Spacebase 2000 by Stewart Cowley

Spacebase 2000 Reviews

• 
  Andrew

  This is one of those curio books of the 80s. Basically it is a collection of science fiction art work cobbled together with a fictitious storyline / explanation. the commentary is loosely based on the authors own imagination inspired by the images. So why read it - simple it has some of the best science fiction cover art in its pages from the time of printing, from Jim Burns, Chris Foss, Peter Elson and Chris Moore. Though there is no index to the work you will quickly recognise covers from books as wide a spectrum as James Blish to Ray Bradbury.
• 
  Ron

  Every nerd I knew had this book when I was a kid and I was no exception. Its best feature is the amazing artwork contained within, but it also had more than a few good science fiction stories as well.
• 
  Mark

  This book holds a big place in my heart as my big brother bought it for me as a kid.
  
  Basically Stewart Cowley has repurposed pieces of sci-fi artwork (taken from books and magazine covers and paintings) and created a world that fits around them.
  
  This is two books joined together.
  
  The first is the guide around a museum of old space ships.
  Each page has the piece of (often great) artwork and a fabricated history of the pictured ship.
  in the 80s a lot of books for kids were statistic heavy. I had books on tanks and planes and cars and trains all showing a Top Trumps level of information.
  This is replicated here.
  What I love is the level of detail.
  You may get a picture of a sleek star ship blasting an asteroid and in the text you will get a design and service history including tasty nuggets like how an exhaust problem was fixed on the model B version or how 60 ships were ordered but due to budget constraints only 10 were delivered or perhaps this old ship is still in service with outer system police forces.
  Even as an adult I lap this stuff up!
  
  The second book is a recount of some conflicts in space (but not the Proxima conflict - a twenty year war that lurks in the background of the first book and facilitated the construction of most of the ships in the museum)
  The stories are a little odd as they have to wrap themselves around the pieces of art work associated to them and don't always corelate.
  The stories (like the books of the time) are quite brief and to the point: these ships went here, loads blew up, but then a missile hit this capital ship and the battle turned etc. etc.
  
  I have so much nostalgia for this book and (objectively) it probably only deserves 3 of the 4 starts I am giving this - but I don't care.
  
  I have somehow collected other TTA books not shown in the series
• 
  Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides

  This caught my eye at a local library. It looks like an RPG supplement, but it's not at all clear that that's what it is. It reads more like a future history with a very niche focus on spacecraft. I'm not going to lie ... I checked it out to look at the retro space art. Yes, for the pretty pictures. If you're into that you'll probably enjoy flipping through this. There's a one page short story on the last page; the rest of the text is descriptions of the spacecraft and/or explanation of the future history.
• 
  Tyler Lutz

  awesome spaceship artwork