Space Wars, Worlds & Weapons, Steven Eisler w/ Foss
Crescent Books, New York, 1979
96pp, 92 full color illustrations, 5 b/w illustrations
I suspect Space Wars, and its stablemate The Alien World, are also Steven Caldwell titles, albeit under a different pen name. Space Wars blends a mix of sci-fi and fantasy artwork with well-written scholarly narrative on the topics of space vehicles, wars and weapons, fantastic creatures, fantasy and worlds. Oddly, there’s no connection between the imaginative artwork captions and the text. A brief, but studious, foreword by Chris Foss sullenly acknowledges how much “good” sci-fi art is inspired from fictitious wars and weapons.
Much of the artwork appears in the TTA and Galactic Encounters books, so I’m presenting a selection of images that, mostly, aren’t published in those editions. Frankly, I feel Space Wars and The Alien World are below the standards of the TTA and Galactic Encounters series. Yet, both can be found relatively inexpensively and will complete your collection.
i think i had this book
Do you know the name of the artist that produced the picture on the left in the last image of the man on a tank (King Crab?)? This is the only place I have found that image, I remember it from when I owned this book as a child and have been searching the web for it.
Hi Cobber…that’s Melvyn Grant.
Steven Eisler is a pen name used by the late author Robert Holdstock. Many of the names and some basic narrative similarities were included in Holdstock’s novella “The Dark Wheel” which accompanied the 1984 video game “Elite”. The Elite series of video games was recently revived in 2014 with the release of “Elite: Dangerous”. Many of the original concepts that were first introduced in “The Alien World” are stilling reaching a new audience.
Hi Jaiotu…thanks for the info. I agree that many of this era’s books continue to reach new readers and sci-fi art enthusiasts!