Monthly Archive for August, 2010

It seems like a meme that’s been coming up a lot lately, for me at least, has been: Two great flavors that go great together. This is definitely the case with this book. Great Flavor Number One being: aliens. Great Flavor Number Two being: Exploring ancient ruins, haunted houses, and/or derelict ships. If you’re anything like me, when you first saw the movie Alien, the most fascinating part of the movie was when they went into the giant derelict space ship and found H.R. Giger’s “space jockey”. That was one of those moments where you remember exactly where you were when you first experienced it. Of course it helps that I was in a movie theater. That was awesome!

The title of this book is Spacewreck – Ghostships and Derelicts of Space and it was published in 1979. The author, Stewart Cowley, wrote a couple of these that all went together and were called “Terran Trade Authority Handbooks”. They’ve become something like collectors items over the years. Besides Spacewreck, there was Starliners, Great Space Battles, and Spacecraft 2100 to 2200 AD. None of the other books held as much interest for me, though, because they didn’t have ruined civilizations, scientific experiments gone horribly wrong, or haunted planets.

Illustration from Spacewreck by Tony Roberts

In addition to the great stories, the book is lavishly illustrated. To me, this is like an extensive catalog of exotic vacation spots. I would definitely pay money to visit a quarantined space derelict where an ill-advised agricultural experiment went awry and took the lives of an entire crew.

Illustration from Spacewreck by Tony Roberts

Another place I would pay to visit is a planet with numerous giant derelict space ships that are worshiped as holy places by the strange humanoid inhabitants. Are they the descended from the space voyagers, or did the unlucky visitors meet their fates on the planet, and leave massive crumbling hulks of alien technology?

Illustration from Spacewreck by Bob Layzell

One place that sounds too horrible to visit is a planet where the wars got out of hand and thrust the population back to stone-age civilization.

Illustration from Spacewreck by Fred Gambino

Of course, none of these places are real, but a monster can certainly dream. Here’s a list of illustrators who contributed to this book (links go to artist websites): Alan Daniels, Peter Elson, Fred Gambino, Colin Hay, Robin Hiddon, Bob Layzell, Angus McKie, and Tony Roberts. It’s interesting to see what these artists are up to thirty years later.

This isn’t so much a book review as it is a “look at this cool thing. Wow!” article, but my OCD is forcing me to grade this book in the normal manner.

Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5 (short stories)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 5 out of 5

Final result: Look at this cool thing. Wow!

Spacewreck – Ghostships and Derelicts of Space by Stewart Cowley – Hamlyn Publishing – 1979
Buy Spacewreck at Amazon – what are you waiting for?!?

Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!