CATEGORY

Imagining Space is a lovely coffee-table collection of artists' renderings, photographs, and schematics, along with a comprehensive history of the human effort to explore space and a look at what's ahead. Starting with paintings from the 1950s of what vehicles and their destinations might look like, and zooming through the decades to fantastic renderings of upcoming space technology, NASA historian Roger D. Launius and American University professor Howard E. McCurdy offer a fascinating overview of the promise of the final frontier.

With a foreword by Ray Bradbury and space art by Chesley Bonestell, Imagining Space has a solid science fiction pedigree. But some of this stuff is real, and images from achievements like moon landings, interplanetary probes, and the Mars rover seem even more amazing when juxtaposed with the wide-eyed scientific speculations of domed habitats and faster-than-light propulsion systems. After all, the rover really got built ... and it worked! No one really knows where we'll go next, or who'll pay for it, but it's exciting to think that we're likely to go somewhere by 2050, even if it's just high enough to admire our own beautiful planet from a distance. --Therese Littleton