"Here is the illustrated history of spacecraft, both as imagined and as built. Its scope ranges from early fantasies to the moon landings and the space shuttle, then goes beyond the known to far-reaching visions of interstellar travel.
"Spacecraft is an informative and witty mixture of fact and fiction. The 150 illustrations range from 17th-Century engravings of Cyrano de Bergerac buoyed up by dew bottles to scenes from Star Wars and Close Encounters of the First Kind, from rare photographs of the early rocket pioneers to futuristic NASA spaceship designs, from the extravagant artists of the SF pulps, such as Frank R.Paul and Howard Brown to the superbly realistic 'preconstructions' of Chesney Bonestall and the brilliant creations of modern artists such as Rick Sternbach and Chris Foss." (Dust Jacket copy)