About this item
How have actual spaceships influenced the design of fictional ones like the Millenium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise? Did a fiction series in Collier's magazine really inspire us to create real-life space stations like Mir and the ISS? How have our depictions of space travel developed as the reality of space travel changed? In his new book Spaceships: An Illustrated History of the Real and the Imagined, Ron Miller shows that when it comes to spacecraft, art actually does imitate life and, even more bizarrely, life imitates art. In fact, astronautics owes its origins to art. Long before engineers and scientists took the possibility of spaceflight seriously, virtually all of its aspects had been explored in art and literature. Miller takes readers on a visual journey through the history of the spaceship both in our collective imagination and in reality.
About the Author
Ron Miller (born May 8, 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an artist and author who lives and works in South Boston, Virginia in the United States. His current work is primarily the writing and illustration of books specializing in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction subjects for young adults.Miller holds a BFA from Columbus, Ohio, College of Art and Design. He worked as a commercial artist and designer for six years, before taking a position as art director for the National Air & Space Museum's Albert Einstein Planetarium. He left there in 1977 to became a freelance illustrator and author; to date he has nearly forty book titles to his credit, and his illustrations have appeared on scores of book jackets, book interiors and in magazines such as National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Analog, Starlog, Air & Space, Sky & Telescope, Newsweek, Natural History, Discover, GEO and others.Miller has translated and illustrated new editions of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Center of the Earth as well as a companion/atlas to Verne's works, Extraordinary Voyages. He has acted as a consultant on Verne for Walt Disney Imagineering and A&E Television Network's Biography series. His original paintings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Pushkin Museum (Moscow) .He designed a set of ten commemorative postage stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. He has been a production illustrator for motion pictures, notably Dune and Total Recall; and he designed and co-directed the computer-generated show ride film, Impact!Miller has taken part in international space art workshops and exhibitions, including seminal sessions held in Iceland and the Soviet Union. He was invited by the Soviet government to the 30th anniversary celebration of the launch of Sputnik, and has lectured on space art and space history in the U.S., France, Japan, Italy and Great Britain. He was featured on Hour 25 Science Fiction Radio program in early 2003.An authority on the work of the famed astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell, his book The Art of Chesley Bonestell received a Hugo Award in 2002; other books have received awards, including a Silver Award for best fiction from ForeWord magazine and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers' League of Texas. His Worlds Beyond series received the American Institute of Physics Award of Excellence. The Grand Tour, has gone through three editions, multiple printings, several translations, was a Hugo Award nominee and has sold over 250,000 copies. It was also a twice a Book-of-the-Month feature selection. Other books have been selections of the Science, Quality Paperback and Science Fiction Book Clubs.Miller has also had several short stories included in science fiction anthologies.Miller has been on the faculty of the International Space University. He is a contributing edi
