This book presents a history of the career of David A. Hardy since his early days of the early 1950's to the heights of SF art. It contains many reproductions of pieces from throughout Hardy's working life and a commentary by Chris Morgan telling the tale of the man's life and work.

Hardy's work displays a love of astronomy and a desire to ensure as great a degree of correct science is contained within his work whilst not sacrificing the entertainement value of the artwork. This he acheives wonderfully well, as should be expected with much of the work being previously used in non-ficiton science books (some co-written with Sir Patrick Moore). There is also, as is explained in the text, a great effort made in ensuring all pictures were created to current scienctific knowledge - even if some of it was later proven false, at the time of creation these were accurate representations of human knowledge.

This is SF art in the manner I enjoy. This man has given visual form to scenes I have imagined leafing through pages of SF novels but not had the ability to create myself. And unlike some images I have seen his can enhance your imaginings not limit them to a flat image.

The only criticism that a book like this can lay itself open to is perhaps it's scope was too great. A career spannign almost fifty years (so far) is not easily portrayed in just 128 pages. There is a tendency here also to try to explain to much. I felt that at times space were taken up with Chris Morgan's text and the pictures were smaller than they might be otherwise perhaps diminishing their impact. I am not saying that the text is a distraction, I found his history of the life and works of David A. Hardy to be highly interesting, but maybe a slightly lengthier book could have included all this and more larger images. These are minor criticisms though.

There are many great pictures in this book altough as always there are standout moments. Woomera Launch is a wonderful 1950's SF scene; the Bhen the Benevolent BEM pictures have a wonderful humour about them; To the Stars is a classic spacecraft image; Terraforming Mars is a great example of scale; and St Michael's Eclipse a wonderful image (and so much better than the actuality of the 1999 eclipse in the UK).

If you are a fan of the modern trends in SF art of absolute perfection that can be acheived due to digital image technology then a lot of this book might not be for you, but if like me you have a liking for artwork produced by a brush and not printed on a computer then you'll like this. This is not to say that David Hardy's art does not include computer generated artwork, and great examples of his work in this field are included here, just that the majority of the work is in more traditional media.

If you are a SF fan who enjoys the art as well as the ficiton, give it a try! You are unlikely to be disappointed.