TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE

Mayflower paperback edition, 1980. Painting: Jim Burns.

 "Imagine - in the morning mail comes a letter announcing you have won a competition, the first prize an all-expenses-paid trip around the local galaxy. You will spend six months travelling from Earthport across millions of miles of space, visiting strange and wonderful planets along the way. You would think it a hoax if it happened now - but imagine yourself living in the year 2577 and such a letter might not be so crazy. Leio and Caroline win such a prize and visit in full fabulous colour Jupiter, with overnight stops at Ring City, Ganymede, Pluto, VandeZande's World, Pliax and have their first meeting with a living alien civilisation, travelling on through dozens of adventures and dangers. This book is the record of their whole journey. We see the dazzling places in full colour, we see the space craft they travel in, the passports, the immigration forms, the travel brochures, newspaper reports and their diaries of the holiday. Share their adventure of a lifetime!"

Hunderdrag Rock by Richard Sparks.

 "Attention is immediately drawn to the much obscured, yet unmistakeable shape of a man embedded in the largest of the rock columns. His face-plate is clearly delineated, and part of the equipment he wore upon his chest; and from the rock surface, some forty centimetres away, a hand grows out, half clenched as if in final agony. There are no names, no visible clues as to this time-lost person's identity."

Chikstha Varieties by Terry Oakes.

 "The immediate obvious feature of the Chikstha is that they are spider-like creatures, especially in the region of the head, jaws and eyes. This analogous evolution to that of the terrestrial spider is quite remarkable, and is the reason for the widespread belief that the Chikstha seeded earth with their own kind some millions of years in their past (a theory easily disprovable: the Chikstha first cycle occurred less than two million years ago)."

The Sacred World by Bob Fowke.

"On Pliax VI, on the world now totally covered by Chiksthian cities, which even extend out across the oceans, here the human tourist may enjoy a brief and possibly frightening holiday."

The Prismoids by Richard Clifton-Dey.

 "The Prismoids of Annax IV are the most enigmatic of intelligent life - if, indeed, they can properly be said to either intelligent or alive, debate on these questions has raged ever since Annax was discovered in 2264."

Aurora-Magellan Guards With Mural by Jim Burns.

 "This mural, completed in 2493 by Kleo Mchaag, depicts one of the crucial encounters in the Great War of Independence: the Battle of Shiva's Rift, which took place between 13th and 24th May 2451."

Aurora-Magellan Cruiser by Jeff Ridge.

Hall Of A Thousand Races by Les Edwards.

"In this immense gallery, which measures almost 30 kilometres in overall length, we see preserved in columns of ionized fluid representative specimens of 984 different alien species. Of these 633 are identified (including an early specimen of Homo Erectus in column no. 422); the remaining 351 are unknown species (many of which may have been extinct for many years: estimated age of the gallery is 0.5 million years)."