Gourt Home::Gourt :: Terran Trade Authority
Terran Trade Authority is a collection of four large illustrated science fiction books published between 1978 and 1980.
The four books are:
- Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD (by Stewart Cowley) (1978)
- Great Space Battles (by Stewart Cowley and Charles Herridge) (1979)
- SpaceWreck: Ghost Ships and Derelicts of Space (by Stewart Cowley) (1979)
- Starliners: Commercial Travel in 2200 AD (by Stewart Cowley) (1980)
- Spacecraft 2100 to 2200 AD (by K. Scott Agnew, Jeff Lilly & Stewart Cowley) (2006)
- The Terran Trade Authority Roleplaying Game (by K. Scott Agnew & Jeff Lilly) (2006)
In addition the books Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD and Great Space Battles were collected together and published as Spacebase 2000 (1984). All the books are currently out of print.
Large color illustrations cover at least half the pages in each book. Most of these illustrations are reprints from book covers, which explains why sometimes they do not exactly fit with the book.
All the illustrations were made by famous science fiction painters such as Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Alan Daniels, Peter Elson, Fred Gambino, Colin Hay (illustrator), Robin Hiddon, Bob Layzell, Angus McKie, Chris Moore, Tony Roberts, Trevor Webb.
The books formed a connected space-opera milieu, describing the future-history and general make-up the Earth-based Trade Authority. However, the books were not always well connected and sometimes contained contradictory information.
In late 2005, the rights to the books were licensed from Hamlyn, the original publisher, and a new, updated and expanded version is in production, which will address the contradictions and omissions in the original. Release is slated for June 2006. A Role Playing game published by Morrigan Press is also in production to follow later.
Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD
This book is presented like an aircraft recognition guide, made up entirely of spacecraft descriptions. The descriptions are presented in the context of an interstellar war between the "good guy" Terrans (from Earth) and Alphans (from Alpha Centauri) and the "bad guy" Proximans (from Proxima Centauri). The book covers an imaginary history between 2000 AD and 2100 AD.
Great Space Battles
This book is divided in two parts
- The Laguna War: A novelette about an interstellar war between Earth and Laguna in 2219. It's an excellent story that captures the atmosphere of a war in the depths of space against a mysterious opponent. It finishes well with a tantalising 'the end...or is it?'
- A set of very short stories mostly about exploration of dangerous planets and minor battles.
The fact that, contrary to Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD the book contains stories instead of individual spaceship descriptions, causes problems since the illustrations are not always coherent within the same story.
SpaceWreck: Ghost Ships and Derelicts of Space
As was the case in the second part of Great Space Battles, the book is a collection of many unrelated very short stories about dangerous planets and space disasters. Since the stories are short they have most of the time only one illustration which avoids the problem of coherence between illustrations.
Starliners: Commercial Travel in 2200 AD
This fourth book is a return to the principle of the first book i.e. an illustrated list of spaceship descriptions instead of a collection of stories. However, being set in a time of peace, it speaks only of commercial companies exploiting flights towards exotic planets, which does not produce the same sense of dynamic "future history" as in the first book.
External links
"Terran Trade Authority"