About 6 weeks ago, I ran across an interesting blog while looking looking for information about the restoration of the original filming model of the Nostromo that was made for Alien back in the late 70s. This site had three very in-depth posts with fantastic photographs of the model before and during reconstruction along with links to several other sites with even more information. The Nostromo is an iconic design for me as I’m sure it is for many other sci-fi fans and people who were fans of the first Alien film. It doesn’t look like any star ship that appeared in movies before Alien and I think the design (along with the designs from Star Wars) set the tone for how spacecraft should look – gritty, dirty and functional with a bit of mystery thrown in. After getting completely distracted by this stuff for about 2 and a half hours, I decided to take a look around the site for more items of interest.

As I looked through the more recent posts on this blog, I found this post and was struck by the artwork I saw.

This painting jangled some memory from deep inside my mind and after a few moments I remembered where I had seen that image before. As a youngster, I was a voracious reader (or at least “looker” since I would often just look at the pictures and paintings in books) and visited our town’s public library every week. There were some books that I borrowed over and over again because some aspect of them just attracted me. This was the cover to one of those books. I distinctly remember looking at this book and drawing pictures based on the illustrations in it when I was a kid. I had to have my own copy!

I searched around a bit and ran across a listing on Amazon for a used copy. The price – 17 cents! Shipping was a few dollars but I snapped it up and placed the order. About a week later the book arrived and I eagerly flipped through the pages. Each fabulous illustration sparked a memory and I recalled the wonder and excitement that they brought to me as a child.