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)
In addition the books Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD and Great Space Battles where 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 , Robin Hiddon , Bob Layzell , Angus McKie , Chris Moore, Tony Roberts , Trevor Webb .
Strangely, the books are not well connected and sometimes contain contradictory information.
Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD
Presented like an aircraft recognition guide. This books contains neither novels nor short stories, only spacecraft descriptions. However, by reading the spaceship descriptions it is possible to imagine a classical science fiction story of an interstellar war between the good guys: the Terrans (from Earth) and the Alphans (from Alpha Centauri) and the bad guys: the 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 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 illustraed list of spaceship description instead of a collection of stories. However, being set in peace times it speaks only of commercial companies exploiting commercial flights towards exotic planets which does not produce the same "future history" effect as felt in the first book
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