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Hall
Green's David A Hardy once again shows us his epic visions of space
in his latest book 'Futures: 50 Years in Space'.
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| A
Martian Canyon |
The
collaboration with Patrick Moore includes some of David's original
images from the 70's compared with new modern interpretations.
It also features dozens of new, original paintings from the world
famous space-artist - many of them digitally created.
The
book is a celebration of Hardy and Moore's half century of work
as an artist/author team, and compares their predictions and ideas
from the 50's and 70's with today's reality. It also looks at how
the future was viewed then and compares that with how it is seen
today.
Amazing
new discoveries
"Our
views of the universe and space exploration have changed in the
past 50 years" said David, "There are no bases on the
Moon or Mars, but there are all the amazing new discoveries by space
probes such as Viking, Voyager and Galileo, plus the Hubble Space
Telescope"
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| David
with one of his 'portals' |
"Many
of the new paintings are of objects which we did not even know existed
in 1954, or even 1972 - such as pulsars, neutron stars, black holes
and jetting galaxies"
"Science
and imagination"
David
describes his work as "a combination of science and imagination"
and says he tries to offer a different perspective on space in his
paintings:
"I
get a lot of information from space probes, but of course they always
look down at the planet from above. I like to imagine myself down
on the surface, walking about and then drawing the image".
50-year
career
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| The
Eta Carinae star explodes |
David,
who had an asteroid named after him in 1998, has been illustrating
space scenes since the 50's.
During
his illustrious 50-year career, he has worked with author Arthur
C. Clarke and scientist Carl Sagan, as well as a long standing collaboration
with Patrick Moore.
Celebrity
fans include Queen guitarist Brian May, sci-fi author Isaac Asimov
and the late Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.
He learnt his trade as an illustrator whilst working at Cadbury's
in Bournville and first worked with Patrick Moore in 1954 on a book
entitled 'The Challenge of the Stars' - though it failed to find
a publisher.
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| A
view from Jupiter's moon - Callisto |
In
1972 a book with that title was finally released, with a revised
edition called 'New Challenge of the Stars' published in 1978. These
books inspired a new generation of space artists and helped to establish
David as Britain's foremost astronomical artist.
In 2001, David published 'Hardyware', a retrospective of his life
and work from his early career onwards. In 2003 he switched from
pictures to words when his first novel 'Aurora: A Child of Two Worlds'
was released.
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