UNIVERSE, Don Dixon, Houghton Mifflin. $35
Space illustrator Don Dixon, the 28-year-old master of distant vistas whose work has graced Omni, Future Life and Science Digest, has created Universe, a book of rare beauty. Its aim is to give us a guided tour through the astronomical wonders Dixon has loved since the age of three. It is a total success.
Although the huge mass of data presented in Universe is as precise and scientifically up-to-date as Voyager's Saturn fly-by, it is presented with such love and effortless order that it never overloads the senses. A balance is maintained between lucid, informative text and some of the most staggeringly impressive spacescapes ever to see print.
The book is divided into four main sections: Beginnings (dealing with the origins of the Universe, our solar system, and Earth); The Inner Solar System (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars); The Outer Solar System (Asteroids and Comets, Jupiter, Saturn,Uranus, Neptune and Pluto); and The Realm of the Galaxies.
Although known primarily as a painter Dixon proves to have an engaging and fluid writing style. He becomes nearly poetic at times, sweeping us into his vision of future possibilities. On the subject of extraterrestrial intelligence, Dixon says: "... an encounter with true otherness, with strangeness, with minds born of other seas and other suns, could do much to drive home the lesson that we humans are of one species and one flesh, more alike than different, and that we may someday have to speak with one voice ..."
But his vision and enthusiasm never interfere with technical precision. He has the Gift, the vital talent for explaining complex concepts, and he shares it unhesitatingly. Particularly brilliant and complete is his discussion of the stability of Saturn's rings, a 1500-word essay which ranks with the very best work in print.
Most importantly, of course, the illustrations which accompany the text are superb, a tribute to the talent of a young man who will be charting man's progress to the stars for many years to come. His visions are deep and kinetic, rich in color and delicate shadow. To wander through a portfolio of Dixon art is to take a balloon ride into the winds of Jupiter, to pursue wisps of frozen gas through the cometary halo, to walk the dead river valleys of Mars.
Particularly striking is an interpretation of Earth four billion years ago: savage lunar tides ripping channels through primeval rock. It is a study in blue and brown, the water churning into white foam, the moon a bloated, scarred specter squatting on the horizon. It is disquietingly lovely, evocative of and superior to the "Rite of Spring" images in Fantasia.
Dixon, who has done matte work for Roger Corman's New World Pictures as well as covers for fantasy role-playing games, has now emerged as a double threat, a visual artist who is also adept at verbal communication. Examining this book, sure to become a standard work in its field, one can only marvel, and wait impatiently for the next product of this fertile and disciplined young mind.