Review of Don Dixon's "Universe" in Topeka Capital-Journal 3/28/82

(Universe, Text and Paintings by Don Dixon, Houghton Mifflin, $35) Reviewed by GENE SMITH

This is a remarkable multi-role (writer, painter) tour de force by one of America's foremost space illustrators.

Not only is Dixon's art work exhibited in the Kansas City Museum and various planetariums and other public buildings around the country, but films containing his work are used by NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

It is arresting, then, to discover the clarity, power and facility with which this illustrator writes. Consider his opening remark: "In exploring the distant past, we must bear in mind that we are like the short-lived insects in the Chinese parable: we spend but a day in the forest, so we cannot watch the trees grow. We can, however, find seeds, saplings, mature individuals and fallen bulks, and through imagination and logic we can deduce the life pattern of a tree."

Astutely, he observes "We are reluctant to acknowledge that an immense span of time has preceded our own existence; it threatens our sense of self-importance. Western religions in particular have fostered the belief that the universe is little more than a clockwork toy, with man as the central gear. This is unfortunate, for by so reducing the scope of creation, we limit our appreciation of its grandeur. ...we may be dust, but we are star dust."

Beginning from a point some 16 billion years ago, Dixon sketches the growth of the universe as we know it, and as it is now understood by scientists. As he does so, he leaves a trail of such lingual gems as: the creation of the atoms of the heavier elements "required no less a sacrifice than the death of suns, for only in the hearts of stars can the chemicals of life be born."

As he traces the development of earth itself, he says of the forming seas that "Though biologically sterile, the early ocean was a rich broth of dissolved atmospheric gases and minerals leached from the land. Sunshine, lightning, volcanic heat and tidal stirring transformed the early ocean into a nutritious chemical soup. Laboratory experiments designed to simulate the Earth's early environment suggest that life probably arises through quite natural chemical processes and will occur anywhere conditions are right."

And he explains how.

"A scant 100 million years intervenes between the 'eat-fight-run-mate' syndrome and Maxwell's equations and Beethoven's Sixth Symphony," he points out. "An understanding of cosmic and biological evolution, far from belittling us, allows us to appreciate how truly marvelous the universe is, and how intimately connected we are to the rest of nature. The ancient sea still pulses in our veins, and we are made of the atoms of long-dead suns. In the 16 billion years since creation, energy has become matter, and matter, mind. The universe has become aware of itself."

Having disposed of 16 billion years in 13 pages of carefully-crafted prose, Dixon explores, successively, the inner and outer solar system and the galaxies in considerable detail. All are copiously illustrated with photos from various NASA space probes and the prolific Dixon's own marvelously detailed paintings, the majority in color. Text is uniformly complete, concise, excellent.

The large-format 240-page volume concludes with tables of planetary quantities, a glossary of terms and an index.

If any "coffee table" book is worth $35, this one is. A keeper!

(return to cosmographica...)