For whatever reason tonight, I put on the music of Homeworld, the only video game which had a soundtrack that I would listen to for the fun of it. This lead me to Wikipedia, which then reminded me of what I'd always known, that the ships in that video game were essentially based on a book I'd inhaled and then memorized when I was 10 years old...

Welcome to The Terran Trade Authority. Spacecraft 2000 - 2100 (upper part of the site, third from the left, Wikipedia entry is here), is a book that has stayed with me to this day, which I found (of all places) in my 6th grade school library. The thing is basically a future-world encyclopedia of Gear. Spaceships, in fact. In action, and otherwise.

In 1978, when it came out, Star Wars had only just detonated over the landscape, and Star Trek was nothing but stale reruns. Far, far from today's dozens of Sci-Fi series on their own channel. Anything that had anything even vaguely rocket-ship-like would be swirled into my hands like rare dust into a hungry black hole.

Its optimistic and realistic view of humanity* was refreshing for the time (really even to this day), and the ships, like those of Star Wars, weren't glittering chrome and needles. They were used, and worn, and streaked. They were real, and not all of them made sense. They existed to me, in a strange sort of way.

I checked the book back in some time in early 1980, and I never saw it again. In spite of that, I sometime think of them to this day.

And here I go rediscovering it all with just four days before Christmas. The Lord definitely has a sense of humor, he does. But that's OK.

Yet another thing to read to Olivia. Some day. If I'm lucky.

Time to throw the dice...

----
* Yeah, we'd made it through, and were doing OK. There were other civilizations way more advanced than ours, but as long as we didn't screw with them they left us alone. And when they screwed with us, well, it didn't always go their way.