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The Alien World: The Complete Illustrated Guide
Professor Steven Eisler uses his immeasurable wit and razor-sharp intellect to assemble the currently available information from both established and obscure sources into the first sensible treatise on the fictitious world of expanding and contracting galaxies and their alien life. When approaching this difficult task Professor Eisler's initial problem was to establish a classification of alien cultures that would be acceptable to academics and, more importantly, clearly understood by the knowledgeable layman with a desire to study alien phenomena in depth. These criteria have been achieved with quite remarkable success. His five principal sectors, or divisions, satisfy all the wishes of his most eminent contemporaries as well as the publishers of this major contribution. The Space that creates the galaxies, universes and their forms is divided into, and named after, five groups: the Oisir-Raxxla; the Human; the Hiraldron; the Narathnu and the Uan-lrec.
Professor Eisler has produced a coherent commentary on the geophysical mediums that support the alien, their socio- *r political status, their economies' their communications and their alternative levels of consciousness. Using superbly adapted illustrations from the foremost artists on our planet, who have generously assisted in developing reconstructions of a selected number of the more significant aliens, the author presents an accurate and imaginative account within the organized structure necessary for any serious study of aliens, without losing sight of the many curious ambiguities that surround this subject.
Professor Eisler has produced a coherent commentary on the geophysical mediums that support the alien, their socio- *r political status, their economies' their communications and their alternative levels of consciousness. Using superbly adapted illustrations from the foremost artists on our planet, who have generously assisted in developing reconstructions of a selected number of the more significant aliens, the author presents an accurate and imaginative account within the organized structure necessary for any serious study of aliens, without losing sight of the many curious ambiguities that surround this subject.
- GenresScience FictionAliens
96 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 10, 2014
Similar to the "Terran Trade Authority" and "Galactic Encounters" series from the same time period. Science fiction art (mainly book covers) is reproduced with fictional "galactic history" text to accompany. The style of the text portions is very fanciful and far fetched: set 10,000 years in the future, in a universe where humans and rival alien races have conquered whole galaxies. A lot of it strained credibility. Most of the art is good, but there are some mediocre and out of place selections as well. Enjoyable, but not not as good as the TTA books.
August 20, 2016
Came across while searching for a different book from my childhood. It's pretty much a random collection of sci-fi art that the author threads into a setting and history. Mildly interesting but not essential.
March 31, 2018
Fun, if a bit derivative. The artwork is not original to the text, and most likely predates it, so we never see exact depictions of what the author’s describing. An exercise in adaptive captioning!
March 19, 2022
Steven Eisler is an incredibly talented artist, whose skill at rendering fantasy worlds and more plausible-seeming science fictional realms is to be admired and studied even, as a source of inspiration. Yet fantasy and SF should probably either not be mixed, or should be blended by someone with a skilled hand at making the link between magic and science appear seamless, at once both logical and mysterious. The "Shadowrun" series comes to mind as an attempt that got the balance exactly right (while miraculously counterbalancing this sense of wonder with cyberpunk's well-worn cynical distrust of practically everything).
It's very hard to do, and while "The Alien World" is a resounding success where the images are concerned, the lavish paintings of planets, stars, dragons and weird cyclopean aliens should have been left to speak for themselves. Because when Eisler tries to provide textual glosses for his creatures and vessels, it becomes clear that the art and words don't really go together.
The bottom line is that in SF, form follows function, while in fantasy, one doesn't need such rigor or justifications. A human in a loin cloth can be riding a dinosaur on a distant world without explaining anything about the atmosphere, or how the human rider made his saurian beast pacific enough to let him ride on its back. A man riding a dinosaur toward a giant flaming sun simply looks cool, and that's the end of it.
When Eisler paints a cat in a flight suit, for instance, the effect is both absurd and astounding, like a Dali painting. But then you read the caption below the suited-up feline, trying to explain why this cool, morphologically impossible creature actually exists, and the effect of the painting is ruined.
It's fun to make up stories to go with these ornate, lovingly painted works from the man's imagination. But it's at first distracting, then taxing, and finally ruinous, to see him keep pulling explanations for the inexplicable out of his ear. To return to Salvador Dali to make another analogy, imagine his paintings of melting clocks accompanied by text explaining to the reader how these dripping timepieces are artifacts from a world where the space-time continuum collapsed. The literalness of the text destroys the surreality of the images.
Disaggregate the images from the words, scrap the text, and you could make some really cool SF calendars from what's here. Staring at those for hours on end would likely give you much more pleasure and intellectual stimulation than trying to read what's Eisler has written to go with his sumptuous paintings.
It's very hard to do, and while "The Alien World" is a resounding success where the images are concerned, the lavish paintings of planets, stars, dragons and weird cyclopean aliens should have been left to speak for themselves. Because when Eisler tries to provide textual glosses for his creatures and vessels, it becomes clear that the art and words don't really go together.
The bottom line is that in SF, form follows function, while in fantasy, one doesn't need such rigor or justifications. A human in a loin cloth can be riding a dinosaur on a distant world without explaining anything about the atmosphere, or how the human rider made his saurian beast pacific enough to let him ride on its back. A man riding a dinosaur toward a giant flaming sun simply looks cool, and that's the end of it.
When Eisler paints a cat in a flight suit, for instance, the effect is both absurd and astounding, like a Dali painting. But then you read the caption below the suited-up feline, trying to explain why this cool, morphologically impossible creature actually exists, and the effect of the painting is ruined.
It's fun to make up stories to go with these ornate, lovingly painted works from the man's imagination. But it's at first distracting, then taxing, and finally ruinous, to see him keep pulling explanations for the inexplicable out of his ear. To return to Salvador Dali to make another analogy, imagine his paintings of melting clocks accompanied by text explaining to the reader how these dripping timepieces are artifacts from a world where the space-time continuum collapsed. The literalness of the text destroys the surreality of the images.
Disaggregate the images from the words, scrap the text, and you could make some really cool SF calendars from what's here. Staring at those for hours on end would likely give you much more pleasure and intellectual stimulation than trying to read what's Eisler has written to go with his sumptuous paintings.
January 4, 2023
Very imaginative with beautiful illustrations read this and similar books as a child loved how different they were from the Star Wars stuff of that era.
December 28, 2010
Loved this picture book as a kid. A great gift for any young science fiction fan.
February 16, 2016
Great art book. Lots of great alien pics and entries. Recommended
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews