GREAT SPACE BATTLES by Stewart Cowley, TTA Sci-fi Artwork Books

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The Terran Trade Authority is a science-fiction setting originally presented in a collection of four large illustrated science fiction books published between 1978 and 1980. This series was written by Stewart Cowley.

The books formed a connected space-opera milieu, describing the future history of mankind's expansion into the galaxy, presented in the guise of official handbooks by the trade organization from which the setting takes its name. However, the books sometimes contained contradictory information (e.g., the nature of early FTL technology).

Compared to other science fiction settings, the TTA setting appears optimistic about man's place in the universe, though elements of violence and authoritarianism do appear in the books. It features a strong undercurrent of wonder and adventure, due in part to the inclusion of various mysterious alien relics and incidents that are left unexplained by the author. 

 

This book is divided in two parts:

• The Laguna War: A novelette about an interstellar war between Earth and Laguna (Beta Hydri) in 2219.
• A set of very short stories mostly about exploration of dangerous planets and minor battles.

Unlike Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, the book contains stories instead of individual spaceship descriptions. This causes some problems as many illustrations were not always coherent within a single story.

Publisher: Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd (1979)
ISBN: 0 600 383 687

Hardcover

This book is in good condition and complete. It has it's dust jacket, which shows a little wear around the edges. The pages themselves are good to very good, all the artwork and text is in there.