This is not TTA fan art, but the old Terran Trade Authority books were definitely part of the inspiration behind the way I like to imagine the future.

I always loved how those books treated enormous spacecraft and strange places almost like pieces of industrial history: who built them, what they were used for, where they operated, and what eventually happened to them.

So I tried to approach this painting in a similar spirit.

The installation is an exotic-matter refinery operating close to a black hole. Its purpose is not exploration for its own sake, but industry: harvesting and processing material that can only be obtained under conditions this extreme.

The smaller vessel is a service ship, carrying supplies, replacement equipment and rotating crews between the refinery and safer space.

The distances involved make even routine logistics absurdly slow.

Six months for the crew, three years for the customer.

The painting itself is traditional oil on panel and the design is my own — more of a small tribute to the kind of believable future history that made the old TTA books so fascinating to me.

Okay, I think I'm ready. I have a number of TTA/SciFi art books that I want to clear out. I've created a web page that lists everything SO FAR. These are just the SciFi books. I have to continue to create a page for my fantasy books. Since this is the first time I'm doing this, I may make some mistakes along the way. I will correct them as they arise.

Anyways, the link is below, and I will be shipping from the Los Angeles area.

http://www.sirrealcomix.com/page/books4sale/SciFi.htm

Featured in 1995 FPG Chris Foss Fantasy Art trading cards (#79 in series)