'Just wondering if someone could help me ID a space science and exploration book I once read when I was a kid—it had the “gimmick” that it was from sometime in the 21st century, and was about the space missions and discoveries in the solar system that hadn’t actually happened yet.
Things I specifically remember where a mention of the Daedalus probe being under construction; a section on Venus mentioning a theory that the surface atmosphere was so thick that the landscape might suffer a “fishbowl” optical distortion (and providing an artist’s rendition of it), but then immediately debunking it, and providing a (faked) photo from the surface, “taken in 1999,” to prove it; and one bit about a (future) incident of what was believed to be a tiny black hole passing through the solar system, complete with photo—a normal starfield, but with a noticeable black circle in the middle, with a ring of rainbowy streaks of light around the circumference, where blackground starlight was being distorted as it passed by.
I couldn’t have read it any later than 1994, and I think it was about ten years old by then, but I’m not sure.
Can anyone help me out with this one? It’s been bugging me for about a decade now (I, uh, had a bad backlog on my “to do” list).
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I seem to recall there was a picture book associated with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos that featured at least some of those. I can’t find any mention of it though.
A book about the history of Federation starships that came out at the time of the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was sort of like that. I can’t remember the title, though.
There were also the very cool Terran Trade Authority books, also now out of print, but I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about, either: Stewart Cowley - Wikipedia
Is this a possibilty? I have this book somewhere. If I can find it I’ll check it out. I immediately thought of this when I read your description. I’m pretty sure it’s written as if published in the early 21st century. IIRC it had an interesting section on some of the Jovian moons and Titan. It was very near future speculation without exotic elements like aliens, fFTL, etc.
cordylus—that sounds like it, and the cover even looks familiar, though I can’t find enough information online to be completely sure. The title is in the county library system where I first would have seen it (heh—it might even be the same copy!), so I was just able to put a loan request in. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find out for sure within the next week or so. Thank you!