Voyage across the Cosmos

Review also includes:

Cosmic!, **, Giles Sparrow, Dorling Kindersley, 14pp, 978-1405332569, £14.99 hbk

Both of these books describe the contents of the Universe; the author is the same, but the means are very different.

Voyage across the Cosmos: a Journey to the Edge of Space and Time, apart from scattered infotech gimmicks such as ‘INCOMING DATA… ACCEPTED>‘ and ‘<<DOWNLOAD COMPLETED’, has 60 or so spreads full of information, divided into Across the Solar System, Through the Milky Way, Beyond our Galaxy, and Depths of the Universe. Objects not commonly seen in Universe books are splendidly illustrated, helped by a large format, mostly with NASA images, and set in context. Stellar and galactic evolution are given due consideration.

Cosmic!: The flashing, exploding, 3-D guide to stars and planets, battery-powered, invites the reader to see the lights by pressing a button on the front cover, roars when opened to the first spread – from the Big Bang to the Early Universe – and has only seven spreads altogether. There are full-spread pop-up images, and numbers of flaps, pull-tabs and turnwheels, which reveal a good deal of information about Looking into Space, The Planets, Our Solar System, Stars, Galaxies, Exploring Space and Robot Spacecraft, mostly chopped into short passages. Many of the images also come from NASA.