Choose Your Own Adventure books – a staple of every 80’s kid’s collection. I loved these books and they definitely got me reading more – but even as a kid I could tell they weren’t the best written things. Seemingly intelligent choices would get you killed while running off against your parents wishes on the family boat across a lake during a thunderstorm would lead to high adventure.

One thing I did love, however, was the amazing illustrations in some of the books. Paul Granger’s illustrations were some of my favorites. Space And Beyond was definitely one of those books where the writing was pretty sub-par, but the pictures were fascinating to me as a kid. I remember trying to copy the ships and make my own – to reasonably good effect on the side of my notebooks and test papers.

Over time as I was exposed to more sci-fi art; and started seeing some similarities between Space and Beyond and other work. I wonder if Paul Granger got some of his inspiration from John Berkey. John Berkey was a fabulous sci-fi artist that created many futuristic works in the 70’s – including one of the most iconic Star Wars posters of the era.

Do you think these were ‘heavily inspired’? 🙂