The Universe and Beyond. Rev. ed.

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Over the past two decades, Terence Dickinson has become the armchair
astronomer’s guide to the night sky. In this revised volume, he straps
the armchair to a beam of light and takes the awestruck reader on his
100 Billion Galaxies Tour of our universe, and beyond. The original
version of this work was published in 1986. The new book has been
expanded to include recent contributions from Voyager 2, Magellan, the
Hubble telescope, and the latest theories from earthbound humanity.

On the surface, this book looks like a quick and easy read. There are
scores of stunning photographs and “space art,” dozens of charts,
and a deceptively simple text. Unfortunately, the scale of what is being
imparted to the reader often results in mental overload. There are 200
billion stars in our galaxy, and 100 billion known galaxies in our
universe. Sit down and try to make that image comprehensible in your
mind; then try and figure out where you fit in the scale of our space
reality.

The science purist might take Dickinson to task for his liberal use of
“space art” instead of actual photos for many of his illustrations.
The author himself seems a tad sensitive on the issue and includes a new
chapter defending this art form. Yet history is on Dickinson’s side.
The super-realist illustrations of his artists are in the same tradition
as the work produced by our early ocean mapmakers. When they were faced
with something they did not yet know, they took an educated guess and
spiced it up with a little imagination. The result was some amazingly
good maps of the world, as well as depictions of sea serpents. Because
we do not have the technology to see our galaxy from afar, I am willing
to accept an illustration: there is the earth, bottom middle; and the
black holes in the corners bear a striking resemblance to sea serpents.