Forgot I owned it: Diary of a Spaceperson by Chris Foss #bookaday

Today's #bookaday is to think of a book that you forgot you owned, and what came to mind for me was Diary of a Spaceperson by Chris Foss.

I completely forgot about this art book until it came up last year in my review of The Resurrectionist. Before that review went live I wanted to check who had written the text of Spaceperson, and began to wonder if I still had the book.

After a bit of rummaging, I found it in the spare room, along with similar books by Chris Achilleos and Boris Vallejo.

This a weird book. I love the spaceships and robots, which I knew best from his wonderful covers for writers like Isaac Asimov and E.E. "Doc" Smith, and they're all in here, often displayed in epic double-page spreads. If that was all there was to the book, it would be one of my all-time favourites.

However, it also contains lots of awkward black and white illustrations of women with their tops off, and text to link it all together that is all in italics. It's to make it look like a handwritten diary, but still:  an entire book in italics! It made it very hard to read.

Nevertheless, I was very glad to find I still have it. It's not the kind of book I'd normally have been able to afford in my school days, so my thanks go to the late-lamented Fantasy & SF Book Club, with its wonderful joining offers in the Radio Times.