Beautiful Illustrations, Begging Storyline

books:

	• Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the A.D. 2358 Voyage to Darwin IV Wayne Douglas Barlowe Workman Pub Co, 1990 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews
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highly recommended

An unique vision of an alien world!

Barlowe has created a rich and exciting world for his readers. We discover this world alog with his main character, who is an intrepid and earnest researcher and artist. Barlowe does not simply spell out every detail of this world, but makes conjectures based on the available data, thus preserving the illusion that this is an actual account of a place that exists.
This book is the template for the new Discovery Channel special on alien worlds. I recommend this book to anyone interested in beautiful art coupled with a fantastic story.

Beautiful Illustrations, Begging Storyline

Wayne Barlow is an exceptional artist. These are beautiful illustrations, and you should set aside some time to dwell on them. They are worthy of the imaginative musings of new planets that we sometimes see in artist conceptions.

But the story was...lacking a story. It was something like a scientific treatise, but lacking any real grounding in science. Unlike books like After Man: A Zoology of the Future, Expedition doesn't relate at all to what has occurred in true evolutionary history. After Man does an admirable job of imagining what might happen, given what has happened. Expedition therefore lacks value as a scientific exercise. And unlike books like Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe, this is no compendium accompaniment to a universe described in other books. All I get is a rather humdrum account of fictional explorations of the biology of another planet, punctuated by only occasional moments of excitement, quickly resolved.

I am frankly far more interested in the brief description of the extinction of all megafauna on Earth, and how tame megafauna have evolved through unnatural selection. Barlow's scientific suppositions on the evolution of organisms is questionable, for even when taking into account an alien environment, there are certain rules to this sort of thing. And he focuses on the typical interest of laymen- megafauna- large animals. I was really interested in the differences in plants on this new planet, as well as a giant sea of a unicellular colonial organism. This was innovative stuff. But the plants and unicellular fauna are merely background and environment for the animals, which after awhile, become themselves rather monotonous and repetitive.

Barlow would have been better served to create a book imagining strange creatures, with brief descriptions of each, rather than attempting some sort of narrative.

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Good artwork...but...

Expedition is about an artist's voyage to Darwin Four, in 2358 A.D. The book is his collection of drawings and sketches made during the first manned mission to the planet. Mr. Barlowe is not just an artist, but also has great knowledge about nature and how it works. He tries to mix the two, showing the aliens and explaining how they lived, mated and, sometimes, died. But he leaves so much out - there is very little background on the planet's natural history. We get hints and clues about what early life was like. For example, most creatures use sonar and have biolights, yet are blind. Being blind, the sonar makes sense, but why have biolights then? The atmosphere must have been thick and murky, allowing animals armed with sonar better chances than those armed with eyes, but could the biolights be something from earlier times, before sonar was developed and all animals used visible light?
The science, in other words, is lacking the details I enjoy. It is a great art book, but Dougal Dixon is better at the science, showing evolution and how it works. This is an alien planet and we barely touched the surface of its wonders!
That is why it only gets three points.

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Out of this World!

Expedition is a book in the style of Dougal Dixon's "alternitive zoology" books, with the main diffrence being this book takes place on a completley alien world, Darwin IV.
The book itself is amazing. The writing, while not as bad as some reviwers say, is'nt up to Dixon's books, but the artwork is truly where Expedition shines. Darwin IV and it's alien inhabitants jump off the pages, even if some of the creatures look pretty "out there". I highly reccomend Expedition to any fan of scientific fiction.

Awesome!

This is the best work for Alternative evolution yet! I actually like how he made the animals look nothing like things on Earth because they evolved from a completely different orgin.It is even better that it's movie adaption Alien Planet. In alien planet it said that they have eyes, but very weak ones, probably just strong enough to pick up biolights, but not strong enough to have complex vision. I like how they ended up with sonar. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who is as big an evolutionary science nut as I am!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

In 2358, wildlife artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe joined the first manned flight to Darwin IV, fourth planet in the newly discovered F-Class binary system 6.5 light years from Earth. Now his long-awaited account of that historic journey has been published. More vivid than the holos and more interpretive than the videos, these extraordinary paintings, plus numerous drawings, studies, and sketchbook pages, transport the reader to a wild, beautiful, untouched world-a planet teeming with incredible beasts and exotic vegetation.

Expedition is the most important travel book of the 24th century. Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club and the Astronomy Book Club.

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