Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Space Odyssey
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 3/31/1962
WEBSITE: http://michael-benson.com
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 31, 1962.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Artist, photographer, filmmaker, and writer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting scholar at Media Lab Center for Bits and Atoms; New York Institute of the Humanities, fellow; Weizmann Institute, advocate for curiosity. Worcester Art Museum, Amerlia and Robert H. Haley Memorial Lecturer, 2004; lecturer or presenter at numerous other venues from New York to California and abroad.
Exhibitions: Photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and elsewhere, including dozens of solo exhibitions of Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, beginning with a show at the American Museum of National History, 2007-08, followed by showings at venues in Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and England, as well as the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution; other solo shows include Planetfall, New York City and Washington, DC, 2013; Otherworlds, London and Vienna, 2016, and Atmospheres, London, 2016. Selected group shows include representation in Skydreamers, Autry Museum, Los Angeles, 2011; Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography, Olin Arts Center, Lewiston, ME, 2012; Touch the Sky, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, 2016; and Lunar Attraction, Peabody Essex Museum, 2016.
AWARDS:Best Documentary Feature Award, National Film Board of Canada and grant from New York State Council on the Arts, 1996, for Predictions of Fire: A Film about Art, Politics, and War; Golden Minotaur, documentary category, St. Petersburg International Film Festival, 1996, for Message to Man; First Prize for design, Special Trade General Books Category, New York Book Fair, 2004, for Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including The Best of Best American Science Writing, HarperCollins, 2010. Contributor of articles and photographs to periodicals, including Atlantic, Interview, Nation, New Yorker, New York Times, Omnivore, Rolling Stone, Sky & Telescope, Smithsonian, and Washington Post.
Benson’s books have been published in French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. The film Predictions of Fire was shown in numerous countries around the world.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Benson is well known for his planetary landscape photography, but he has also earned awards and critical acclaim for his work as a filmmaker, curator, and author. Benson has turned photographs of space into works of art and, more recently, his detailed history of the making of a classic film was dubbed by many as an artistic accomplishment in its own right. The focus of his body of work is, according to his website, “the intersection of art and science.”
Benson first attracted critical notice as a filmmaker. In 1995 Predictions of Fire: A Film about Art, Politics, and War alternated studio photography and animation with documentary footage. Ten years later, Benson contributed his expertise to space and cosmology segments of the Terrence Malick film Tree of Life. His interest in film continues to this day.
At the same time Benson’s print photography and artwork was turning heads around the world. He plumbed the national archives for raw images of planets, moons, and other celestial bodies from earth-bound telescopes and unmanned space probes going back as far as the 1960s. Benson subjected selected images to every artistic tool available: from digital editing and filtering applications to the creative bursts of his own imagination. The resulting large-format images transformed the raw material of science into a new dimension of color and detail that left critics striving for words powerful enough to describe what they saw. Benson’s first major solo exhibition, “Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes,” was shown in various curated editions at dozens of venues, beginning at the American Museum of Natural History in 2007. New exhibitions would follow.
Beyond
Much of Benson’s best work would find its way into magazines and books, further enhanced, critics observed, by the author’s curatorial talent and capable narrative. Each of Benson’s books is a bit different in theme and direction than the last. Taken together, they represent the widening scope of his creative talent.
The growing sophistication of the Internet gave Benson access to tens of thousands of digital images. He chose the most striking views and devoted himself to reprocessing the images, producing true-color representations, composing mosaics from multiple single frames, and more. He created breathtaking versions of familiar images and invented views of the solar system never seen before. Nearly 300 of these images appeared in Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes. Benson introduced each section with a brief essay. According to Stuart J. Goldman’s review in Sky & Telescope, “these philosophical and sociological essays are infused with biographical information,” marred by relatively few factual errors, but the text takes a back seat to the images themselves. To Booklist contributor Donna Seaman, “each sequence of finely detailed portraits … is sublimely exhilarating.”
Beyond: A Solar System Voyage is an abridged edition aimed at school-age readers, with fewer photographs but additional narrative on the history of the solar system, the science of astronomy, and answers to the big questions that youngsters ask about the universe and man’s place in it.
Far Out
Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle offers a photographic tour of space in oversize coffee-table format, moving outward from near to far and backward from present to past. A Publishers Weekly commentator noted that “Benson’s emphasis on the correlation between geological time and astronomical distance sets this book far apart from others.” Dennis Overbye observed in the New York Times: “‘Exquisite’ does not really do justice to the aesthetic and literary merits of the book.” He described Benson’s meticulously crafted renditions of “stars packed like golden sand, gas combed in delicate blue threads, piled into burgundy thunderheads and carved into sinuous rilles and ribbons.” A person could “look through this book for hours and never be bored,” he mused.
Cosmigraphics
In Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space through Time, Benson directs attention away from his own work to focus on the masterpieces of others who, for more than 4,000 years, have pondered their place in the cosmos and recorded their visions for posterity. This “book of 300 astronomical illustrations containing only four photographs” is what Laurence A. Marschall called in Natural History “a brilliant and flamboyant collection.” Corey S. Powell noted in American Scientist that “Benson’s accompanying text pulls off the hat trick of being simultaneously erudite, lyrical, and accessible. The author also proves himself a wily curator.” His selections, arranged by theme, include “illuminations, etchings, woodblock prints, [and] paintings,” reported Alison Rose in Maclean’s. The oldest representation is the Nebra Sky Disc, a twelve-inch copper disc depicting crescent moon, sun, and stars all made of gold, along with the star cluster known as the Pleiades, likely created at least 3,618 years ago in what is now Germany. The newest include mathematically accurate super-computer simulations and cartographic representations of dark matter. Between them are reproductions from a host of other luminaries who straddled the boundary between science and art. Powell described the illustrations as “all full color, lavishly sized, meticulously reproduced, and almost indescribably gorgeous.” Henrietta Verma wrote in Library Journal that Cosmigraphics “is a wonderful testament to the reaches of human imagination.”
Space Odyssey
When Benson was six years old, he tells readers, his mother took him to see the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he left the theater uncertain about what he had just witnessed. Fifty years later he published Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, “a detailed and often thrilling account of one intense, unforgettable collaboration,” Sibbie O’Sullivan reported in the Washington Post Book World. Benson takes readers on a tour of every facet of the production, from the meeting of the principals to the final post-production cut and the critical legacy. He talks about the people and their personalities, the contributions of space scientists, photographers, and animators. Benson describes the special effects, the costumes, and the visual sleight of hand, all conceived and executed before the age of computer-generated imagery, which he himself came to master decades later.
The account bursts with anecdotes and ephemera, but Benson always returns to the powerful dynamism between two very different visionaries. Both were giants in their respective fields: the genius filmmaker who wanted to shatter the boundaries of science fiction and the intellectual science-fiction master who wanted to explore a new horizon in Hollywood. What they created together, wrote Brian Truitt in USA Today, was “an astounding philosophical and downright Homeric work that explored evolution, artificial intelligence and the existence of alien life in the universe.”
Critics heaped praise upon Benson’s personal odyssey from photographer to author. His “skill as a science journalist is evident when he describes how Kubrick and his staff made the film’s visuals truly visionary,” O’Sullivan reported. The author spent equal time on the personalities of the players, including the dozens of cast and crew members, all of whom made their contributions count. “Kubrick literally breathes life into his film,” O’Sullivan commented, but costume designers committed literally years to creating the suits of the ape-men.
Booklist contributor David Pitt pointed out Benson’s attention to every tiny detail of the creative process. He summarized: “This story about the making of 2001 is as compelling and eye-opening as the film itself.” To a Kirkus Reviews commentator, however, “it is the often fraught episodes of interaction between Kubrick and a phalanx of collaborators and contributors, most of them now forgotten, that drive this endlessly interesting narrative.” O’Sullivan called Benson’s achievement as “a tremendous explication of a tremendous film.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Scientist, May-June, 2014, Corey S. Powell, review of Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space through Time, p. 230.
Booklist, December 1, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, p. 637; April 1, 2009, Hazel Rochman, review of Beyond: A Solar System Voyage, p. 29; March 15, 2018, David Pitt, David, review of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, p. 8.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2009, review of Beyond: A Solar System Journey; February 15, 2018, review of Space Odyssey.
Library Journal, December, 2003, Margaret F. Dominy, review of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, p. 156; January 1, 2015, Henrietta Verma, review of Cosmigraphics, p. 127.
Maclean’s, Dec. 8, 2014, Alison Rose, review of Cosmigraphics, p. 32.
Natural History, December, 2014, Laurence A. Marschall, review of Cosmigraphics, p. 40.
New Scientist, December 6, 2003, Hazel Muir, review of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, p. 54.
New York Times, January 5, 2010, Dennis Overbye, review of Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle, p. D2.
Publishers Weekly, October 5, 2009, review of Far Out, p. 42.
School Library Journal, June, 2009, Jeffrey A. French, review of Beyond: A Solar System Voyage, p. 140.
SciTech Book News, June, 2010, review of Far Out.
Sky & Telescope, February, 2004, Stuart J. Goldman, review of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, p. 72; February, 2015, S.N. Johnson-Roehr, review of Cosmigraphics, p. 71.
USA Today, April 3, 2018, Brian Truitt, review of Space Odyssey, p. 05D.
Washington Post Book World, April 3, 2018, Sibbie O’Sullivan, review of Space Odyssey.
ONLINE
Michael Benson website, http://michael-benson.com (October 7, 2018).
• BIO •
• BIO • • CV •
Michael Benson’s work focuses on <
Michael Benson
List of Works
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Atmospheres, 11 framed prints, Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ, UK, 11/9/2016-12/3/2016
Otherworlds, 77 framed prints, Natural History Museum Vienna, Burgring 7, 1010 Wien, Austria, 5/31/2016-9/25/2016
Otherworlds, 77 framed prints, Jerwood Gallery, Natural History Museum, London, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom, 1/22/2016-5/15/2016
Carina Nebula, single large print in dedicated gallery, Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 12/1/2013-6/22/2014
Planetfall, 56 framed prints, AAAS Art Gallery, 12th and H Streets NW, Washington DC, 3/27/2013-6/28/2013
Planetfall, 18 framed prints, Hasted-Kraeutler Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, NYC, 1/24/2013-3/9/2013
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints in 40 frames, Stauth Memorial Museum, Montezuma, Kansas, 10/8/2011 – 12/4/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 55 duratrans prints mounted in light boxes, Dulles Airport Gateway Gallery, 9/30/2010 – 3/31/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, College of Central Florida, The Webber Center Gallery, Ocala, Florida, 7/23/2011 – 9/18/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, The Petaluma Museum, Petaluma, California, 5/7/2011- 7/4/2011
Jenseit des Blauen Planeten (Beyond the Blue Planet), ), 42 framed prints, Astronomie Wien – Planetarium, Kuffner- und Urania Sternwarte, Vienna, Austria, 5/6/2011 – 6/6/2011
Beyond, 15 framed prints, Hasted-Kraeutler Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, NYC, 2/3/2011-3/19/2011
Beyond: Visions of Our Solar System. 148 framed prints in seven rooms, Art Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, 5/26/2010 – 5/2/2011
Da draussen – Planetenaufnahmen aus dem All (Beyond – Planet Recordings from Space), Natur-Musuem Luzern (Natural History Museum of Luzern), 42 framed prints, Switzerland, 11/12/2010 – 5/1/2011
Images from Beyond: Visions of Our Solar System. 22 framed photographs, Long View Gallery, Washington DC, 9/16/10-10/24/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA, 12/4/2010 – 4/17/2011
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Daura Gallery, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA, 9/18/2010-11/14/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, 4/17/2010 – 8/29/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes. 59 framed prints, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, CA, 11/13/2009 – 3/28/2010
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 42 framed prints, Palazzo della Borza, Genoa, Italy, 10/23/2009 – 11/1/2009
Planeter i sikte (Planets in Sight), 118 framed prints, NRM Naturhistorisk Riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History), Stockholm, Sweden, 6/16/2009 – 11/29/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 42 framed prints, Fondazione Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy, 9/23/2009 – 9/28/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN, 6/13/2009-8/9/2009
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, 20 framed prints, Minorite Monastery of St. Francis, Piran, Slovenia, 6/16/2009 – 11/29/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 3/28/2009-5/24/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Museum of Arts and Science, Macon, Georgia, 1/10/2009- 3/8/2009
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, The ETSU Natural History Museum, Gray, Tennessee,10/25/2008-12/21/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, Ohio, 8/9/2008-10/5/2008
Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, 90 framed prints, Gliptoteka Museum, Zagreb, Croatia, 7/16/2008 – 8/21/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona, 5/24/2008 – 7/20/2008
Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes, 59 framed prints, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey, 3/8/08 – 5/4/08
Beyond: Voyages to Venus, Mars, Europa & Io, 49 framed prints, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, 4/14/07 – 4/14/08
Selected Group Shows
Lunar Attraction, Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, 161 Essex Street, Salem, MA 01970-3783 USA, 10/15/2016-11/4/2016
Touch the Sky, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Bates College, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie, NY, 4/29/16-8/21/16
Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography, Bates College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center, Lewiston, Maine, 6/8/2012-12/15/2012
PATHS: Charting, Navigating, & Bridging, Simons Center Art Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, 5/6/2013-6/28/2013
Skydreamers, The Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 4/29/2011-8/21/2011
Public Collections
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Corporate Collections
PharmaSwiss SA, Zug, Switzerland
Gallery Representation
Michael Benson’s photographic work is represented in the United Kingdom by Flowers Gallery, 82 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP
Agency Representation
Signed by Corbis Photo Agency (Fall 2006 to present), now Getty Images
Books
Otherworlds: Visions of Our Solar System, Michael Benson (Natural History Museum, London; 160 pages, 10” x 10”). (January 2016)
Planetfall: New Solar System Visions, Michael Benson (Abrams Books, New York; 208 pages, 15” x 12”). (October 2012)
Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle, Michael Benson (Abrams Books, New York; 320 pages, 11.5” x 11.5”). Companion volume to Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (see below). Also published in Japanese. (October 2009)
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, Michael Benson (Harry N. Abrams, New York, October 2003; 320 pages, 11.5” x 11.5”; paperback 2008). Also published in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke, Afterword by Lawrence Weschler. (October 2003; Paperback April 2008)
Beyond: A Solar System Journey, Michael Benson (Abrams Books for Young Readers, New York, March 2009; 128 pages), children’s book based on the above. Also published in Korean.
Recognition:
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes received First Prize for Design, Special Trade General Books Category at the 2004 New York Book Fair
Other Publications
Selected Articles/Essays
Feature stories and editorials for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The Village Voice, Interview, Artforum, Sight and Sound (UK), Leonardo (an MIT Press on-line journal), Colors, Astrobiology Magazine (an on-line journal), The Ganzfeld, Omnivore, and a broad spectrum of other publications, including European and world media outlets (German, French, Belgian, Dutch, South Korean, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, etc), from daily papers to magazines to book-format compilations. Subjects include robotic space exploration, the break-up of Yugoslavia, Russian rock music and underground culture, art and ideology, Slovenian and ex-Yugoslav culture, etc. (1980’s to present).
Selected Photographs
Photographs published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, Interview, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Village Voice, Believer, McSweeney’s, Filmmaker, Sky & Telescope, New Scientist (UK), The Times Magazine (UK), Geo (Germany), and many other publications. Cover or front page photographs in Smithsonian, The Village Voice, The International Herald Tribune, Andere Sinema (Belgium), etc. (1980’s to present).
Films
Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Writer
More Places Forever
“A Global Documentary Road Movie” (2008)
150 minutes; 16 mm color film and digital video
Co-production between ZDF-Arte (German and French television) and Kinetikon Pictures (Michael Benson’s production company)
Broadcast on ZDF/Arte (German and French satellite and cable television) in November 2008
Director/Writer/Producer
Predictions of Fire
“A Film about Art, Politics and War” (1995)
Co-production between TV Slovenia and Kinetikon Pictures
94 minutes; 16 mm color film
Recognition:
Best Documentary Feature Award, National Film Board of Canada, 1996 Vancouver International Film Festival
“Predictions of Fire is intellectual dynamite. Out of the shattered history of Slovenia, this film constructs a new way of looking at art, politics and religion.”
– Jury statement, National Film Board of Canada
Golden Minotaur (First Prize), Documentary Category
1996 “Message to Man” St. Petersburg International Film Festival (Russia)
Theatrical run, Film Forum, NYC Oct 2-15 1996
Official Selection, 1996 Sundance, Berlin and Sydney international film festivals
Top Ten List, 1996 Sydney International Film Festival (based on audience poll)
Finalist, Independent Feature Project Open Palm Award, NYC, 1996
Predictions of Fire received a grant from the NY State Council on the Arts and was distributed theatrically across the US. It screened theatrically in France, Germany, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, and Finland. It received national TV broadcasts in eight countries and was widely and positively reviewed in major American media, including the NY Times, LA Times, Variety, etc.
Director/Writer/Producer
Fragrant Harbor/UKàPRC/Pass the Glass
“A Colony in Transition” (1997)
Co-production between TV Slovenia and Kinetikon Pictures focusing on hand-over of Hong Kong from the UK to China.
55 minutes; digital video transferred to Beta. (Completed and broadcast by the TV Slovenia Documentary Program June 1997)
Selected Lectures/Presentations
Cosmigraphics lecture, New Scientist Live, ExCeL Center, One Western Gateway Royal Victoria Dock, London E16 1XL, 9/23/16
Cosmigraphics lecture, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Bates College, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie, NY, 4/29/16
Cosmigraphics lecture, The New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan Library, 455 5th Avenue NY NY, 1/15/15
Lecture, Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 12/1/2013
Lecture, Arts Letters and Numbers Workshop, Averill Park, NY, 7/16/2013
“Images of Our Solar System: Science Meets Art,” presentation at American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC, 3/27/2013
“The Periphery of Perception,” EMPAC, RPI, Rensselaer, NY, round-table discussion on the work of the Oakes twins, 4/18/12
“Tarkovsky Interruptus,” The New School’s Tishman Auditorium?66 West 12th Street, NYC, a New York Institute for the Humanities-sponsored screening and discussion of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker; discussion with Geoff Dyer, Walter Murch,?Philip Lopate, Francine Prose,?and Dana Stevens, 3/10/12
“Talk: Color Effects,” Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI: individual presentations and round table discussion with artist Spencer Finch, marine biologist Dr. Christopher Deacutis, and RISD professor Christopher Rose, on the subject of the use of color, 3/1/2012
“Science and Beauty, Dialogues Between Scientists and Artists,” Sala d’Arme, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence Italy: discussion between Michael Benson and Carl Schoonover, part of the NYU Villa La Pietra summer season, 6/18/2011
Lecture, The Petaluma Museum, Petaluma, California, 5/21/2011
TEDx talk, Hotel Beacon, 2130 Broadway, NYC, 5/10/11
“An Outer Versus Inner Space Slapdown,” NYU’s Cantor Film Center, East 8th Street, NYC, between Michael Benson and Carl Schoonover, part of the All Day Springtime Wonder Cabinet, 4/16/2011
“On Space and Time,” lecture, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA, 4/15/2011
Keynote talk on solar system photography, art and science, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI: at the STEM-to-STEAM workshop, 1/20/2011
“Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle.” Lecture sponsored by the New York Hall of Science, National Arts Club, Gramercy Park, NYC: 11/11/2009
“Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle,” NYU’s Cantor Film Center, East 8th Street, NYC, a presentation at The New York Institute for the Humanities “Halloween Wonder Cabinet,” 10/31/2009
Joint appearance and discussion with Ann Druyan, Loyola University, Rubloff Auditorium, Chicago Humanities Festival: 11/11/2007
The Amelia and Robert H. Haley Memorial Lecture, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts: 12/12/2004
“The Wonder of the Cosmos” panel discussion moderated by Tom Curwin, The Ninth Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, 4/25/2004
“Far Out: The Sublime Photographic Legacy of the Interplanetary Space Probes,” a symposium inspired by Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes co-sponsored by The Hayden Planetarium and The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, West 79th Street, NYC: 10/20/2003
Memberships
Michael Benson is a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities, an Advocate for Curiosity at the Weizmann Institute, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bits and Atoms at the MIT Media Lab
On the shore of the infinite
Corey S. Powell
American Scientist. 103.3 (May-June 2015): p230+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
http://www.americanscientist.org/
Full Text:
COSMIGRAPHICS: Picturing Space Through Time. Michael Benson. 320 pp. Abrams, 2014. $50.00.
INFINITE WORLDS: The People and Places of Space Exploration. Michael Soluri. vii + 344 pp. Simon and Schuster, 2014. $40.00.
"When I behold the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou are mindful of him?" Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich quotes from Psalm 104 in his introduction to Cosmigraphics--the latest from Michael Benson, author of Beyond and Planetfall--encapsulating in one line the grand theme of the 310 pages that follow. The vastness of the universe is both exhilarating and existentially terrifying. In response, artists and mapmakers have struggled to reduce the cosmos to a comprehensibly human scale, creating works of extraordinary beauty in the process.
That effort began long before art and mapmaking were even recognizably different things: The Nebra Sky Disc, the oldest known representation of the heavens, dates from approximately 2000 BCE. You will see it here, along with hundreds more celestial depictions running all the way up to the latest maps of dark matter and intergalactic structure. The illustrations are<< all full color, lavishly sized, meticulously reproduced, and almost indescribably gorgeous.>> I cannot ever recall getting shivers of pleasure so often simply by flipping from one page to the next.
<
Where Benson leaves off, photographer Michael Soluri picks up. His Infinite Worlds is a unique photographic chronicle of NASA's 2009 space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. (Full disclosure: I worked with Soluri and ran some of his photos while I was an editor at Discover.) That may sound like a more limited theme, but Infinite Worlds is every bit as grand as its title suggests. In an intriguing echo of Cosmigraphics, the book begins with a visual journey through the history of artistic abstraction, starting with the 75,000-year-old rock etchings of Biombos Cave in South Africa, before rocketing into the space age.
Even the photo essay at the book's core is expansive and unexpected. Soluri's roving lens captures rarely seen aspects of astronaut training in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory; the many unsung technicians and engineering innovations needed to support a major space mission; and startlingly fresh perspectives on the iconic space shuttle. And in a clever twist, the Hubble Space Telescope, humanity's greatest eye on the universe, itself becomes the center of attention here.
The shuttle program was discontinued and Hubble will be shut down later this decade, realities that lend an elegiac quality to Infinite Worlds. Mindful of these transitions, Soluri spent time teaching the astronauts to be adept photographers, hoping to spur more and better views from space. The outpouring of imagery from recent International Space Station crews testifies to the success of Soluri's campaign. His effort also yielded the most memorable shot in the book: A self-portrait by astronaut John Grunsfeld, seeing himself in the reflection of the Hubble telescope, with the cloud-flecked Earth behind. It captures the terrestrial and the cosmic, the human and the infinite, all at once.
Caption: A geological map of the Mississippi River, created for the Army Corps of Engineers, captures a timespan beyond human perception: It shows ancient meanders of the river, no longer obvious from the ground but still etched into the surrounding alluvial plain. From Cosmigraphics.
Caption: The 4,000-year-old Nebra Sky Disk, excavated in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in 1999. Its icons are interpreted as the crescent moon, Sun, and seven stars of the Pleiades (upper center). From Cosmigraphics.
Caption: Astronaut John Grunsfeld--tutored by photographer Michael Soluri--took this shot of himself and the shuttle Atlantis, reflected off the Hubble Space Telescope. From Infinite Worlds.
Caption: Atlantis sits on the launchpad in 2009, just before ferrying a crew into orbit to service the Hubble telescope. The astronauts made repairs and added an imaging spectrograph as well as an upgraded wide-field camera. Over 25 years and four repairs, Hubble has greatly expanded our understanding of cosmic evolution and our place in the universe. From Infinite Worlds.
Corey S. Powell is senior consulting editor for American Scientist and former editor-in-chief of Discover magazine. His blog, Out There, appears at http://bhgs.discovermagazine.com/outthere.
----------
Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Powell, Corey S. "On the shore of the infinite." American Scientist, vol. 103, no. 3, 2015, p. 230+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A412409078/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fa068570. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A412409078
Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time
Laurence A. Marschall
Natural History. 122.10 (Dec. 2014): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
http://naturalhistorymag.com/
Full Text:
Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time by Michael Benson; Abrams, 2014; 320 pages, $50.00
In this era of colorful high-resolution digital images from the Hubble Space Telescope, one would scarcely expect this: a<< book of 300 astronomical illustrations containing only four photographs>>--of nineteenth-century plaster models of the imagined lunar surface. Otherwise, writer and visual artist Michael Benson has limited his choices to hundreds of years of drawings and paintings, and one 4,000-year-old artifact, along with modern images in the form of maps, sketches, charts, and supercomputer data visualizations. As a professional astronomer and collector of antiquarian books, I can attest to Benson's fine eye in selecting both archetypal and seldom-seen renderings of things astronomical. In the former category are several colorful diagrams of the Aristotelian cosmos, my favorite being from Hartmann Schedel's 1493 Liber Chronicarum, showking nested celestial spheres with the Earth at the center, along with a florid celestial map from Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia macrocosmica (1660). But I had never seen the colored engraving of a meteor shower observed from a bal, loon above the clouds, which appeared in James Glaisher's r 1871 book Travels in the Air. Nor did I know of the most surprising image in the book--a black square on a white background, taken from a 1617 cosmological work by English mystic Robert Fludd, and supposedly representing the universe prior to the "Fiat Lux" of Genesis. Dark and minimalistic, it provides a perfect opening to what is otherwise a brilliant and flamboyant collection.
Laurence A. Marschall is a professor of physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. His most recent books, coauthored with Stephen P. Maran, are Pluto Confidential: An Insider Account of the Ongoing Battles over the Status of Pluto and Galileo's New Universe: The Revolution in Our Understanding of the Cosmos (both BenBella Books, 2009).
----------
Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Marschall, Laurence A. "Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time." Natural History, Dec. 2014, p. 40. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A398252191/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2267fd42. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A398252191
Far out; a space-time chronicle
SciTech Book News. (June 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780810949485
Far out; a space-time chronicle.
Benson, Michael.
Harry N. Abrams
2010
328 pages
$55.00
Hardcover
QB45
The format is lavishly oversize (11.5x11.5") to accommodate images of the universe--presented full-page--culled by the author from the best of what's available these days. Without interpretation these images have only a small amount of visual interest on flat sheets of paper, but with interpretation they spring to life inspiring awe and wonder. The author takes care to provide that context in engaging narrative as well as small-scale images that help narrate the chronology told by light traveling across the eons. Benson is a journalist, filmmaker, and photographer whose previous book Beyond: Visions of Interplanetary Probes has been the source for exhibitions sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Far out; a space-time chronicle." SciTech Book News, June 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A243390426/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=43de740a. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A243390426
Benson, Michael. Beyond: A Solar System Voyage
Jeffrey A. French
School Library Journal. 55.6 (June 2009): p140.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
BENSON, Michael. Beyond: A Solar System Voyage. 122p. photos. bibliog. glossary, index. Web sites. CIP. Abrams. 2009. RTE $19.95. ISBN 978-0-8109-8322-9. LC 2008022297.
Gr 8 Up--An appealing presentation based on stunning photos taken by numerous space probes. Arranged according to the order in which robot probes visited and photographed the Earth, Moon, Sun, the other seven planets, their moons, and the asteroids, the book is a more visual introduction to the sights, landscapes, and diversity of the Solar System, with enough data to understand the photos and the basics of each celestial body. Beginning with a brief history of astronomy related to the Solar System, each chapter includes the historical development of human understanding of the Sun's family. Benson explains that Pluto and other dwarf planets, as well as comets, are not included, as they have not been photographed as yet by space probes. Text and captions effectively explain the outstanding color images, although a reference to the fictitious "centrifugal force" in explaining the shape of Jupiter is troubling. There is a thorough index; each photo is credited to the probe that shot it; and an excellent glossary helps with unfamiliar terms. Benson succeeds not only in showing young people the beauty of almost the entire Solar System, but also in reinforcing the value and relative low cost of uncrewed space exploration.--Jeffrey A. French, formerly at Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library, Willowick, OH
French, Jeffrey A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
French, Jeffrey A. "Benson, Michael. Beyond: A Solar System Voyage." School Library Journal, June 2009, p. 140. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A201712074/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be69b5c3. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201712074
Book World: The Making of A Monolith
Sibbie O'Sullivan
The Washington Post. (Apr. 3, 2018): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Sibbie O'Sullivan
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece
By Michael Benson
Simon & Schuster. 497 pp. $30
---
Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" had its world premiere April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Northwest Washington. People in the audience were "streaming out" before the film was over. The next day, in New York City, 241exited early. Obviously, some viewers didn't know what hit 'em, or that they were witnessing a significant moment in filmmaking.
Fifty years later, few would dispute that "2001" is a masterpiece. But how, exactly, is a masterpiece created, especially one that relies on collaboration? Michael Benson's new book, "Space Odyssey," is <>. It's<>
Benson, the author of five books about astronomy, approaches his topic from both human and scientific angles. He begins with the friendship between director Kubrick and sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, which began in 1964 when jazz musician Artie Shaw recommended Clarke's novel "Childhood's End" to Kubrick. From there, Benson builds his narrative one collaborator at a time. We learn about Hollywood dealmaking, NASA's scientific input, top-notch film photographers and animators, and who did and did not have a nervous breakdown during the four years it took Kubrick to complete his masterpiece.
Despite their friendship and Clarke's intelligent suggestions throughout the project, once Kubrick had gathered his team of technical specialists and began the production process, the novelist's input diminished. With only 40 minutes of dialogue in a 2-1/2 hour film - there was never a fixed script - the images would supplant the words.
Benson's<< skill as a science journalist is evident when he describes how Kubrick and his staff made the film's visuals truly visionary.>>Although the technical descriptions of certain procedures might tax readers who aren't engineers, the cumulative effect of such information is breathtaking. All the work was done by hand, a reminder that "2001" was created back in the pre-digital era. For the moonscape scene, Kubrick insisted that 90 tons of sand be dyed gray. Some of the sets were "so brightly lit that the actors wore sunglasses between takes."
Although the finished film may be futuristic, the making of that future was a day-by-day, hands-on, trial-and-error, sweat-off-the-forehead human collaboration. My favorite detail involves how the Star Gate scene was created. Famous for its psychedelic special effects, the scene originated in 1965 in an abandoned brassiere factory on New York's Upper West Side. By pouring ink into tanks filled with paint thinner and then photographing the ink's flow using high camera speeds, Kubrick captured "galactic tendrils streaming into cosmic space." Although more sophisticated photographic enhancements to the Star Gate sequence were added in 1967, the paint thinner shots made the final cut. Facts such as these don't diminish the wonder of the completed film but have the opposite effect.
Benson tries to be fair to everyone involved in this project, but Kubrick was the sun around whom they all orbited. It's Kubrick's breath we hear when HAL, the malicious computer, is deprogrammed by astronaut Dave Bowman, played by Keir Dullea. What Benson calls the film's "respiratory soundscape" creates "a subjective sense of shared humanity." <
Some have regarded Kubrick as cold and distant, but Benson's book convinces otherwise. Although solidly self-protective, Kubrick appears surprisingly democratic and optimistic, often giving assignments to nontechnical people because he's curious about what they'll come up with. For instance, he put a mime, Dan Richter, in charge of the ape men in the film's "Dawn of Man" segment. Devising the ape costumes took more than two years, and lighting one scene required 1.5 million watts. "You start to die," Richter recalls, referring to the working conditions inside the ape-men suits, yet he stayed on and was responsible for unforgettable footage.
After reading a bit of Benson's book, I took a TV break: "2001" was on! While watching my 40-inch HD Samsung television, I was speechless. But that's the point, isn't it? Who knew that visionary thinking, attention to silence, a committed workforce, millions of lightbulbs and an abandoned brassiere factory could create a masterpiece?
Stanley Kubrick knew, and thanks to Michael Benson, we now know, too.
---
O'Sullivan, a former teacher in the Honors College at the University of Maryland, has recently completed a memoir on how the Beatles have influenced her life.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Sullivan, Sibbie. "Book World: The Making of A Monolith." Washington Post, 3 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533136662/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ab682f4a. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533136662
'Space Odyssey': Even HAL would approve
Brian Truitt
USA Today. (Apr. 3, 2018): Lifestyle: p05D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Brian Truitt, Columnist, USA Today
It's the 50th birthday of a film that was supposed to be -- and definitely is -- "the proverbial 'really good' science fiction movie," and Michael Benson's exhaustive new book about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey stars the two men at the center of an influential powerhouse.
In 1968, 2001 changed the game for the sci-fi genre. Until that point, science fiction movies were mainly considered trash. Then a couple of cultural giants -- novelist Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick -- got together and created<< an astounding, philosophical and downright Homeric work that explored evolution, artificial intelligence and the existence of alien life in the universe.>>
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece (Simon & Schuster, 512 pp., ***) effectively chronicles all of it, down to the smallest spaceship details and the most petty business decisions.
The book presents in a fairly straightforward manner the four years between director Kubrick and author Clarke's initial meeting and 2001's release. They were fans of each other's work: Kubrick, coming off Dr. Strangelove, yearned to make a groundbreaking sci-fi epic, and the older Clarke, a sci-fi icon even then, wanted to break into Hollywood. They became a cinematic equivalent to McCartney and Lennon, two talented visionaries who became friends and created something epic while also navigating the friction between them.
And something as mind-blowing and esoteric as 2001, which begins with early man-apes discovering a black monolith and then blasts into the future with astronauts dealing with an AI on the verge of a breakdown (the antagonistic HAL-9000), is going to have its setbacks.
Benson skillfully digs into the budget-busting actions and plot problems, because the script was constantly changing during filming and it took forever for Kubrick to figure out the trippy ending. It's enlightening stuff, especially for casual fans of the movie, about how Kubrick got struggling actors to learn their lines and the near-mutiny of the special-effects department when the filmmaker considered having his main characters travel to Saturn instead of Jupiter.
Hardcore 2001 nerds will dig the nuts and bolts of the designs of the "Dawn of Man" opening and the memorable Star Gate sequence. There's loads of trivia (the movie's costumer plotted the assassination of Nazis!) and Benson weaves in supporting personalities who put readers on ground zero of the filming chaos. But, like a good Beatles tune when those two songwriters are clicking, Space Odyssey is fueled by the dynamic between Kubrick and Clarke.
Both had their egos, sure, yet powered through differences to make something great. Clarke had to deal with other personal business during the making of 2001 and worried that Kubrick would be bothered by his homosexuality (he wasn't). And the filmmaker himself, who had a reputation for being brilliant but cold, is given a fair amount of warmth by Benson: One passage finds Kubrick directing his young daughter for a voice-over that's more than a little adorable.
Space Odyssey is a solid companion piece to a sci-fi classic, both for newbies trying to figure out the movie's existential questions and longtime HAL lovers who want to know everything about two guys and their grand movie mission.
CAPTION(S):
photo AP
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Truitt, Brian. "'Space Odyssey': Even HAL would approve." USA Today, 3 Apr. 2018, p. 05D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533333757/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6f777a92. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533333757
A guide to the cosmos, in words and images dazzling and true
Dennis Overbye
The New York Times. (Jan. 5, 2010): News: pD2(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
In the universe there is always room for another surprise. Or two. Or a trillion.
Take the Witch Head Nebula, for example -- a puffy purplish trail of gas in the constellation Eridanus. When a picture of it is turned on its side, the nebula looks just like, well, a witch, complete with a pointy chin and peaked hat, ready to jump on a broomstick or offer an apple to Snow White.
In 30 years of covering astronomy, I had never heard of the Witch Head Nebula until I came across a haunting two-page spread showing it snaking across an inky black star-speckled background in ''Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle,'' an exquisite picture guide to the universe by Michael Benson, a photographer, journalist and filmmaker, and obviously a longtime space buff.
Actually <<''exquisite'' does not really do justice to the aesthetic and literary merits of the book>> published in the fall. I live in New York, so most of the cosmos is invisible to me, but even when I lived under the black crystalline and -- at this time of year -- head-ringingly cold skies of the Catskills, I could see only so far. If you don't have your own Hubble Space Telescope, this book is the next best thing.
Mr. Benson has scoured images from the world's observatories, including the Hubble, to fashion a step-by-step tour of the cosmos, outward from fantastical clusters and nebulae a few hundred light-years away to soft red dots of primordial galaxies peppering the wall of the sky billions of light-years beyond the stars, almost to the Big Bang.
The result is an art book befitting its Abrams imprint. Here are<< stars packed like golden sand, gas combed in delicate blue threads, piled into burgundy thunderheads and carved into sinuous rilles and ribbons>>, and galaxies clotted with star clusters dancing like spiders on the ceiling.
Mr. Benson has reprocessed many of the images to give them colors truer to physical reality. For example, in the NASA version of the Hubble's ''Pillars of Creation,'' showing fingers of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula boiling away to reveal new stars, the ''pillars'' are brown and the radiation burning them away is green; Mr. Benson has turned it into a composition in shades of red, including burgundy, the actual color of the ionized hydrogen that makes the nebula.
You can sit and<< look through this book for hours and never be bored>> by the shapes, colors and textures into which cosmic creation can arrange itself, or you can actually read the accompanying learned essays. Mr. Benson's prose is up to its visual surroundings, no mean feat.
''The enlarging mirrors of our telescopes,'' he writes, ''comprise material forged at the centers of the same generation of stars they now record.''
One set of essays relates what was going on in the sky to what was going on back on Earth. The Witch Head, for example, is about 700 light-years from here, which means its soft smoky light has been traveling to us since the early part of the 14th century. It is a milestone for, among other things, the bubonic plague, the first stirrings of the Renaissance in Italy and the foundation of the Ming dynasty in China.
The Heart Nebula, another new acquaintance, in Cassiopeia right next to the Soul Nebula, is 7,500 light-years away. Its image dates to the time of the first proto-writing in China and the first wine, in Persia, and when the Mediterranean burst its banks in biblical fashion and flooded the Black Sea.
The journey outward ends in those distant blurry galaxies on the doorstep of the Big Bang. Or is it the beginning?
''Eternity,'' Mr. Benson quotes William Blake as saying in an epigraph, ''is in love with the productions of time.'' Well, aren't we all?
FAR OUT: A Space-Time Chronicle. By Michael Benson. Abrams. 328 pages. $55.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTOS: COLLIDING ANTENNAE GALAXIES (PHOTOGRAPH BY HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/NASA-ESA); ANDROMEDA GALAXY (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVIDE DEMARTIN/PALOMAR OBSERVATORY); BOK GLOBULES, VISIBLE IN THE CARINA NEBULA (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL BENSON/HUBBLE, ESA, NASA); ROSETTE NEBULA (PHOTOGRAPH BY J. C. CUILLANDRE (CANADA FRANCE HAWAII TELESCOPE) AND GIOVANNI ANSELMI (COELUM ASTRONOMIA))
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Overbye, Dennis. "A guide to the cosmos, in words and images dazzling and true." New York Times, 5 Jan. 2010, p. D2(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A215774987/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ac60614b. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A215774987
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 1/17
Print Marked Items
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur
C. Clarke, and the Making of a
Masterpiece
David Pin
Booklist.
114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p8+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece.
By Michael Benson.
Apr. 2018. 512p. illus. Simon & Schuster, $30 (9781501163937). 791.4372.
Those whose copies of Jerome Agel's classic The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) are getting tattered
from rereading will be thrilled to learn there is a new and remarkably comprehensive look at the complex
relationship between the two men whose collaboration led to one of the greatest films of all time, 2001: A
Space Odyssey. director Stanley Kubrick and sf master Arthur C. Clarke. Author and filmmaker Benson
celebrates the movie's fiftieth anniversary by chronicling the creation of the 1968 film, starting when
Kubrick, coming off the success of Dr. Strangelove, had it vaguely in mind to make a science-fiction film,
and taking us through the story's numerous iterations; the shifting nature of the extraterrestrial elements; the
evolution of the supercomputer HAL; the construction of the film's remarkable sets, with their almost mindboggling
attention to scientific realism; the creation of the groundbreaking special effects; the selection of
the film's music; and much more. Benson is clearly in tune with the film--he calls it at one point "essentially
a nonverbal experience" and, at another, "a masterwork of oblique, visceral, and intuited meanings"--and he
follows the story of the movie's creation with an eye for small, precise detail. In its way, <
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pin, David. "Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece."
Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 8+. General OneFile,
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 2/17
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533094365/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5e2ba257.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094365
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 3/17
Benson, Michael: SPACE ODYSSEY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Benson, Michael SPACE ODYSSEY Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-5011-
6393-7
A fascinating, detail-rich account of the long slog to make the science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space
Odyssey.
Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), writes Benson (Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, 2014, etc.),
was a slayer of genres. He reinvented film noir, the costume drama, the horror film, and the war movie.
With 2001, over the course of seven years of hard work, he aimed to put his mark on science fiction, with
his own unmistakable twist: "Kubrick's method was to find an existing novel or source concept and adapt it
for the screen, always stamping it with his own bleak--but not necessarily despairing--assessment of the
human condition." He found his sources in two places: the work of British science-fiction writer and
technologist Arthur C. Clarke and the Homeric Odyssey. In the end, as Benson capably demonstrates, both
those sources faded into the background. The Odyssey is perhaps best echoed by the deaths of all the crew
members of Discovery, prompting Clarke to write in his journal, "after all, Odysseus was the sole survivor."
A couple of years after the film was released, Clarke recalled that it reflected 90 percent Kubrick's genius, 5
percent the work of the special effects crew, and 5 percent his own contribution. That assessment was too
modest, but Benson runs with the notion that this was Kubrick's film through and through, and each minute
of screen time reflected weeks of work and thought as well as many missteps and rethinkings (voice-over
narration throughout, anyone?). The author turns in some memorable phrases--for instance, in his telling,
the space between the known and the unknown is "that place science is always probing like a tongue
exploring a broken tooth." More importantly,<< it is the often fraught episodes of interaction between Kubrick
and a phalanx of collaborators and contributors, most of them now forgotten, that drive this endlessly
interesting narrative.>>
Essential for students of film history, to say nothing of Kubrick's most successful movie.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Benson, Michael: SPACE ODYSSEY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248259/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8090a97b.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248259
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 4/17
Benson, Michael. Cosmigraphics:
Picturing Space Through Time
Henrietta Verma
Library Journal.
140.1 (Jan. 1, 2015): p127.
COPYRIGHT 2015 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Benson, Michael. Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time. Abrams. 2014. 320p. illus. maps, index.
ISBN 9781419713873. $50. SCI
While Benson explains that this heavily illustrated, oversize title is not strictly a history of astronomy, his
collection of dated astronomical "maps" from earliest times until today (with most representing the period
from 1,000 to 2,000 CE) will beautifully complement such histories. Each chapter's lengthy introduction
offers context to the images that follow; taken together, the summaries and image captions comprise a
robust look at science, philosophy, and, often, theology, over time. Thematically arranged entries appear in
chapters considering "Creation"; "Earth"; "The Sun"; "The Moon"; "The Structure of the Universe";
"Planets and Moons"; "Constellations, the Zodiac, and the Milky Way"; "Eclipses and Transits"; "Comets
and Meteors"; and "Auroras and Atmospheric Phenomenon." The variety in the illustrations, some of which
cover entire spreads,<< is a wonderful testament to the reaches of human imagination>> and to the progress of
science over the centuries. Among the featured images are early paintings of concentric circles depicting
water, air, fire, the night sky, and heaven; Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night; lunar photographs; and maps of
jupiter's moon Ganymede that were created between 1982 and 1989. VERDICT Perfect for astronomy
lovers and of great interest to those who enjoy the histories of art, book making, cartography, philosophy, or
theology.--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Verma, Henrietta. "Benson, Michael. Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time." Library Journal, 1
Jan. 2015, p. 127. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A443057142/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0b568bb9. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A443057142
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 5/17
Art of the Universe: Cosmigraphics:
Picturing Space Through Time
S.N. Johnson-Roehr
Sky & Telescope.
129.2 (Feb. 2015): p71.
COPYRIGHT 2015 F+W Media, Inc.. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material is duplicated by
arrangement with Gale and may not be redistributed in any form without written permission from Sky &
Telescope Media, LLC.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
Full Text:
Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time
Michael Benson
Abrams, 2014
320 pages, ISBN 978-1-4197-1387-3, $50.00, hardcover.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
We AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS spend a lot of time explaining the allure of our hobby to non-observers.
How many of us have settled friends (or strangers) in front of the scope, waiting for that Aha! moment
when they finally understand why we do what we do? A view of Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons can make
the argument for us. But what if we don't have recourse to that immediate viewing experience? How do we
explain our passion to others, particularly on a frigid February night?
Michael Benson's Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time is a meditation on this problem and more.
In a lavishly illustrated, beautifully bound volume, Benson presents a selection of images--some produced
during the practice of astronomy, others as descriptions of that practice--extracted from some 4,000 years of
material documenting humans' fascination with the sky. The images trace what Benson sees as an evolution
of thought, the incremental development of an awareness and understanding of our place in the universe.
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 6/17
Cosmigraphics is arranged thematically, opening with a reflection on origins, expanding to consider the
solar system, galaxy, and cosmos, and closing with a section on atmospheric phenomena and auroras. Each
chapter follows a loose chronology, with images slightly shuffled to show a development of knowledge and
method of representation. Brief essays and captions flesh out the book.
There is much here to inspire amateur astronomers. The Moon is only occasionally my observing target, but
after sifting through the chapter on the topic, I began to question my priorities. Benson maps the arc from
"discovery" to "convention" in lunar studies, as astronomers and artists chose between tradition (producing
an image of the Moon with north at the top of the page, as in a terrestrial map) and veracity (inverting the
Moon to duplicate the view in the eyepiece). Anyone who has spent time sketching at the eyepiece will
appreciate the challenges worked through by lunar cartographers.
In fact, this book works well as a history of cartography, a discipline long allied with astronomy. I expected
to see included topographic maps of Mars and other planets, but was delighted to find maps of the
Mississippi River meander belt as well. Readers will enjoy visiting with old friends--a selection from
Galileo's Sidereus nuncius, for instance--but also savor the heady rush produced by an encounter with the
unfamiliar.
While this is largely a survey of historical material, Benson has pushed most chapters to the present tense
(and even into the future with predictive diagrams for the 2117 Transit of Venus). However you choose to
engage with the sky, something here will catch your eye. Benson has given readers much to consider with
his curatorial choices, managing to share the workings--as well as the wonder--of the universe.
S&T Observing Editor S. N. Johnson-Roehr loves reading even more than she loves astronomy.
Johnson-Roehr, S.N.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Johnson-Roehr, S.N. "Art of the Universe: Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time." Sky &
Telescope, Feb. 2015, p. 71. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A396766843/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3a06c89d. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A396766843
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 7/17
The story of the world: a magnificent
book presents visualizations of the sky,
and the universe beyond, created over
4,000 years
Alison Rose
Maclean's.
127.48 (Dec. 8, 2014): p32+.
COPYRIGHT 2014 Rogers Media
http://www2.macleans.ca/
Full Text:
If a person from the past, no matter how long ago, were to be transported to the present, the one thing that
would reassure him would be the familiarity of the sky: the Pleiades, an open cluster of stars visible to the
naked eye at northern latitudes in the fall and winter; Orion, the hunter; the moon in its various phases. The
sky for the ancients was a compass and a calendar. The regular pattern of the sun through the day, the moon
over a short cycle, and all of the sky over an annual cycle, became the means for coordinating meetings, and
defining age and time. The sky was both directly and intimately connected with every moment of our lives.
It was--and is still--reliable, comforting and beautiful, at the same time as it remains remote, distant and
mysterious.
What are stars? What are we looking at? Where are we exactly? These questions marked our emergence.
The study of the sky helped to make us self-conscious: It gave us perspective. "It drew us out of the world
and into the universe, and made us human," says Jesuit meteoriticist Guy Consolmagno, the 2014 recipient
of the Sagan Medal for communication by the American Astronomical Society's planetary science division.
This search, both outward and inward, is illuminated in a handsome book by Michael Benson,
Cosmigraphics, released by the art publisher Abrams this month. In 10 chapters, Cosmigraphics reproduces
visualizations of the sky we see, and the universe as a whole that we imagined and later discovered.
When he was six years old, Benson's mother took him to see 2001: a Space Odyssey. Afterward, he trailed
after her, asking, "What was it about? What did it mean?" The next year, a man walked on the moon for the
first time. Benson's parents were in the American foreign service and he grew up living all over the world,
interested in everything, but those two events in particular left a persistent and profound impression.
Benson's career has spanned writing, documentary filmmaking and photography. His previous photo-essay
books compiled images of space and the solar system taken by telescopes and cameras on interplanetary
spacecraft. "All retrospectives, art and otherwise, should shock us awake the way this one does," raved one
reviewer. In his new book, Benson turns his attention to how humans over millennia have imagined and
represented space and our planet by means other than photography: <
supercomputers.
He assembled the images in a marathon nine-month research session, mostly drawing on online resources
produced by libraries that have scanned their rare books to make them widely accessible. He researched
collections in Europe and the United States, from the famous to the obscure. He delighted in discoveries,
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 8/17
such as the library of the American Association of Variable Star Observers and its collection of 19th- and
20th-century books. He spent days there, discovering and photographing illustrations. "Cosmigraphics
documents the stages of our evolving understanding as a species ... about the cosmos and our position
within it," he writes.
Leaf through the book, and you discover how deeply people thought about the cosmos and its relationship
to their lives, and how that evolved over 4,000 years. Pictures of the universe--what it looks like, how it
came to be--are stories of both religion and science, and Cosmigraphics encompasses both of those
histories. You can consider Renaissance depictions of creation in 1573 on one page, then on another, an
image of the cosmic microwave background radiation produced by scientists using the Planck satellite in
2013. In one chapter, Benson singles out the work of 18th-century English astronomer Thomas Wright, who
posited that the stars were in motion orbiting a centre, and that the Milky Way was a disk, long before
astronomers had discovered how to calculate velocity from the red shift of spectral lines.
Iconic moments in astronomy--and, in fact, in the history of science as we know it--are presented here too:
Galileo's drawings of his observations of the moons of Jupiter; Kepler's observations of comets;
Copernicus's drawings of the solar system. These gave way, of course, to modern geological maps of the
moon and Mars and supercomputer visualizations of the gravitational attraction between 30,000 galaxies,
including the Milky Way in a supercluster.
One image depicts a growing awareness, and it captivated Benson. It shows four medieval men standing in
a garden, looking through a portal at a planet, presumably Earth, in space. The planet is studded with
buildings, as if the artist knew that the entire world were going to be developed. Blue sky is separated from
a starry, moonlit night by a red-and-gold sunset. The image is from a 15th-century edition of a 13th-century
encyclopedia, On the Properties of Things. In his imagination, the artist has moved outside the world and is
regarding it affectionately and self-consciously, considering what and where we are. In his introduction,
Benson quotes Werner Heisenberg: "Science forgets that in its study of nature it is studying its own picture."
On the facing page, Benson places a page from Peter Apian's Caesar's Astronomy, an interactive book from
the 16th century that allowed the reader to align paper wheels that were layered one on top of the other.
With these functioning as round slide rules, the reader could graphically see and predict the changes in the
night sky over time, such as the phases of the moon, eclipses, the position of the sun and the planets. Apian
produced the book (publishing it in 1540) to make astronomy easy, and dedicated it to his patron, Holy
Roman Emperor Charles V.
Apian was a mathematician, cosmographer, artist and humourist. One imagines him and his workers, bent
over work tables--carefully, patiently, meticulously creating these paper disks and assembling them. His
book is "probably the most remarkable book ever in the history of astronomy," says former Harvard
University astronomy professor Owen Gingerich, who wrote the foreword to Cosmigraphics. Gingerich,
whose book God's Planet was published recently by Harvard University Press, has seen 100 copies of
Apian's book; he believes there might be only 150 in the world. He collects rare astronomy books and,
when a German press produced a faithful facsimile of Caesar's Astronomy in 1970, he bought one and took
it apart. "It's very interesting; When you take it apart, you see there are instructions for how to put it
together," Gingerich says.
Humanity has, for its own part, been attempting to put the pieces of our universe together for millennia. The
oldest astronomic visualization in Benson's book is the Nebra sky disc, an oxidized copper disk that is 12
inches in diameter and decorated with a gold crescent moon, a large gold sun and small gold dots for stars.
Excavated in Germany, it's presumed to have been created between 2000 and 1600 BCE. On it, high
between the moon and the sun, is a distinct cluster of seven: the Pleiades, shining then, as they do now.
Caption: World view: Cosmigraphics compiles rare historic imagery that strikingly documents our everevolving
insights into the cosmos
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 9/17
Caption: Beyond the universe: Both humankind's imaginings of the many wonders of the heavens, as well
as iconic moments in astronomy and the history of science, are depicted in writer and filmmaker Michael
Benson's expansive illustrated look at our understanding of space through time
----------
Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rose, Alison. "The story of the world: a magnificent book presents visualizations of the sky, and the
universe beyond, created over 4,000 years." Maclean's, 8 Dec. 2014, p. 32+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A392899580/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9b77b33b.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A392899580
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 10/17
Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle
Publishers Weekly.
256.40 (Oct. 5, 2009): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2009 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle
Michael Benson. Abrams, $55 (328p) ISBN 978-0-8109-4948-5
Journalist, filmmaker and photographer Benson follows his book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary
Probes with an even more stellar array of astronomical photographs that offer glorious views of space,
moving successively from close to home to the outermost regions of the universe, moving simultaneously
farther from Earth and farther back in time. <
pond.., so vast that the ripples extending out from each event take thousands, millions, or even billions of
years to echo off its banks." Light reaching Earth now from the Witch Head nebula, some 740 light-years
distant, was generated in the 14th century. Elsewhere, remote galactic clusters, "aggregate bonfires shining
across the blackness of deep time," cast light as old as Pangaea, the Earth's ancient supercontinent, which
broke up to create today's continents. Benson illuminates the vast scale of the universe and its workings
with large-scale "quasi-cinematic" photos that reveal scintillating stars, galaxies and Rorschach-like nebulae
in their "true" colors. The 228 color photos are spectacular and enhanced with three eight-page gatefolds.
(Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle." Publishers Weekly, 5 Oct. 2009, p. 42. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A209405779/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4b2346a9.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A209405779
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 11/17
Beyond: A Solar System Voyage
Hazel Rochman
Booklist.
105.15 (Apr. 1, 2009): p29.
COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Beyond: A Solar System Voyage.
By Michael Benson.
2009. 128p. illus. Abrams, $19.95
(9780810983229). 523.2. Gr. 6-9.
With dramatic, unframed color photos on thick glossy paper, this big photo-essay looks like a coffee-table
browser, but the science details are just as exciting as the pictures. Starting with a long chapter on the early
history of astronomy, Benson examines the solar system from the perspectives of robot explorers launched
in the last 60 years. He also gives in-depth descriptions of how the photos were taken by unmanned
spacecraft. More technological information about how scientists identified the space probe's findings would
have been welcome, but the informal text raises the big questions that will captivate young readers: Are we
alone in the universe? Has Mars ever supported life? Does life exist there now? Or elsewhere? More than 20
space probes are in action right now, and engaged readers will want to reference the listed Web sites. The
comprehensive glossary is also a handy resource. Older students may want to move on to Benson's adult
title of the same name, published in 2003.--Hazel Rochman
Rochman, Hazel
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rochman, Hazel. "Beyond: A Solar System Voyage." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2009, p. 29. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A197721839/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e9595d8f.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A197721839
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 12/17
Benson, Michael: BEYOND
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Benson, Michael BEYOND Abrams (Children's) $19.95 Mar. 1, 2009 ISBN: 978-0-8109-8322-9
This bargain edition of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (2003) may lack the double gatefolds,
more than half of the pictures and the Arthur C. Clarke introduction, but it does still offer a mesmerizing
grand tour of solar-system high spots. Gathered with the premise that they are significant achievements in
the history of not just science, but photography as well, these big, sharply detailed images were all taken by
(specified) space probes and were chosen for their visual impact. Arranged roughly in the order in which
they were taken, the photos range from a primitive 1967 composite shot of the Moon to haunting close-up
views of mysterious Neptune and its moon Triton taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. Benson includes several
asteroids, but not comets or dwarf planets because, he claims, decent photos of these do not yet exist.
Except where they descend into outright error (Venus is not "by far the hottest place in the solar system"),
the accompanying text and captions just rehash commonly available facts, but our nearest neighbors in
space have never looked better. (glossary, notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Benson, Michael: BEYOND." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2009. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A194497606/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=66ab48fd.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A194497606
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 13/17
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary
Probes
Stuart J. Goldman
Sky & Telescope.
107.2 (Feb. 2004): p72+.
COPYRIGHT 2004 F+W Media, Inc.. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material is duplicated by
arrangement with Gale and may not be redistributed in any form without written permission from Sky &
Telescope Media, LLC.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
Full Text:
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes Michael Benson (Abrams, 2003). 321 pages. ISBN 0-8109-
4531-2. $55. Available from Sky Publishing.
ONLY A FEW DAYS AFTER THE FIRST edition of our new annual publication, Beautiful Universe*,
was wrapped up and sent to the printer, a copy of Beyond arrived in the mail. "Oh," I thought after a cursory
look, "it's Beautiful Universe: The Book!"
A more detailed examination affirmed that impression. Although the book is limited to shots of the solar
system, taken by the robotic spacecraft that humankind has scattered across interplanetary space over the
past four decades, every photo was indeed stunning.
But this is more than just a well-produced glossy picture book. Author and filmmaker Michael Benson has
created not only an ode to the Lunar Prospectors, Voyagers, Vikings, and many other picture-taking space
probes, but also a tribute to the availability of the images via the Internet. After he shows us all the images
Benson tells in a follow-up essay about what I'd consider a mild obsession with looking at the solar system
via the Internet from his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He became a space-image junkie as he sat at his
keyboard in awe of the Internet's power to bring him old and new images as well as live feeds from rocket
launches. He notes that he downloaded the highest-resolution version he could find of the Hubble Deep
Field (amounting to 67 megabytes) just to look at it in detail. That sounds like something I should do, now
that my home computer can handle such a huge image without choking. Benson spent many evenings
downloading images and then took this online plunder to commercial printers to make his own posters.
As with any photographic compilation, my hope was to find a few shots that I had never seen before.
Beyond didn't disappoint. The images new to my eye included ones that showed Mars and its larger moon,
Phobos; a few Martian surface vistas; and images of Earth taken by NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft--
two satellites that admittedly I haven't paid any attention to.
My unfamiliarity in some of these cases is understandable: the pictures didn't exist until now. Benson
explains his image-selection process toward the end of the book. He not only pored over thousands of
pictures, but he also pieced together wide-field mosaics from individual frames (with the help of other
imaging specialists). One of these is the view above of Europa hanging over the clouds of Jupiter.
Sometimes he combined filtered frames to create true-color views. All of this was, of course, a lot of work,
which makes this book even more akin to Full Moon by Michael Light (S&T: August 1999, page 78), who
did his own image processing on the photographs taken by Apollo astronauts.
The photos in Beyond are organized by target object, with each section beginning with a brief essay. It's
here that Benson offers his praise for the missions themselves, telling how Mariner 10 was brought back
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 14/17
from the edge of failure, of an anxiety-producing initial glitch with Magellan, and of the precision timing of
Voyager 2's passage by Uranus. It's clear he did plenty of background reading too, given the references he
makes (including one from Sky & Telescope). The photos themselves have terse captions that identify only
the object in the frame, which spacecraft took them, and when.
After a final look at Neptune and Triton on page 292, we return to Earth with several more lengthy essays
that tell us why Benson made this book.<< These philosophical and sociological essays are infused with
biographical information>>. His second long essay is a breezy chronology of the space program. It's here that
we learn why there aren't any Soviet photos of the Moon and planets: their cameras and image-transmission
systems were inferior.
Many people could conclude that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory operates all planetary space missions.
Benson makes the same JPL-centric mistake. While this aerospace institution may be in charge of a lot of
spacecraft, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) isn't among them, as Benson misstates. The US
part of the joint NASA-European Space Agency mission resides at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Likewise, JPL had little to do with the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft, which was managed by
the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. For a text that aims to glorify the projects
themselves as much as praise their results, such misplaced credit is unfortunate.
Other mistakes are few. I don't know if there is a "Bill Hamilton," but I presume the name is a regrettable
combination of the hosts of two planetary-information Web sites that Benson frequented: Calvin J.
Hamilton (www.solarviews.org) and Bill Arnett (www.nineplanets.org). To confound the matter further,
Benson misstates the name of Hamilton's Web site.
My only complaint with the pictures themselves involves a few hemispheric shots that are spread over two
pages. I couldn't make the book lie flat enough to yield a creaseless Mercury or Io without a twin-humped
limb.
Benson's site (www.kinetikonpictures.com) is supposed to have more information about the book, but at the
time of this writing I found little there. Among the links is the tantalizing (but empty) "Exhibition." My
mind reels at the thought of some of these images being enlarged to cover walls.
* Available from Sky Publishing.
Review by Stuart J. Goldman
Associate editor STUART GOLDMAN will be checking NASA's Web sites for Terra and Aqua more often
now.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Goldman, Stuart J. "Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes." Sky & Telescope, Feb. 2004, p. 72+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A122969614/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cf2810bf. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A122969614
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 15/17
Snap heaven
Hazel Muir
New Scientist.
180.2424 (Dec. 6, 2003): p54.
COPYRIGHT 2003 New Scientist Ltd.. For more science news and comments, see
http://www.newscientist.com.
http://www.newscientist.com/
Full Text:
Beyond: Visions of the interplanetary probes by Michael Benson, Abrams, 38/$55 [pounds sterling], ISBN
0810945312
ON 5 March 1979, Voyager I snapped the Pele volcano erupting on lo, Jupiter's fifth satellite (right). This is
one of nearly 300 stunning pictures in Beyond, a collection of images beamed back from space over the past
40 years.
The photographs come from early pioneers such as the Mariner missions of the 1960s as well as high-tech
ventures like SOHO, which is still operating today. They capture everything from rippling sand dunes
defrosting in the Martian spring to dumpy little asteroids like Eros, which was so carefully scrutinised by
the NEAR spacecraft in 2000. A serene image from Voyager of the crescent of Neptune with its moon
Triton in tow is one of the best and rightly appears on the book's cover.
Contrast that with furious ultraviolet eruptions on the sun and violent volcanoes on Jupiter's spotty moon,
lo. It is baffling to think that nature has built these diverse worlds from the same huge, bland cloud of gas
and dust.
The print quality of the book is excellent, and it is refreshingly light on text, allowing the images to speak
for themselves. Beyond is a breathtaking reminder that out solar system is a beautiful and strangely
disturbing place.
Muir, Hazel
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Muir, Hazel. "Snap heaven." New Scientist, 6 Dec. 2003, p. 54. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A111264510/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ff0e6f6a.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A111264510
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 16/17
* Benson, Michael. Beyond: Visions of the
Interplanetary Probes
Donna Seaman
Booklist.
100.7 (Dec. 1, 2003): p637.
COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
320p. illus. Abrams, $55 (0-8109-4531-2). 778.3.
Space-age prophet Arthur C. Clarke, one of three eloquent, forward-looking contributors to this pioneering
and magnificent collection of pictures generated by the robotic space probes Galileo, Voyager, Pathfinder,
Magellan, Viking, and other less commonly known mechanical explorers, describes these breathtaking
images as "some of the greatest landscape pictures ever taken." The recognition that these miraculous
images (supremely reproduced) are nothing less than works of art is the impetus for this resplendent
volume, and discerning writer and documentary filmmaker Benson did, in fact, serve as the book's curator,
searching through tens of thousands of digital images to find the most striking and beautiful scenes of the
solar system, many never published before.<< Each sequence of finely detailed portraits>> of Earth, the Sun, the
Moon, and our sister planets <
and serene Neptune, and elegant Saturn, which Benson describes as "cosmic perfection." Not only do
Clarke, Benson, and Lawrence Weschler celebrate the ingenious technology of robotic space probes and
their, as Weschler writes, "unparalleled ability to convey the sheer beauty and mystery" of the solar system,
they also ponder, with great acumen, the metaphysical questions raised by these awesome new visions of
the glorious cosmos.
Seaman, Donna
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "* Benson, Michael. Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2003,
p. 637. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A111856748/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b87f05f. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A111856748
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538343644224 17/17
Benson, Michael. Beyond: Visions of the
Interplanetary Probes
Margaret F. Dominy
Library Journal.
128.20 (Dec. 2003): p156.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Abrams. Dec. 2003. 320p. photogs. ISBN 0-8109-4531-2. $55. SCI
Compiled by writer/photographer/filmmaker Benson--whose work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly
and the New York Times--this collects 295 stunning photographs (color mad b&w) of our solar system,
taken by an assortment of interplanetary satellites since the 1960s. The amazing views (e.g., the canyons of
Mars, the mountains of the moon) Lake up a full page, and as if that weren't enough, readers are also treated
to frequent double fold-outs, giving a four-page panoramic view. For each image, there is a brief description
of a prominent feature, the probe, and the date. A brief essay begins the chapter on each solar system object.
These, along with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke and an afterword by Lawrence Weschler, make up
practically the entire text. But, then, this book is for viewing, not reading. For public library science and
photography collections.--Margaret F. Dominy, Drexel Univ. Lib., Philadelphia
Dominy, Margaret F.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Dominy, Margaret F. "Benson, Michael. Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes." Library Journal,
Dec. 2003, p. 156. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A113855999/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6a6fbe0c. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A113855999