Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV

Brushworm Speaks!Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 AD. Voyage to Darwin IVby Wayne Douglas Barlowe****For nearly a decade, ever since the release of the Discovery Channel special, Alien Planet, this book has been on Brushworm’s wish list. He kept meaning to buy it but he got distracted by other things, the price got too high, lack of funds and other things. Last week, though thanks to an infusion of funds, he finally bit the bullet and purchased this book. Was it worth the years long wait? Lets find out!.The Story: In 2358, wildlife artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe joined the first manned flight to Darwin IV, fourth planet in the recently discovered F-Class binary system 6.5 Lightyears 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.The Good: Where to begin?Wayne Barlowe creates a world that is alien in every since of the word. Everything about it is different from Earth in every conceivable way. Makes every other creator of an alien world and species created seem woefully inadequate. Darwin IV feels alive. Darwin IV feels like an alien planet. Creatures don’t have eyes nor do they have jaws or teeth. They feed on liquids not meat. Its quite clear that Wayne Barlowe did his homework because this book really does feel like an account of a real life adventure to another planet. The way he describes the various biomes of Darwin IV and how the various animals fit into the habitat. Some may say the various landscapes are too unusual to be realist but the truth is we have no idea what alien life is like. It could very well be that alien planets don’t look, sound, or even think, anything like something native to Earth. Stanislaw Lem understood that and so does Wayne Barlowe.Wayne Barlowe is a genius. One of The Worm’s favorite books of all time is Wayne Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials which showcases the full extent of his prolific imagination. His illustrations are the work of a master, the colors and the lines are excellent. A signature of Wayne Barlowe’s work is the lack of angles. In Brushworm’s explorations of his work, there are not that many depictions of machinery. There are the hover pods used by the expedition members but that is only one page. His comfort zone is in curves and natural lines, not the hard angles of vehicles and starships. On that front: Wayne Barlowe delivers. The alien creatures really look like they could be real. There is no fur on Darwin IV, but he depicts the rolls of skin and pockmarks extremely realistically.Some may argue that the choice of the image on the cover: the Rugose Floater seems odd being how briefly the creature is characterized. Why not use a more “impressive” creature like the Arrowtongue or the Emperor Sea Strider? It is fitting though. The Arrowtongue, while very unusual, is a bit more ‘rooted’ than the Rugose Floater, two legs, a head, all that jazz. The Floater is alien, the way it moves and the way it reproduces, truly alien. Aside from that…sometimes less is more. Sometimes books on the wildlife of Africa, simply show a line of birds soaring across the sunset.The Flaws: The main flaw is that sometimes the seams between the pages can obscure certain aspects of the image’s subject. For example…it is hard to tell if the Prairie Ram has any legs. Sometimes on certain pages there would be an illustration of a creature but the main text would not go into detail about it until the next few pages. Some would not be expanded on at all, which was very disappointing. Sometimes the reverse would happen, the main text would mention a certain animal but the illustrations would be lacking.Wayne Barlowe is a very imaginative forger of alien creatures, but some of them may be a bit too odd to make a lot of sense. They are just bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. One of the main gaffs a legitimate biologists might make is the concept of multiple leg configurations. Many creatures have three or even one leg, and while Brushworm is no biologists, that is kind of weird as most large fauna on Earth tend to follow the same evolutionary pattern, four or two legs. Even insects tend to have even numbers of legs. Perhaps Barlowe was trying hard to be weird. Then again, many creatures from the land and seas of Earth could be described exactly the same way. Weird.Final Verdict: Expedition is a must read for any reader or writer of Science Fiction. One must study the masters if one is too mater their own craft. Was this Book worth the decades long wait? Absolutely Yes!Five out Five Starsthecultureworm.blogspot.com

Expedition has managed to make Wayne Douglas Barlowe one of my favourite authors of all time. It is clear that he has put a lot of imagination into this book, and he manages to make it both exciting and believable at the same time. The book is also beautifully illustrated by Barlowe himself, and the illustrations do a great job of giving one a feel of how it would be like to actually be on an alien planet.Expedition tells a story from the first perspective of the author himself. In the story he portrays himself as a researcher living in the mid-24th century. Pollution has reduced Earth to a horrible filthy wasteland, with many of the creatures we know of today extinct or horribly mutated. A benevolent alien race called the Yma (who are never illustrated nor properly described in the book, though one passage shows they communicate with whistling and clicking sounds), has managed to help us humans clean up some of our mess, though there's still a long way to go before Earth is truly healed.A life-bearing planet is discovered around 6.5 lightyears from Earth. This planet is named Darwin IV, and a joint human-Yma scientific expedition is sent to study the planet's indigenous wildlife. Amongst the expedition members is of course the author.At least some people may remember Darwin IV and many of its alien lifeforms from a documentary called Alien Planet, that was loosely based on the book. Differences from the book and documentary include the fact that while the documentary only had robotic probes going to the planet, the book has actual people going there. The book also features far more lifeforms than the documentary did (this is likely because the documentary had to cut out a lot of creatures to save time. There were still quite a lot of lifeforms that did get mentioned though).Some of the creatures to get featured in Expedition, but not Alien Planet include the Rugose Floater, which are the creatures featured on the book's cover; the Forest Slider, which loses its two hind legs as it becomes and adult; the Forest Gulper, a creature that flies as a juvenile but becomes a sluggish sac-like predator as an adult; the Sac-Back, who's females bury themselves in the ground to be fed by the males; the Tundra Plow, which keeps a third of its body underground and and slowly drags itself forward; the Rimerunner, a unipedal hopper and the only featured creature with an eye; the Mummy-nest Flyer, who's foremost part detaches at some point in its life and uses the husk of its hindbody as a nest; and much, much more.It should be noted, however, that some of the lifeforms that get only get briefly featured in the book Expedition, such as the Pronghead and the Electrophyte, get bigger roles in the documentary Alien Planet, so in that apsect the book and the documentary complement one another.The thing that sets Wayne Barlowe apart from standard sci-fi writers is that he actually makes aliens that look alien. All too often, sci-fi will do no more with their aliens than make humanoids or rubber forehead aliens and perhaps a few creatures that parody Earth animals. Barlowe, on the other hand, creates lifeforms that look like nothing that ever lived on Earth. Darwin IV's creatures are truly unique.One important feature of Darwin IV's alien creatures is that almost all of them are blind, relying on sonar and infrared sensing rather than sight. The only featured creature with sight is the Rimerunner, which has a single eye, and even it uses sonar as a main sense.Another feature of Darwin IV life is that most are hermaphrodites (meaning they have no males or females and when two individuals mate, either one may end up birthing the young/laying the eggs). There are some exceptions to this though, perhaps most notably the Sac-Back, with its radically different males and females.Also, while large predators on Earth tear into their prey's flesh with powerful jaws and sharp teeth, large predators on Darwin IV pierce their prey with sharp proboscises or tongues and liquify the insides into a sort of soup which they then drink (we have animals that do that on Earth too, but they are small things such as bugs).Overall, Wayne Barlowe has done science fiction a huge favour by creating aliens that are truly alien. His story has also presented us with a fascinating "what if" scenario.Overall, Expedition was a fascinating and enlightening read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction, aliens, or biology.

The media could not be loaded.  I missed out on this GLORIOUS book as a child.Imagine my devastation when finally getting a copy as an adult, only to open it and find the spine detached.See video.Not for the squeamish.(This review is not a reflection of Barlowe's legendary work, by the way. Rather, the absolutely appalling presentation I personally received of it)

This is not a bad book

Purtroppo 2 stelle per le scelte pessime di impaginazione, che segano malamente moltissime illustrazioni, riuscendo a rovinare un libro che potenzialmente sarebbe stato molto interessante e ben fatto.Per quello che costa (più di 50 euro) ci si aspetterebbe una maggiore cura di queste cose. Peccato!

I have wanted this book for a very long time. It did not disappoint both story and illustrations are wonderful. For those unaware the premiss is - earth is a devastated mess and humans only survive thanks to the intervention of an alien species. An earth like planet is discovered and an expedition is sent. This is the journal of one of the human scientists sent. There is a tie in DVD "Expedition to Darwin IV", equally wonderful.

Ce livre est tout simplement un MONUMENT en matière de science-fiction!SCIENCE, car même s'il est ici question de zoologie spéculative, Wayne Barlowe procède avec une méticulosité toute scientifique pour faire de Darwin IV une planète crédible.FICTION également, car ce livre est a ma connaissance l'œuvre la plus brillante ayant pour thème l'exobiologie.C'est aussi un authentique tour de force artistique qui pour moi reste inégalé plus de trente ans après (certaines peintures dates du début des années 80).Le livre regorge littéralement de somptueuses illustrations mettant en scène les étranges organismes peuplant ce monde fictif.Attention toute fois!Les accros de grandes métropoles alien fourmillant de véhicules et autres gadgets technologiques seront ici très déçu car Darwin IV est une planète totalement dépourvue de civilisation "évoluée" et on ne rencontre a sa surface qu'une faune et une flore sauvage d'une bizarrerie a vous couper le souffle.L'imagination et la créativité dont fit preuve pour l'occasion Wayne Barlowe est tout simplement exceptionnelle!EXPEDITION a été adapté en vidéo il y a de ça quelques années sous le titre "Alien Planet" mais ce dvd est actuellement presque aussi rare que le livre dont il est issu.Si vous en avez l'occasion, ne boudez pas votre plaisir, procurez vous les deux...