This is Spacecraft 2000 – 2100 AD (1978), by Stewart Cowley and a bevy of uncredited artists who were under contract at J. S. Artists Ltd, an art agency. It is the first of four volumes dedicated to describing the Terran Trade Authority, which grew out of the World Trade Authority in 1999 and functioned as an important administrative and manufacturing body for humanity’s exploration of space.

Do y’all remember The Tourist’s Guide to Transylvania that I posted about a few years ago? TTA is the same basic idea: take a bunch of agency art that had been used as illustrations or book covers elsewhere and give them a second life as the tentpoles for a new sci-fi universe. Cowley took the paintings and sort of ekphrastically reconciled them all using a framework of fictional history (and a little bit of extra art that provides explanatory diagrams of various ships). The primary appeal is getting these gorgeous sci fi paintings printed big in A4 books, but Cowley’s narrative is good fun too (better here than the ridiculous Transylvania book) and scratches an RPG-adjacent itch similar to the Star Trek Technical Guides, where you get a bunch of what I’d consider system agnostic sourcebook material. It that context, TTA is way ahead of its time — you wouldn’t really start seeing this sort of sourcebook in RPGs until the mid-to-late-’80s.

This is really the keystone book of the series, laying out types of spacecraft and detailing some missions they took part on. Flip through it once and you immediately see why folks are keen on the series (and why the books command high prices on the collector’s market). Grab ’em if you see ’em!