Space Wreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space (1979), is the third volume of Stewart Cowley’s Terran Trade Authority handbooks. As with Space Battles, the art here comes from the portfolios of artists at the Young Artists and Sarah Brown agencies. This is my favorite book of the series (and also the last one I own — I’m not super interested in Starliners: Commercial Travel in 2200AD relative the prices I’ve seen it going for).

If the first volume is the ship sourcebook and the second the galactic history sourcebook, this is the adventure seed book. Story after story of things going wrong in space or on exo-planets, none of them really containing satisfactory explanations. All of the art is spooky. I love a skeleton in a space suit and this book is full of ‘em, but more than that, so many of the images play on that eerie sense of mystery I find in the story of the Mary Celeste. Space Mary Celestes! Dozens of them, with twisted hulls and rusting metal.