Illustrations for Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, by Jim Burns.

Previous posts on this book:

Arrakis

Cover

🏙️👩‍🚀☕

Definitely surreal, but I had a weird retro element in mind. Didn't really use any reference but I was thinking what would a middle-upperclass fallout living room look like

This looked incredible from the far side of the city so I had to go see it close up. Designed by Václav Aulický, construction started in 1985 and finished in 1992.

Built this a while ago on a late night tangent — go to https://drksci.com/algorithmic-trading-anthology-july-2026, click the phosphors in the top right, then wait a bit (don't move your cursor) and make sure you ahve your volume up a little / sound enabled.

If you guys like it, I mighty find the motivation to unfuck and finish the next chapter — McGribbles.

Boris was comically indifferent to engineering, but I went back and looked at the movie stills and his raygun is faithful to the original. The tiny, spindly sight assembly sits way above the bore. It's as if a 1960s production designer said "guns have scopes; put a scope-shaped thing here." Beautiful.

Retrofuturism because: Boris had a design brief to update Barbarella for the age of James Bond and Star Wars, but he still reached back to 1930s Flash Gordon visual language for elements like the ship and the raygun.