Beyond the Horizon is another well-presented 160-page art book in the Titan Books series of artist collections. John Harris is a British artist and illustrator, known for working in the science fiction genre. He attended the Fine Art course at Exeter in 1967 to study painting and graduated in 1970. Like Jim Burns, he joined "Young Artists" in the late 1970s, the premier agency for the emerging movement of science fiction art in the UK.

Harris's first exhibition was a shared show with the artist and architect Nicholas Gilbert Scott, held at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter University in 1977. This was a good match as a lot of Harris's paintings are architectural in nature with towering structures, alien cities and other-worldly landscapes. These demonstrate his preoccupation with scale and space. He has a particular liking for heavy-looking massive structures and craft that float in space and defy gravity. The chapter “Floating Mass” is full of examples of these such as “The Building of FTL1” (1979) and “Judge of Ages” (2012).

Anyone familiar with the manual for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum will know Harris's wonderful cover artwork entitled "Microdrive". This is one of his typical futuristic hulking tower structures and is found on page 45 of this book. The cover, “The Human Division” captures the same language and colour palette. Notably absent from this book, however, is "NASA, T+60", which he produced when NASA invited him to witness the launch of the space shuttle and record the event in a painting. His creation now hangs in the Kennedy Space Centre and is part of the Smithsonian Collection.

In the 1980s Harris started to churn out striking book covers for esteemed SF authors, including Arthur C Clarke, Orson Scott Card, John Scalzi, Ben Bova, Jack McDevitt and Frederik Pohl. These paintings have a fresh and impressionistic style. He has a skill for using texture and colour that fool the eye into seeing more detail than is actually present. This gives his pictures a painterly yet technical feel - perfect for dramatic futuristic space scenes.

Such beautifully reproduced seductive art makes for a great book which is further enhanced by being well-organised with a “Works by Author” section for book covers and a handy index of images at the back.