John Martin – “The Fall of Babylon” (1831), featured in “Twenty Years of Terror”
Adamas Nemesis – “Fly me to the moons” (2021)
Alfons Mucha – “Dance” (1898), featured in “Toward Nuclearpunk: Solarpunk with a Twist”
Adamas Nemesis – “Through the Looking Glass” (2021)
Lawrence Alma-Tadema – “Spring” (1894), featured in “Worldbuilding Near-Future Space Demography”
James Poole – “Donati’s Comet” (1858), featured in “Colonizing the Oort Cloud: The Final Frontier of the Solar System”
John Reinhard Weguelin – “The Tired Dancer” (1879), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 33”
Marie-Denise Villers – “Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes” (1801), featured in “Thinking Outside the ‘FIRE’ Box”
George Clausen – “The Student” (c. 1908), featured in “Toward a New Vision for Online Education”
Caspar David Friedrich – “Two Men Contemplating the Moon” (1819-20), featured in “My Lunar Program After Wings of Fire”
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – “Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante” (1790), featured in “Jean Sibelius and the Music of a Sci-Fi World”
James Tissot – “Goodbye on the Mersey” (c. 1880), featured in “Industrialization in a World Without Oil”
Unknown author – Reclining young woman with skull, c. 1900, featured in “Folkways From Our Past Return”
Thomas Francis Dicksee – “Distant Thoughts” (1886), featured in “A Stream of Thoughts Against Lockdown”
Alexandre Cabanel – “Echo” (1874), featured in “Post-Liberalism: An Echo, Not a Choice”
Arthur John Elsley – “Well on the mend” (1910), featured in “On the ‘We’re So Blessed’ Starter Pack”
Luis Ricardo Falero – “Nymphe” (1892), featured in “Aquamusicals in Space: Worldbuilding Zero-G Sports”
Benes Knüpfer – “Duel of the Tritons” (1848-1910), featured in “Some Thoughts on James Bond”
Léon-François Comerre – “Moon” (1850-1916), featured in “Infinite Scattering: The Future of Spacefaring Civilization?”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “Wave” (1889), featured in “Opry Tower: Going Goth?”
Juan Luna – “The Death of Cleopatra” (1881), featured in “Catacombs of Music City”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Sphinx mit Undine” (1902), featured in “The Long Night of Elite Imagination”
George Spencer Watson – “The Saddler’s Daughter” (1923-24), featured in “Triumph of the Fleece Vest”
Arthur Hacker – “Temptation of Sir Percival” (1894), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 16”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Der Rettung entgegen” (1851-1913), featured in “Worldbuilding Immortals in Science Fiction”
John William Godward – the Priestess (1893), featured in “Indistinguishable from Nature: Toward a ubiquitous Dark Web”
George Romney – “Lady Hamilton as Cassandra” (1780s-90s), featured in “Checking in on American Politics: 2020 Edition”, and “A Romantic Apocalypse: Beyond the Doomsday Shroud”
Albert von Keller – “Melancholy” (c. 1885), featured in “Left Out of Life”
Thomas Cole – “The Ages of Life: Youth” (1842), featured in “Leveraged Stocks for long-term Investing”
Luis Ricardo Falero – The Planet Venus (1882), featured in “The Strange New Worlds of ‘Warp Dawn'”
Gaston La Touche – “Le Ballet” (1890-1913), featured in “Dancing in Space: Worldbuilding More Zero-G Sports”
Pierre-Auguste Cot – “Springtime” (1873), featured in “Antifragility in Love and Life”
George Wilson – “Snow Scene” (1848-1890), featured in “Christmas Night, Rocket Night, Magic Night”
William Gale – “Rocking the Baby” (1867), featured in “Of Single Mothers by Choice”
Adamas Nemesis – “Glowbugs in flight” (2021), featured in “Double, Double, Stories and Trouble”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Solitude” (1851-1913), featured in “Lifestyles in a Fully Globalized Future”
Charles Chaplin – Allegory of Science (1891), featured in “R&D and the Great Power Sweepstakes”
Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky – “Gibraltar at Night” (1844), featured in “For a Darkness Protection Act”
Alfons Mucha – An illustration from “Le Pater” (1899), featured in “In Restless Repose”
NASA – “X-30 NASP” (1990), featured in” The Shapes of Spaceships”
Cesare Maccari – “Cicero Denounces Catiline” (1889), featured in “Presidential Debate Reform: A Radical Proposal”
Fritz Zuber-Bühler – Distant Thoughts (1822-96), featured in “Beginning the Adventure of writing a Novel”
Albert Bierstadt – “Storm in the Mountains” (c. 1870), featured in “The Dark Matter of Excellence”
Adamas Nemesis – “Emerald Nebula” (2021)
Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson et Amable Louis Pagnest – “Atala au tombeau” (1813), featured in “A Life Not-So-Well-Lived?”
Maxime Vorobiov;s “Oak fractured by Lightning” (1842), featured in “Operating System What-Ifs”
Paul DiMare – NASA Study for Manned Mars Mission (1989), featured in “Road Trains of Mars”
George Romney – “Emma, Lady Hamilton” (c. 1785), featured in “Taking my Space Opera into the Far Future”
Luis Ricardo Falero – “Moonlit Beauties” (1851-1896), featured in “Romantic Realist Science Fiction: A Sublime and Beautiful Future”
Edmund Blair Leighton – “A Little Prince likely in Time to bless a Royal Throne” (1904), featured in “Rules of Succession What-Ifs” and “Accident of Birth: A Feature, Not a Bug?”
Witold Pruszkowski – “Falling star” (1884), featured in “Panspermia, the Alpha, and the Omega”
Les Bossinas – “Wormhole travel” (1998), featured in “Worldbuilding faster than Light Travel”
John William Waterhouse – “Hylas and the Nymphs” (1896), featured in “Worldbuilding the Naked Jungle…in Space”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Martyr and crucified, son Helios” (1895), featured in “Some Thoughts on Harry Potter”
Peter Nicolai Arbo – Valkyrien (1869), featured in “Constant Acceleration: Across the Solar System and Beyond”
Rogelio de Egusquiza – “Tristan and Isolde” (1912), featured in “Ever Rending: Another Bond Movie I’d Make”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Question to the Stars” (1901), featured in “To Further the Decentralized Web, Think Bigger”, “Taking My Space Opera into the Really Far Future”, and “A Beloved From the Stars”
Richard Riemerschmid – “Ghost clouds” (detail) (c. 1897), featured in “To Love a Ghost”
“Portrait of Emma Hart” by George Romney (c. 1784), featured in “Toward a Libertarian Artistic Movement”
Adamas Nemesis – “Sunset flight to cloud city” (2020)
John William Godward – Dolce Far Niente (1897), featured in “Idle Geopolitics”
Franz Xaver Winterhalter – “The Cousins (Queen Victoria and Victoire, Duchesse de Nemours)” (1852), featured in “Tangling Up a Family Tree for Fun and Worldbuilding”
Ivan Auvazovsky – “The Wave” (1889), featured in “A Flying-Dutchman Christmas Tree Ship?”
Adamas Nemesis – “Girls’ Night Out” (2021)
Wilhelm Kray – “Sea Creatures” (1828-1889), featured in “Upgrading the Life of Linda” and “Fun with Matrilineal Patriarchies”
Delphin Enjolras – “Portrait of an Elegant Lady Reading” (1910), featured in “New Year, New Sci-Fi Romance Novel”
Marcus Herzberg – “Tall buildings in Dubai at night” (2018), featured in “Gleaming Cities of the Eclipsed”
Frederic Leighton – “The Fisherman and the Siren” (1858), featured in “The Siren Song of Job Security”
François Gérard – “Portrait of Louise-Antoinette-Scholastique Guéhéneuc, Madame la Maréchale Lannes, Duchesse de Montebello, with her Children” (1814), featured in “The Secular Shall Inherit the Earth?”
Augustus Leopold Egg – “Past and Present” (1858), featured in “Worldbuilding Motorhomes”
Albert Edelfelt – “At the Piano” (1884), featured in “Academia, Dark and Otherwise”
John Martin – “Manfred and the Witch of the Alps” (1837), featured in “Improving the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy”
Constance Mayer – The Dream of Happiness (1819), featured in “All My Little Dreamlets”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “An Allegory of Lost Love” (1851-1913), featured in “Shadows Never Lie: The Next Bond Movie I’d Make”
Peder Mørk Mønsted – “The Woodland Glade” (1898), featured in “Germanic America’s Strange Dearth”
Eugène Carrière – “Two Women” (1895), featured in “Hold Fast the Dream”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “The Birth of Venus” (1879), featured in “One Dominion to Rule Them All?”
Thomas Moran – “Green River, Wyoming” (1878), featured in “Young, Lonely, and Restless”
George Romney – “Study of Emma Hamilton as Miranda” (1780s-90s), featured in “Thoughts on Ariel and the Adamas Nemesis Girls”
Thomas Cole – “The Course of Empire: The Savage State” (1836), featured in “Worldbuilding with Dunbar’s Number”
George Romney – “Lady Emma Hamilton as Cassandra” (1780s-1790s), featured in “Lockdown, the Culture of Fear, and the Politics of the Future”
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres – “Napoleon on his Imperial throne” (1806), featured in “Gödel’s Loophole: My Pet Theory”
Archibald Thorburn – “On the stooks – Blackgame” (1902), featured in Worldbuilding Avian Intelligence”
Rick Guidice – Bernal Sphere “Interior including human powered flight” (1970s), featured in “Our Future in Space Habitats: More Thoughts”
Edward Arthur Walton – John George Bartholemew (1911), featured in “Of Map Projections Obscure”
Henry Raeburn – “Colonel Alastair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry” (c. 1810-1812), featured in “Degree Quest: The Second Leg Looms”
Jean Delville – “Allegory of Music” (1923), featured in “A Music City for my Alternate History”
Jonas Lie – “Path of Gold” (1914), featured in “Ecumenopolis: Thoughts on Worldbuilding City-Planets”
Gabriel Émile Édouard Nicolet – “Portrait of a Nurse from the Red Cross” (c. 1914), featured in “Therapeutics of my Alternate History”
Harry Wilson Watrous – “Just a Couple of Girls” (1915), featured in “Do My Stories Pass the Bechdel Test?”
Frederic Edwin Church – “Aurora Borealis” (1865), featured in “Thalassa, or Proxima Centauri b: The Pale Green Dot”
Luc-Olivier Merson – “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” (1880), featured in “Welcome to the Desert of the Weird”
Artur José de Sousa Loureiro – “Spirit of the New Moon” (1888), featured in “To Orbit by Space Gun” and “Worldbuilding the First Moon Landing”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “Not Too Much to Carry” (1895), featured in “The Surprising Path to a Happy Everyday Life”
Julius Sergius von Klever – “Moonlight Winter Landscape” (1913), featured in “Housing Crisis: Is the End in Sight?”
Herbert James Draper – “A Water Baby” (c. 1895), featured in “Stop Worrying and Love the Birth Dearth?”
George Romney – “Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante” (1780s-90s), featured in “I Never Went to College…or High School”
Charles Dana Gibson – “Serious Business” (1906), featured in “Me, A Spendy Start-Up? Oh No!”
Leonardo da Vinci – “Study for the Head of Leda” (1503-10), featured in “The Renaissance Man, still the Master”
Constantino Brumidi – Sketch, Telegraph (c. 1862-67), featured in “A Telegraph World”
Victor Gabriel Gilbert – “The ball or an elegant evening” (c. 1890), featured in “A Social Vision for College Ships”
Robert Wilhelm Ekman – “Ilmatar” (1860), featured in “Worldbuilding Exotic Oxygen Atmospheres” and “Letters from the Airy Deep: New Novel Coming Soon”
“The Death of Dido” – Henry Bone (after Reynolds) (1804), featured in “Delayed Childbearing: I Too Succumb”
Unknown artist, edited by Albertus Seba – Illustration of squid (circa 1735), featured in “After Thalassa: Squid Brains of Enceladus?”.
SpaceX – “A Performance Inside Starship” (2018), featured in “Interplanetary Travel in the Solar System of the Near Future”
Tom Roberts – “The Opening of the First Parliament” (1903), featured in “I Joined the Fediverse”
Henrietta Rae – “Roses of Youth” (1859-1928), featured in “A Not-so-Minor Dream for the Minor Outlying Islands”
John Collier – “Lilith” (1889), featured in “Bite the Apple, Escape the Amazon Jungle?”
Jules Joseph Lefebvre – “Servant” (1880), featured in “Third Rome, Viking Tsars, Russian Turan, and Beyond”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau –
“The Nut Harvest” (1883), featured in “Fresh Air, Green Space, and Unsung Paths to Healthy Living”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “The Ninth Wave” (1850), home page header image
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “Les Oreades” (1902), featured in “Counting Bodies”
Adamas Nemesis – “A Trip to Starlit Spa” (2021)
Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun – Self-portrait with Her Daughter (1789), featured in “Thoughts on Names for Characters and Babies”
NASA – “Blue Rays, New Horizons’ High-Res Farewell to Pluto” (2015), featured in “Worldbuilding the Definition of Planet”
Thomas Edwin Mostyn – “Jewels’ (1864-1930), featured in “Materialist, Not Minimalist”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “The Great Pyramid at Giza” (1871), featured in “Twilight of a Decade”
Frederick Edwin Church – “Our Banner In The Sky” (1861), featured in “Worldbuilding Flags: Some Thoughts”
NASA – “High Altitude Venus Operational Concept” (2014), featured in “Worldbuilding Cloud Cities on Venus”
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard – “Portrait of Louise-Elisabeth of France with her son” (1780s), featured in “Forget Humanoid Aliens: Try Dinosaur Aliens”
Tresca, Salvatore (Graveur), Lafitte, Louis (Dessinateur du modèle) – Vendémaire calendar (1797-98), featured in “Worldbuilding New Calendars”
George Romney – “Emma Hart as Circe” (1782), featured in “The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy I Would Have Made”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Toteninsel” (Isle of the Dead) (1851-1913), featured in “Panpsychism and Beyond”
Johann Ender – “From Darkness, the Light: Allegory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences” (1831), featured in “On Etymologies of the Elements”
Caspar David Friedrich – “Evening” (1821), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 66”
Pierre-August Cot – “Primavera” (1873), featured in “Pensioners, Aristocrats, and Financial Independence”, and “Reinhardts After Rapunzel”
Gabriel Loppé – “Unknown Title” (1882), featured in “Skiing and Space Diving on Other Worlds”
Frank Dicksee – “The Crisis” (1891), featured in “The Wonder Drug Scores Again?”
Albert Bierstadt – “Alaska” (c. 1889), featured in “An Alternate History of Cascadia”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “Maternal Admiration” (1869), featured in “The Boon of Young Motherhood?”
“Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods, page 180” by Arthur Rackham (1911), featured in “Starve the Beast: Still the Path to Smaller Government?”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Capri III” (1900), featured in “The Rise of Deplatforming and the Decentralized Web”
Unknown (but good!) Illustrator – “Sif was Queen of the Fields” (1897), featured in “More Thoughts on my New Calendar”
Edmund Blair Leighton – “The Dedication” (1908), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 4”
Jean-Léon Gérôme – “Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind” (1896), featured in “Of Fediverses and Frustrations”
James Tissot – “Room Overlooking the Harbor” (c. 1876-78), featured in “The Puzzle of Credentialism”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “Ships in a Storm” (1860), featured in “A Pirate Story for Me, Savvy?”
Frederick Stuart Church – “Knowledge is Power” (1889), featured in “So Much Fear and Doubt For So Small a Paper”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “Black Sea (A storm begins to whip up in the Black Sea)” (1881), featured in “The Lavender Glow of a Radon Sea: Worldbuilding Exotic Oceans”
John William Waterhouse – “The Crystal Ball” (1902), featured in “Crystal Cities in Other Galaxies”
Jacques-Louis David – “The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis” (1818), featured in “Becoming a Superior Man: Easier than You Think?”
Edvard Munch – Vampire (1895), featured in “Vampires of the Oort Cloud?”
Edwin Blashfield – Spring Scattering Stars (1927), featured in “Worldbuilding a Space Opera Setting of My Own”
Edward Coley Burne-Jones – “Psyche’s Wedding” (1895), featured in “The Future of Marriage”
Antonio Sant’Elia – “Casa a gradinata” (1914), featured in “Personal Transportation of the Near Future: Flying Cars and Beyond”
Lawrence Alma-Tadema – “The Baths of Caracalla” (1899), fearured in “Sisterhoods and Hives of my Space Opera”
Jean-Léon Gérôme – Pygmalion and Galatea (1890), featured in “Sponsus ex Twittera”
Hubble Space Telescope – “The Cosmic Horseshoe” (2011), featured in “The Sun as Gravitational Lens: A Breakthrough Technology?”
Ivan Aivazovsky – “Peter the Great at Krasnaya Gorka” (1846), featured in “The Twilight of Conservatism”
Adamas Nemesis – “Base 10 versus Base 12 parchment” (2021), featured in “Worldbuilding Number Systems”
Heywood Hardy – “Holiday Time” (1908), featured in “A Slice of Life at the Dawn of the Space Age?”
An antique New Year’s postcard in Berlin, Germany (c. 1911), featured in “Beginning the Night of the Calendars”
Joseph-Marius Avy – “White ball” (1903), featured in “Ballroom and Business with ChatGPT”
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – Lady Emma Hamilton as either Ariadne or a Bacchante (c. 1790-92), featured in “Feminine Companionship: An Unsung Ideal”
William-Adolphe Bougereau – “The Motherland” (1883), featured in “Big Families on the High Frontier: Worldbuilding Space Colony Demography”
Thomas Le Clear – “Young America” (1863), featured in “Abolish Elections: For Sortition and Direct Democracy”
Donald Davis – “Endcap view with suspension bridge” (1975), featured in “Worldbuilding Space Megastructures: Beyond Dyson Spheres”
Paul Emile Chabas – “Jeune Naiade” (1869-1937), featured in “Taffy’s Life: A Few Thoughts”
Seymour Millais Stone – “Parsifal and the Holy Grail” (1904), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 88”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “Nymphs and Satyr” (1873), featured in “Worldbuilding with Parthenogenesis”
J. Frassanito & Associates for NASA – McDonnell Douglas proposal for X-33 single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (1996), featured in “Catching a Lift”
Antoon van Welie’s portrait of the gorgeous Geneviève Lantelme (1911), featured in “My Dream Relationship”
John William Waterhouse – Consulting the Oracle (1884), featured in “World Religions in Alternate Histories”
Bror Lindh – “Northern Light” (1900), featured in “Worldbuilding Seasons on Planets with High Axial Tilts”
Adamas Nemesis – “Travel the Solar System at 1g” (2021)
John Martin – “Pandemonium” (1841), featured in “Our Dystopian Moment: The Fruit of Our Dystopian Futures”
Gustav Dore – “Dante and the River of Lethe” (1880), featured in “Lethe to the Future”
Domenico Corvi – “Allegory of Painting” (1721-1803), featured in “Artists Exit Stage Left?”
Alfons Mucha – “The Arts: Painting” (1898), featured in “Toward More Visual Storytelling”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “Abschied” (1892), featured in “Toward a Generational Division of Labor?”
Adamas Nemesis – “Charting the Airy Deep” (2020)
William-Adolphe Bougeureau – “Nymphs and Satyr” (1873), featured in “Courtesans and Drugs: All Things in Moderation?” and “A Dance with Death”
Adamas Nemesis – “Spaceplane approaching Neptune orbital Sphere” (2020)
Rick Guidice – “Toroidal colonies, cutaway view, exposing the interior” (1970s), featured in “Artificial Gravity in Outer Space: Centrifuges and Beyond”
Peder Mønsted – Solen trænger gennem trækronerne over Sæby Å (1922), featured in “Taking Earth into the 23rd Century”
Vilhelm Melbye (attrib.) – “Shipping off the Eddystone Lighthouse” (1824-82), featured in “Worldbuilding Communications with Smoke, Mirrors, and Analog Computers”
Adamas Nemesis – “Starburst” (2021)
Albert Bredow – “Romantic Winter Landscape with Gothic Castle” (1899), featured in “The Heir Abides”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “The Nut Gatherers” (1882), featured in “Art, Nature, and Freedom: Toward a Better Future for Education”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – “A Childhood Idyll” (1900), featured in “Life Cycles in my Space Opera’s Far Future”
Mårten Eskil Winge – “Thor’s Fight with the Giants” (1872), featured in “The Dark Path to Masculine Beauty”
Paul Gustave Fischer – “The Royal Theatre Ballet School, Copenhagen” (1889), featured in “Interests Too Many, and Never Enough”
Mihaly von Zichy – “Romantic Encounter” (1827-1906), featured in “I’m ‘The Most Dangerous Personality Type'”
Albert Bettannier – “The Black Stain” (1887), featured in “Redrawing the Map of Ukraine”
Winslow Homer – Girl in the Hammock” (1873), featured in “No Solace for the Single?”
James Tissot – “Plymouth Dockyard” (1887), featured in “College Ships: A Pathway to Seasteading”
Albert Bierstadt – “Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast” (1870), featured in “Let’s Build Pacific Coast City!”
Gustav Wertheimer – “The Kiss of the Siren” (1882), featuring “Making Diet and Exercise Easy and Fun”
“Emma Hamilton as Joan of Arc” (1780s-90s), featured in “Nemesis Among the Machines”
Alfons Mucha – “Spring” (1898), featured in “Ready for Rapunzel”
“Design for The Magic Flute: The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night, Act 1, Scene 6”, after Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1816), featured in “Cosmic Ley Lines: Space Opera to Space Fantasy”
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun – “Portrait of Princess Karoline of Liechtenstein” (1793), featured in “A Second Sci-Fi Romance Novel is Coming Soon” and “Dear Future Me: New Sci-Fi Romance Novel Released”
Pierre Bouillon – “The Child of Fortune”, (1801), featured in “For Proportional Representation”
Frank Lloyd Wright – Sketches for Broadacre City (1932), Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, featured in “Thoughts on Futuristic Transportation”
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach – “The Fairy Dance” (1895), featured in “The Coming Union of Intelligence and the Cosmos Primeval”, and “Straddling the Shadow of Life”
Francis Danby – “Shipwreck” (c. 1850), featured in “No Escape for the Cheap”
Eduard Büchler – “Classical ruins with a maiden in the foreground” (1915), featured in “Kudzu Among the Ruins”
Wenzel-August Hablik – “Starry Sky” (1909), featured in “The New Star Trek I Would Have Made”
Alfred Seifert – “Hypatia” (1850-1901), featured in “Degree Quest: Day 58”
NASA/JSC – “Humans Explore Martian Canyons at Dawn” (1989), featured in “Worldbuilding the First Mars Landing”
Henrika Šantel – “The Chemist” (1932), featured in “The Final Frontiers of the Periodic Table”
John Smmons – The Morning Star (1867) (detail), featured in “Worldbuilding the Cool, the Romantic, and the Fantasy into my Space Opera Setting”