John Berkey is remembered today as one of the leading figures of the golden era of science fiction. Most identified with his posters for the original Star Wars film, Berkey was a technically brilliant commercial illustrator and his vision is what we see in our minds eye when we picture “outer space.” A prolific illustrator of sci-fi book covers, the artist also was employed to paint the cutting edge of technology by everyone from Popular Mechanics to Time magazine and even NASA. This example of Berkey’s finely rendered and technically brilliant space scenes shows an almost anthromorphic galactic city-scape, with a citadel shaped like a helmet in the foreground, protecting or menacing a bustling river route.  The painting has a great eerie mood, and appeared as the cover of the 1995 Del Ray paperback The Immortality Option by James P. Hogan. The work is signed lower right and also features a second signature on the verso, along with a note dated August 10th, 1998 that transferred ownership from Berkey to Bill Daley, a long-time Minneapolis based illustration art dealer.  Painting is simply framed in a black gallery frame with a linen matting.