When it comes to books, I’m a sucker for many things. Maps. Gatefolds. Inserts. High-res images. Gorgeous design beneath a dust jacket. In short, high production quality is my jam.

And Phaidon routinely targets my oh-so-many soft spots. So when I saw their recent release Soviet Space Graphics, I felt like I was personally in their cross hairs. Stellar production value AND retro futurism? From the Soviet Union?

As the meme says, take my money!

Soviet Space Graphics: Cosmic Visions from the USSR is written and compiled by Alexandra Sankova, the founder and director of the Moscow Design Museum (which was established in 2012 as the first cultural institution in Russia dedicated to design). And it’s almost 250 pages of inspired illustrations that represent the daydreams and unbridled optimism of the “other side” of the Space Race.

From Sankova’s introduction: “The imagery that began in the 1920s as a romanticized and aspirational imagining of the great Socialist future had by mid-century adopted a more realistic approach based on the latest scientific research, and with the first major successes of the Soviet space program, the iconography of space travel began to permeate all areas of visual culture.”

The book is divided into four broad chapters, which collectively present the extraordinary ambitions and imaginations of Soviet citizens during the early to mid 20th century. They are Space Exploration, Cosmic Pioneers, Future Visions, and Alternative Worlds. (Obviously, the third and fourth are a veritable gold mine of awesomeness.)

The retro futurism of U.S. imaginations is well documented – if not overly familiar – from the pages of mid-century Popular Science to the cheeseball sci-fi films of the 50s. What’s less well known, however, is what Soviet Space Graphics provides: how the people living in the Soviet Union saw the Space Race and envisioned the future – a future THEY undoubtedly won.

It’s a future with amazing technology AND imposing communist architecture. There’s interstellar travel AND socialist propaganda. In a nutshell, it’s ridiculously great.

“During this unprecedented period of productivity, the scale of society’s dreams had transformed dramatically. If, in the 1950s, artists were visualizing what technology would allow them to master the depths of the universe, only a decade later they were creating entire cosmic cities, orbital power stations, residences and greenhouses, and conjuring otherworldly scenes of interplanetary travel.”

Most of the art presented in Soviet Space Graphics originally appeared on book and magazine covers – both mainstream general interest titles (like Popular Science) and more scientific and academic journals. Some pieces are abstract, others are concrete. Some portray real people and technology, whereas others (the really great stuff) were fueled by pure imagination.

But, personally, my favorite is the art that accompanied a 1951 novel by Valentin Ivanov “in which American imperialists and fascist military outlaws conspire to destroy the USSR using the moon as a giant ‘death ray’ reflector.”

Yes, that book was only ever published in Russia. Yes, through some creative Googling, I found an ebook of it online at a Russian library. And yes, I will totally read a crappy Google Translate version of it. BECAUSE HOW CAN THAT NOT BE TOTALLY AMAZING?

Soviet Space Graphics: Cosmic Visions from the USSR by Alexandra Sankova is available from Phaidon now.