Bradamant: The Iron Tempest

Before TV's Warrior Princess, before the golden lasso, fiction's first major Warrior-Woman was Ludovico Ariosto's Bradamant, the heroine of his classic 16th century poem, Orlando Furioso. In 7th century Europe of myths, gods and monsters, Bradamant vanquishes evil knights, rescues the unfortunate, fights black magic and destroys entire armies in her adventurous quest for her lost lover, Roggero, an enemy knight she once rescued at the risk of her own life. Roggero in turn must battle monsters, giants and evil sorceresses in his quest to be reunited with Bradmant in this epic retelling of her story, with new, original illustrations by the author and by Gustave Dore from his classic 19th century edition of Orlando Furioso.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
RON MILLER is an illustrator and author whose primary work entails the creation of illustrations for books and magazines, specializing in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction subjects. His work has appeared on scores of book jackets, book interiors and in magazines such as National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Air & Space, Sky & Telescope, Newsweek, Natural History, Discover, Geo, etc. In addition to dozens of magazine articles and professional papers, he has had nearly twenty books of his own published, either created wholly by himself or in collaboration, most often with noted astronomer William K. Hartmann. These include the Hugo- nominated The Grand Tour, Cycles of Fire, In the Stream of Stars, and The History of Earth (all published by Workman Publishing Co.).

Ron Miller's The History of Earth has been optioned by Pinnacle Studios of Seattle, Washington, who plans to use the book as the basis for new 3D Imax feature. Production should begin this Summer.

The Miller-Hartmann series have gone through numerous printings and foreign translations. All of them have been Book-of-the-Month Club Feature Selections (as well as selections of the Science, Quality Paperback and Astronomy Book Clubs) and have seen numerous translations. They have received many commendations and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific has called The Grand Tour "a modern classic." An updated, revised edition of The Grand Tour, with thirty new paintings, was published in October 1993 and reprinted in 1994 and 1995.

His most recent book, A History of Rockets, was published in January 1999 by Franklin Watts.

Considered an authority on Jules Verne, Miller translated and illustrated new, definitive editions of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Unicorn, 1989) and Journey to the Center of the Earth. A major companion/atlas to Verne's works, Extraordinary Voyages, was published in 1994. He has acted as a consultant on Verne for Disney Imagineering and A&E's Biography series.

Miller is also considered an authority on the early history of spaceflight. A book published in July 1993, The Dream Machines , a comprehensive, quarter-million-word 744-page history of manned spacecraft, was nominated for the prestigious IAF Manuscript Award and won the Booklist Editor's Choice Award for 1994. It will soon be a multimedia CD-ROM.

He designed a set of ten commemorative stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and a trading card collection of 111 of his paintings of great science fiction heroines was published (as Ron Miller's Firebrands) by Comic Images in October 1994. The book version of Firebrands, with a text by Pam Sargent and some 30 new paintings, was published in November 1998 by Paper Tiger (London). It, too, is a Book Club selection.

Miller has also written a trilogy of fantasy novels Palaces and Prisons, Silk and Steel and Hearts and Armor published by Ace in 1991 and 1992, as well as a fourth volume, Mermaids & Meteors.

Several other novels are in progess as well as the production of a screenplay co-authored with Ron (Alien, Total Recall) Shusett and a graphic novel based on this same screenplay.

He has been a production illustrator for motion pictures, notably Dune and Total Recall, and has done preproduction concepts, consultation and matte art for David Lynch, George Miller, John Ellis and James Cameron.

He was the art director the computer-generated showride film, Impact!.

He has taken part in numerous international space art workshops and exhibitions, including seminal sessions held in Iceland and the Soviet Union, and has lectured on space art and space history in the U.S., France, Japan, Italy and Great Britain. Miller has been on the faculty of the International Space University.

His original paintings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Pushkin Museum (Moscow).

Before becoming a free-lance illustrator in 1977, Miller was art director for the National Air & Space Museum's Albert Einstein Planetarium. Prior to this he was a commercial advertising illustrator. Miller is a contributing editor for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Life Member and past Trustee of the International Association for the Astronomical Arts, an Honory Member of the Sociétè Jules Verne (Paris), a Member of the North American Jules Verne Society and a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.