Thanks for finding those amazing pictures Steve.
Like many others here, I grew up on Chris Foss's covers to Asimov's books (the Foundation and I Robot stories were inspirational to most of us here I guess).
But the Sparth illustrations are at another level: they have a sense of vastness and wonder that is awesome. Can we have E4 like that please? (Can't remember which one, but there was a computer game a while back based on HR Giger artwork).
It's an incentive to hurry Frontier, the bar keeps being raised....
p.s. looking on his website, I see he did covers for Heinlein, another childhood s.f. hero of mine (Stranger in a Strange Land anyone?)
Also, that he's signed up to idsoftware, so sadly not much chance of Frontier getting him on board