The name Canopus was originally suggested to me (Robin Rees) by Sir Patrick Moore when I started the business in 1999. Patrick had been my author at Cambridge, Mitchell Beazley and George Philip for several years and now writes for and with me at Canopus. My academic background is in physics, and the books Canopus produces fall into two categories – popular illustrated astronomy, and academic physics commissioned and produced for Springer Verlag.
Canopus is based in Queen Square, Bristol, but we travel throughout the UK commissioning new titles, with much time spent in London with current clients for our popular works.
At present this includes Thames and Hudson, Carlton and Gorge Philip. Our commissioning editor, Tom Spicer, runs the acadademic side of the business with me, and to date we have some 30 books signed with Springer. All other staff are freelances.
2006 saw the publication of our most successful popular illustrated title yet. Bang!, The Complete History of the Universe by Sir Patrick Moore, Brian May and Chris Lintott. Conceived and created by Canopus, the books was published by Carlton. One year on it is going into a new edition, and has appeared in 12 foreign languages. See our wonderful website: www.BangUniverse.com
Earlier this year we published Dark Side of the Universe – Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Fate of the Universe by Iain Nicolson. It has had a terrific reception by the review media. It tackles head on the grave problem that most of the matter in the Universe is missing, so all our theories about the Universe are based on observations of the puny few percent of the Universe we can actually observe. Iain is one of the most gifted authors currently writing about astronomy and cosmology.
Canopus’s mission is to have fun while publishing as much useful and entertaining science as possible. In addition to book publishing, we have ventured into multimedia CDROMs, in particular for the Sunday Times – one on astronomy, and one on genetics – and have a documentary film in post production.
