My attention was drawn by the following explanation of the Front cover design: The roses in the foreground (Roses by D. R. Fowler, J. Hanan and P. Prusinkiewicz [1990]) were modeled using L-systems. Distributed ray-tracing with one extended light source was used to simulate depth of field. The roses were placed on a background image (photgraphy by G. Rossbach), which was scanned digitally and post-processed.

Computation has evolved quite a lot in 30 years, which makes it even more magical how Prusinkiewicz imagined these wonderful concepts. By the way, does somebody else also wonder why his wikipedia entry doesn't mention a birth year?