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krpalmerQuite a few books and documentaries were turned out last year for the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing. Wondering if having already seen other documentaries and read a good many other books (some dating back to before that landing and found later) might mean I’d find these new ones assorted repackagings of familiar anecdotes, though, I didn’t seek out many of them. Not that long ago, though, I did get a slight nudge towards one particular book from last year named Chasing the Moon, and after a few idle ebook searches I had the even more idle thought to check the catalogue of my library’s ebook lending service. The book just happened to be there, and I signed it out, although still unsure just what I’d make of it; it did happen to be “a companion book to the PBS series,” which seemed at first glance a little less imposing than a standalone volume.
I had noticed in the pre-signout blurb, though, that Arthur C. Clarke would be one of the people featured in the book, and after a launch-day prologue mentioning him among other notable figures in Florida the first chapter opened with how he’d first begun to learn about scientific possibility as distinct from science fiction as a teenaged boy (then known as “Archie Clarke.”) The end of that chapter mentioned a book of his providing the same help for a young Carl Sagan, and I was well into the narrative.
While the writing may not have ever felt profound, commenting on things such as the TV news coverage (with relatively little that could be shown outside of news studios after the blastoffs) did keep my interest up. One person focused on in turn was Ed Dwight, a black Air Force pilot in a test flight school with some higher-level thoughts of making him “the first Negro astronaut.” While I’d heard of Dwight before, his story did seem distinct from that of the human computers in Hidden Figures or the “Mercury 13” women who’d begun space medicine tests.
That focus on people in addition to official astronauts and high-level politicians and administrators, though, did have me wondering a little if the book would say anything about one particular reason why Arthur C. Clarke had moved from England to Sri Lanka or, as the book Space Odyssey had described it, his declaration to Stanley Kubrick early on during the pre-production of 2001: A Space Odyssey that he was “a very well-adjusted homosexual.” (Kubrick’s response had been “Yeah, I know.”) While that movie did get mentioned in turn in this later book, the more personal discussion of Clarke was saved for a last chapter covering the decade after 1969, with Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff suggested as changing the way we’ve looked back at those early days in space since. While this book might have been more just “perfectly fine for an ebook from the library” (even as it closed with its acknowledgements pointing out the good example beforehand of Marketing the Moon, which I’ve also read) it does have me curious in turn about the documentary it’s a companion to.
I had noticed in the pre-signout blurb, though, that Arthur C. Clarke would be one of the people featured in the book, and after a launch-day prologue mentioning him among other notable figures in Florida the first chapter opened with how he’d first begun to learn about scientific possibility as distinct from science fiction as a teenaged boy (then known as “Archie Clarke.”) The end of that chapter mentioned a book of his providing the same help for a young Carl Sagan, and I was well into the narrative.
While the writing may not have ever felt profound, commenting on things such as the TV news coverage (with relatively little that could be shown outside of news studios after the blastoffs) did keep my interest up. One person focused on in turn was Ed Dwight, a black Air Force pilot in a test flight school with some higher-level thoughts of making him “the first Negro astronaut.” While I’d heard of Dwight before, his story did seem distinct from that of the human computers in Hidden Figures or the “Mercury 13” women who’d begun space medicine tests.
That focus on people in addition to official astronauts and high-level politicians and administrators, though, did have me wondering a little if the book would say anything about one particular reason why Arthur C. Clarke had moved from England to Sri Lanka or, as the book Space Odyssey had described it, his declaration to Stanley Kubrick early on during the pre-production of 2001: A Space Odyssey that he was “a very well-adjusted homosexual.” (Kubrick’s response had been “Yeah, I know.”) While that movie did get mentioned in turn in this later book, the more personal discussion of Clarke was saved for a last chapter covering the decade after 1969, with Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff suggested as changing the way we’ve looked back at those early days in space since. While this book might have been more just “perfectly fine for an ebook from the library” (even as it closed with its acknowledgements pointing out the good example beforehand of Marketing the Moon, which I’ve also read) it does have me curious in turn about the documentary it’s a companion to.