Out of the Cradle

[murphydyne]

"Jim Dunlap and the Long Lunar Walk" by Bernard Palmer

Published in 1974 by Moody Press, it weighs in at 127 pages. No errors noted.

Jim and Steve are responsible and Christian young men who have befriended an ex-missionary whose service to God led him into the scientific field and a number of new advances that reveal the wonder of His universe, and let Dr. Brockton to travel to the Moon and discover a new metal he calls Lunerium.

There have been some strange characters seen around the castle where Dr. Brockton has his laboratory, strange because the Dr. has been away hasn't contacted the boys like he said he would. They pay a visit to the castle to see if he is there, only to have a strange young lady answer the door. A fiery-tempered, quick to take umbrage, redhead by the name of Ginger. Girls! Pshaw - nothing but trouble.

Later, Dr. Fletcher's men try to ambush Dr. Brockton, but the boys warn him and he's able to avoid trouble. The Dr. tells the boys of his plans to go to the Moon to find more Lunerium, and invites them along. With the permission of their parents, the boys set off for the Moon. Wait, what's that in the closet? It's Ginger! Interfering girls! The Doctor's first thought, naturally, is to return Ginger to safety. But doing so would put their plans at further risk of being compromised by Dr. Fletcher. So Ginger gets to go along, and the all head for the Moon where they have thrilling adventures trying to thwart the evil Dr. Fletcher, and Ginger opens her heart to Jesus, becoming a Christian in the process and earning greater respect from the guys.

There have been several overtly Christian-themed Moon books reviewed so far, this one being the first I've found for the, I would say, 8-12 age range. Pretty straightforward, the specificities of the science receive less attention than the devotions to God. It's not actually the trip to the Moon that is important in this story, but rather Ginger's overcoming of her intellectual prejudices against Christianity and opening her heart to the Savior.

(words capitalized out of respect, not belief)

This one might prove popular with certain audiences, and I'm always in favor of good, wholesome stories. Other audiences might find the Christian elements a bit overbearing.

This one is somewhere around a waxing quarter/waning half Moon.

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[murphydyne]

"By Rocket to the Moon" by Otto Willi Gail

Published originally in 1931, this edition is 2006 by Black Cat Press via Lulu Books, it weighs in at 208 pages. Frequent OCR errors throughout.

Tommy Bighead, ace reporter for the Michigan Evening Post, is on to the story of the century. He'd just spoken to Hans Hardt on his way to the office, and his editor is telling him that Hans Hardt took off from Germany that very morning, less than two hours before Tommy had seen him. How was that possible? He tracks down Dr. Hardt, only it's Hans' uncle, who clues in the reporter. Tommy's nose for old-school journalism tells him there's a story afoot, and he makes a deal with the Hardt's for an exclusive.

And what an exclusive it is. They're going to the Moon. Having proved the basic concepts with suborbital hops (~45 mins to anywhere on the planet), they're ready to move ahead with the Wieland, a rocket launched from a large carrier aircraft (aka TSTO, two-stage to orbit). Tommy gets a little too excited about the scoop and stows away onboard, only to find out post-launch that his added mass has completely compromised the mission. Still, they soldier on as best they can. They spot a small moon in orbit around our Moon, and Tommy decides that he will meet his end there, sneaking out of the ship in a spacesuit when no one is looking. Heedless, the others continue to try to rendezvous with the small moon, which turns out to hold mysterious treasures. Their stay foreshortened, they manage to escape only with what they presume to be a mummy of one of the lost crew.

It turns out to be Tommy Bighead, who is now going to have a sensational story for the newspaper. They proceed to the Lunar surface, where they try to figure out a way to refuel the Wieland. There, the strange discoveries continue, and the explorers learn of ancient astronauts and the fate of Atlantis. The Sun continues its progress across the heavens, and the crew is going to have to throw everything they can overboard to make it back to Earth. Maybe.

I was quite impressed with this story, as Mr. Gail got a lot of things right technology-wise. I was less impressed with the book, which had fewer OCR errors than the last Lulu book reviewed, but nevertheless they were found throughout and came to be quite annoying. If they could clean up the text I would be happy to rate this one favorably.

The story gets a waxing three-quarter Moon. The book gets a quarter Moon.

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[murphydyne]

"Moon Jack" by Walt Crosby

Published in 2001 by Proctor Publications, it weighs in at 272 pages. A fair number of errors throughout, including numerous homonymic errors.

The time is the near future. A private company is nearing completion of the development of a crewed launcher to orbit, even to the Moon. It's a normal day, when all of a sudden terrorists invade the compound and seize the facilities. A flight controller who had slipped out for a smoke catches one of the strike team off guard, and manages to escape into the desert.

Somewhere in the jungle, at a concrete bunker, another team is entertaining the local chieftain to maintain goodwill with the natives while they undertake their portion of the mission.

Somewhere in Europe, a criminal mastermind is watching the pieces of the puzzle slip into place, ensuring the success of his latest criminal enterprise - the extortion of (everyone put pinkie to lower lip) eight Trillion dollars from the world's governments.

Soon the nature of the threat is revealed. The rocket is going to deliver a significant amount of plutonium to the Moon which, if the ransom is not paid, will be detonated and destroy a significant portion of the Moon with all of the consequent effects on our ecosystem.

Thus is laid the foundation for this action thriller. Dr. John Bedaris, our protagonist saved by a smoke break, is the one best hope of the good guys, and ends up on the adventure of a lifetime, with the finding of his true love thrown into the mix for good measure. It's tough for the good guys to catch a break, and the evil criminal mastermind seems to have considered all contingencies. It's not looking good for Earth's little sister our Moon, nor for Earth herself as a consequence.

This was a decent story, marred only by the numerous errors one tends to find in self-published books. Spellchecks don't catch everything, and we're not at the AI stage where they can catch homonym-type errors like disseminated for decimated. I do wish that individual authors who self-publish would pay to have their books professionally edited. It's a very wise investment in the quality of the work.

Again, not a bad idea, but I really can't go over a waxing quarter Moon on this one.

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[murphydyne]

"The Moon Conquerors" by R.H. Romans

Published in Science Wonder Quarterly in Winter 1930, my copy is the Black Cat Press edition from 2007, weighing in at 251 pages. Numerous unedited OCR errors, though not as bad as the last one from them.

We commence with the Narrative of Miss Dorothy Brewster, our protagoniste for this adventure. As a child she had asked her aunt for the Moon, and hadn't understood why she couldn't have it. She grew up, but the Moon remained "the most beautiful, fascinating and mysterious object of my life". Her father sends her off to university to cultivate her mind, and when she returns he bestows on her a rare gift, a 1200" telescope for observing the Moon, one that has taken decades to construct. This magnificent telescope allows her to resolve the features of individuals on the Moon, and so she is unsurprised to find inhabitants there. She witnesses a strange sight - an individual of noble bearing is dumped in the middle of the desert to bake in the Sun by flying spheres. After taking his bearing, the individual sets off presumably for some kind of shelter at a place she dubs Mt. Despair, as she despairs he will reach it before the cold Lunar night begins. With nightfall on that part of the Moon she loses the ability to follow the drama, and so determines to use the Brewster millions to construct a means of getting to the Moon.

An electromagnetic gun type launcher is built up a mountainside near Brewster, AZ, and the great rocket is launched to the Moon. The landing is roughed up, as while the fall wasn't too bad, the lateral velocity rather did them in, as well as the big rock that stopped them. Everyone's unhurt, so they pile out, and immediately drop and pray to give thanks for their survival. As they rise, they discover the joys of Lunar gravity and begin to play. They make contact with Baklo, the object of Ms. Brewster's interest, and move everything they can into the cave. Baklo is most interested in the technology of the radio, and soon has it rewired so that he can communicate with more of his kind, though he is evidently human. More spheres come to retrieve them and return to the far side, though the Earthmen (and woman) soon find themselves as prisoners of what is clearly an advanced human civilization. One which regards them as little more than clever animals if they are from the Earth, and it's up to the clearly outclassed Earthlings to prove otherwise to the Lunar civilization. Which Ms. Brewster does, and thus proves herself worthy of the love of Baklo, who is actually effectively the crown prince of their society.

This was an interesting tale with a strong female lead, though the narrative does pass from participant to participant in the tale. The only real problem is the really poorly edited text, which was obviously scanned from a hard copy text (perhaps from the original publication?) and run through a low-level Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program to render text. Tlie for The is but one of many, many examples.

While I did enjoy the story much more than the rating merits, I can't give this one any higher than a half Moon.

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