Out of the Cradle

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"Doctor Who and the Cybermen" by Gerry Davis
Adapted from BBC: 'Doctor Who and the Moonbase'

Published 1975 by Target books, weighing in at 150 pages. Some spelling errors.

The Gallifreyan Timelord Doctor Who travels through time and relative dimensions in space in his TARDIS. On one such flight the TARDIS controls go berserk as a result of passing through a Gravitron beam and has to make a quick landing, but where? By golly on the Moon! (Much to the consternation of the 1750s-era Scots Highlander they recently adopted).

They see a Moonbase nearby and head towards it. They don't see the small flotilla of Cybermen ships on the other side of the crater rim. For those who didn't grow up with Doctor Who, the Cybermen are a race of beings who, in their search for immortality began replacing body parts with metal and plastic for greater longevity. Eventually they replaced even their brains and hearts, but at the expense of their emotions, becoming instead cold, calculating beings of reason and logic bent on empire.

The Earth holds resources, and the Cybermen are indifferent to the inferior biological beings which inhabit it. The Moonbase, in the year 2070, is equipped with a Gravitron beam used to control weather on Earth, sparing the lives of millions who would otherwise die in hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, flooding and so forth. It can also be used to prepare the planet for the harvesting of its resources.

The story follows the battle of wits between the crew of the Moonbase and the seemingly overwhelming Cyberman attack force. Biological warfare is employed, as well as mind-control, sonic weapons, unique uses for solvents and fire extinguishers, and lots of ingenuity.

It's a brisk read, with illustrations, making it youth friendly. It may help to have a little bit of background on Doctor Who to really appreciate the story. I'll give it a Half Moon.

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"Jason X: Death Moon" by Alex S. Johnson

Published 2005 by BL Publishing. I haven't finished the book, so can't comment on the editing, though early on there did seem to be the subsititution of 'metal' for 'mettle', but there can be some ambiguity in the reading.

Public Service Announcement: Don't waste your time.

This is a New Moon if I've ever read one. The target market is teenagers, and if it in any way reflects current cultural norms then I for one am scared.

Anyone who saw the movie Jason X (set onboard a spacecraft) gets the gist. Serial killer (and apparent folk hero) Jason Voorhees has survived into the 25th Century. He's been effectively cyborgized and hacks and slashes faster than the eyeball refresh rate. So lots of people die quickly and brutally. Cut to Earth II, where young teenagers are getting into all kinds of trouble. Apparently if a young person drinks beer or smokes pot Jason will kill them. This sets the stage for lots of further scenes of mayhem and death when the young ladies are sent to Moon Camp at Moon Base Americana.

The dialogue's terrible, the slang's horrible, the technology wonky, the plot nothing but a propping up of various elements for subsequent hacking down. The F-bomb is liberally sprinkled throughout, and there are depictions of teenage drinking, drug use, group sex, and so forth. Frankly, I was appalled by the amount of bad behavior depicted therein and likely won't be finishing it, working instead on a real Lunar horror story, 'Blood Moon'.

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"Blood Moon" by Sharman DiVono

Published in 1999 by DAW Books, weighing in at 441 pages. A few factual errors, like Apollo 7 being the fire that charred three astronauts. also in description of Aitken Basin being ringed by craters Komarov (24.7N, 152.5E), Grissom (47S, 147.4W), White (44.6S, 158.3W) and Chaffee (38.8S, 153.9W), and Peary (88.6N, 33E) and Byrd (85.3N, 9.8E) being just northwest of the base.

This is a spooky, scary horror book set on the Far Side of the Moon. Far Side base is set in the rim of the Aitken Basin and is meant as a scientific base for further study of that unique feature in the Solar system that is so close by, and a future telescope. Everything is going swimmingly in building things up until on the fifth mission the crew fails to re-establish contact with the Lunar-TDRS after a periodic LOS. The sixth crew (FS-6) is quickly hustled up to the base to find out what happened, because the last few videos received from the base did not look good. Something evil is afoot at Far Side, but what exactly is it?

This book speculates on what might be the nature of a Lunar terminator passage over a base, and its effects on people. It explores the ideas of the nature of life, the interplay of physical phenomenae like electricity and magnetism, how conciousness manifests itself on the quantum level, and that sort of thing. It definitely has a reason and science uber alles approach to how the protagonists respond to the horrors inflicted upon them. ("Food for the Moon")

As with any good mystery, there are numerous red herrings, the biggest being the ongoing allusions to the occult and satanism (oddly enough, when I logged in to post this review the thread had had 666 views. cue Twilight Zone music), and the book does use this device to explore some Christian religious concepts. The robot assistant MILTON bears an uncanny similarity to the robot in the movie 'Red Planet'.

One thing I did learn was 'Raging Martians Invade ROY G BIV Using X-Rays and Gamma Rays' as a mnemonic device for the wider electromagnetic spectrum.

The author does have some interesting insights, though at times the delivery seemed a bit stilted. I'd say this one is somewhere between a half- and three-quarter Moon.

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"In the Wrong Hands" by Edward Gibson

Published in 1992 by Bantam Spectra, weighing in at 362 pages. Only a couple of minor errors.

Joe is a maverick astronaut. In the future society of 2036 there is a race to conformity. Once the best way is found to make something that way is standardized around the world, so that training can be standardized, replacement parts, technicians, etc. There's no room for individuality, but Joe breaks all the rules and gets things done. Unfortunately, a slip of the tongue by one of Joe's associates leads to a string of deaths always aimed at Joe Rebello.

The first is at the fictional (not in my Clementine) Karov crater on the Lunar farside, where the PRECISE Corporation is hemming and hawing on completing the UN's base. Meanwhile, their own activities there continue apace. Dark activities that involve genetic engineering rooted in eugenics, with evil intent.

This is a pretty good thriller, with decent pacing, larger than life characters, and lots of good space and Moon action. It's written by an ex-Skylab astronaut, so he's definitely able to convey the space station action. The book is pretty blunt in its disparagement of a culture of conformity that excludes excellence and achievement. It does raise a few interesting questions about the nature and ends of genetic engineering, and the true rights of an individual in a global population.

I'll give this one a three-quarter Moon.

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Our bonus book tonight is "Darok 9" by H.J. Ralles. Top Publications, 2002. Targeted to the pre-/early teen crowd.

In the near future, Earth has been ravaged by ecological and military disaster. The few who survived have gone to our Moon, eking out an existince in domed towns called Daroks (Domed AtmospheRic Orbital Kommunities). Our plucky protagonist is a scientist researching ways to reduce the need for water by humans. Little does he know that treachery and betrayal lay all about him. An attack on the remote lab by the Fourth Quadrant sets him running from more than just falling masonry.

Some of the science is a little goofy in this one, but the double-crosses and double-double-crosses should be engaging for a young adult. 178 pages of relatively large type.

Okay, I cheated on this one. It was originally written about two years ago over on the Space Frontier Foundation's now defunct Space Arena Board (good archives, but lots of noise). It was quoted almost verbatim in a set of reviews of "Darok 9" published in the sequel "Darok 10", so I'm a bit proud of my first 'published' work.

Still, they're both good half-Moons.

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"Moon Shots", edited by Peter Crowther.

Published in 1999 by Daw Books, weighing in at 304 pages. Professionally edited with no noticeable errors.

This collection of 16 short stories was compiled sort of as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the first Apollo Moon landing. Reading through them again I get much more of a sense of melancholy underlying many of the tales.

'An Apollo Asteroids' visits the unusual results of an Earth-crossing asteroid's impact in Aristarchus. 'Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon' is an odd piece about carnival workers and advanced physics. 'Ashes and Tombstones' takes Space Services Inc. concept into the distant future. 'The Way to Norwich' is a diverting bit of fantasy. 'Steps Along the Way' is a historical trip 30,000 years in the future. 'The Moon Tree' notes the unique aura of the Moon, and the effect it can have on plants, lovers and politicians. "The Last Man on the Moon' visits a VR recreation with an interesting twist. 'Carry the Moon in my Pocket' is a cautionary tale of Lunar obsession.

'Moon Hunters' explores the idea of adding an additional Moon. 'The Little Bit that Counts' has a 'one piece at a time' gone horribly wrong get-rich-slowly scheme. 'People Came From Earth' explores the interesting idea of phytomining on the Moon in the wake of a nanotech attack. 'Visions of the Green Moon' is a fantasy of imagination checking out of Earth to go to the Moon in the wake of a sudden ice age. 'How We Lost the Moon' is about a black hole created on the Moon in the wake of a high-energy physics experiment. 'The Man Who Stole the Moon' concerns an ex-football player addicted to the women of questionable moral values who typically accompany such a profession who finds himself in the clutches of much slyer prey. 'Elegy' is a sad look at a future without hope. 'Breakfast on the Moon, with Georges' is a fantastical re-visitation of Melies famous 1903 movie.

It's certainly a diverse collection, and there were some I really liked, and a few I really didn't. I'll give it a half Moon.

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"Blood on the Moon" by Barney Cohen

Published in 1984 by Tor Books, weighing in at 254 pages. A few minor errors.

Asher 'Bock' Bockhorn is a corporate detective on the Moon, living in Crisium City (pop. 20,000) in the southwestern quadrant of Mare Crisium. The year is 2084, and one of Bock's company's employees just got waxed in the first mass murder on the Moon. Ten seemingly unconnected individuals wiped out in a heartbeat of explosive projectile gore. Lots of cops on the Moon are working on this case, and everyone wants to make the bust.

But Bock is on the case, and years of experience and a detective's intuition, coupled with the manic mind of his partner 'Fosky' Foskollio, so you know the bad guys are going to get caught, but there are many red herrings and seeming dead ends.

This one is a brisk pulp detective fiction set on the Moon. He's got a virgin .44 magnum that gets deflowered in the climactic scene. It's a pulp noir set a hundred years in the future (at the time it was written). One clue: Betamax. It's hard not to enjoy this one in this day and age of CSI and other TV detective dramas.

This one is somewhere around a waxing half Moon/waning three-quarters Moon.

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Woo Hoo! One thousand views! Thanks everyone!

"Luna Marine" by Ian Douglas
(Book Two of 'The Heritage Trilogy')

Published in 1999 by Avon Books, it weighs in at a hefty 402 pages. A few minor editorial and spelling errors.

Ooh-rah! Sir! When the future of humanity threatens to fall into the hands of UN ne'er-do-wells who are you going to call? Sir!

The United Stated Marine Corps, of course. Wiser for their experiences on Mars (in "Semper Mars", Book One of 'The Heritage Trilogy'), the USMC Space Assault Group is called into action to investigate recent UNdie activity at Fra Mauro base and Picard crater. Turns out that the alien remains found at Cydonia on Mars are only one piece of the puzzle that has thrown the world into a frenzy of 'Ancient Astronaut' hysteria and global war. The UNdies may have lost control of the Mars site to the good guys, but there are interesting treasures to be found closer to home.

Set in the near-future of 2040, this is a rousing and patriotic (to U.S. Americans) military techno-thriller. The pacing is quick, for the most part, and the battle scenes are well described. The basic premise is that the rise of civilizations in our galaxy is cyclical, and that the last round of self-consuming triumph happened more or less at the dawn of our pre-history. This provides for some interesting musings in cosmology and the Fermi Paradox. The technology is sufficiently near-future that it doesn't feel out of place.

I enjoyed this one, so I'll give it a waxing three-quarter Moon.

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"Honor Bound, Honor Born" by S.D. Howe

Published in 1996 by Lunatech, it weighs in at 206 pages plus a nice epilogue. A couple of minor errors, otherwise very well edited for an independent press book.

Hawk is a busy man. Alone on the Moon, he has more than enough work keeping him busy, from the microwave-sintering of certain areas around the base, to assembling a telescope array, to helping students with space projects. One of these projects is a sulfur-based rocket to take advantage of the excess sulfur separated from the regolith during the oxygen extraction process. His employer, Selena Corp., could only afford to send one person and supplies to the Moon, and that's on foreign launchers, so Hawk has his hands full.

Since it's a non-NASA mission to the Moon, the U.S. government is understandably less than happy, especially when the company starts soliciting bids for the Old Glory at Tranquility Base. This makes relieving Hawk with a new crew somewhat difficult. The company must maintain a presence to enforce its claims, but as the weeks stretch Hawk finds himself increasingly weary. That is, until he goes out hunting for that student rocket and stumbles across something wonderful, then something else even more so.

This book is grim, reminding me a good bit of "The Moon is Hell" by John Campbell, in the sense that it dwells on the drudgery of the work, and the increasing hopelessness of Hawk's situation. For lack of a better word I'll call it Reallunatik (after Realpolitik [Realmond?]), in that the story doesn't mess around with a lot of silly frillery, but has a basic message and sticks with it: "Going to the Moon is important to the future of humanity and we must never retreat again". If you aren't touched by the ending then you have a cold heart indeed, as even -my- eyes teared up, something that hasn't happened since "Magnificent Desolation"

The book covers a lot of the technological and scientific theory that is still current today ten years after the book was written. While "Moonwake" weaves much of that into the story, "Honor Bound..." touches on it and fleshes out the references in the epilogue.

I'm starting to find it very intriguing how many of the more interesting Moon colonization stories are done through independent presses, such as this one, Moonwake, Project Avalon, Moongate, Mines of Luna, and others.

I'll rate this one a three-quarter Moon.

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"Shoot at the Moon" by William F. temple

Published in 1966 by Simon & Schuster, it weighs in at 192 pages. Only one or two minor spelling errors.

Captain Franz Brunel is one of the few pilots capable of flying the Harwell Atomic Propulsion Unit (HAPU), a new kind of rocket motor that will take humanity to the Moon and the Solar system, and one that threatens to make make pilots and engineers obsolete (the operating instructions are basically push this button to start, push that button to stop). The test run is commanded by Colonel Marley, an eccentric and well-connected British Army officer with a rather Heinleinian-headstrong daughter, Lou (after a line in 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew', a Klondike frontier adventure poem). The crew is an odd bunch, and what starts out as a rather unlikely group of folks headed to the Moon becomes fraught with danger and death. First the cat, then the Colonel, then the medic. Brunel is left with a schizophrenic and traumatized woman and a lethargic, introverted yet brilliant scientist as the suspects in some rather bizarre murders. But what they've stumbled onto in one of Tycho's rays proves far more important than any of that.

Mr. Temple was apparently a roommate of Arthur C. Clarke back in the charter days of the British Interplanetary Society, whose Journal is affectionately referred to as JBIS and is well-regarded in established space circles worldwide. He creates the kind of eccentric characters that only the strange British mind can fully realize. And while the eccentricities are just as prevalent on this side of the pond, they seem to be less recognized, perhaps because we're not all stuffed in one on top of another. I'm not sure the characterizations would be as well received by readers here in the U.S., and the story development does seem rather, well, British. Almost like an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

It was okay. I'll give it a waning half Moon.

***Spoiler Alert-
It does kind of spoil the mystery of the plot a bit, but the discovery in Tycho is of a proto-life form left from a metal asteroid impact. In what today is a shocking and appalling development, the book proposes the harnessing (or harvesting) of these lifeforms for inter-planetary travel. Apparently they tap into the electromagnetic fields of space, but are rendered inert by direct sunlight (photon activity?). They are wafer-thin and diamond-shaped, and are therefore stackable, creating the potential for something akin to a compact solar sail. The climactic attack is a kamikaze impact by such a stacked form, which wreaks havoc on the guidance system and requires the intervention of the human pilot, who has input the computer doesn't and can therefore understand what needs to be done to fix the problem. It's a solution that a computer never would have been able to arrive at given its programming, and this kind of 'greater' situational awareness and understanding is why humans must be involved in going beyond. That's fundamentally the message of the book.
***End Spoiler

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"Rebel Moon" by Bruce Bethke & Vox Day

Published in 1996 by Pocket Books, weighing in at 282 pages. A few grammar and spelling errors.

Dalton is a carefree young man living on the Moon. He's good at computer systems, and wiles away his free hours in immersive role playing games (as with 'Growing Up Weightless'). Fate has a different role for Dalton 'Icehawk', one involving the future of the free peoples of the Moon.

This book serves as a kind of back story for the computer game 'Rebel Moon Rising'. Once again, the UN are the bad guys. The Moon provides much needed food resources for an overstrained Earth, but the Lunars are 'exploited' to that end, and as with any frontier settlement it begins to chafe at the bonds of Earth. Power factions within the UN strive to control the outcome, but the Lunar Defense Forces have their own agenda, and strange new technologies to achieve their ends. Unfortunately, that involves your usual 'advanced aliens' contact that turns the plot in favor of the good guys.

The story pays its respects to past Lunar stories, with a heavy nod to 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' in the form of General Consensus, and off-hand references to things like THX 1138. It's a fair tale of militaristic adventure on the Moon, but not as well developed as 'Luna Marine'.

This one gets a waxing half Moon.

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"Gambler's Star Book One: The Six Families" by Nancy Holder

Published in 1998 by Avon Science Fiction, weighing in at 338 pages. About average number of errors, including some odd sentences.

In 2142, Arturo 'Deuce McNamara' Borgioli is an inter-casino liaison for the Borgioli family, one of six that were granted license to operate gambling facilities on the Moon in the wake of fundamentalist takeover on Earth (itself the result of a wrestling match gone horribly wrong and the use of a Quantum Instabiliity Effect device inside a Feynman Shield). While those on Earth toil to restore the planet, they vacation on the Moon, where every vice immaginable is available (for a price), and who better to run such a set-up than the Mob?

Then, one day, the Ditwac (the Die that was cast) shows a five instead of a six. Clearly the message is one of the families is going to go down, but who? And how could the ultra-secure Ditwac even be manipulated? And why would self-made multi-billionaire Hunter Castle show up on the Moon at just this particular moment in time? Thus is the die cast for a fast-paced yarn of underworld snitches, sparkling showgirls, family honor, gambling, honor killings, not-so-honor killings, hovercar chases through utility tunnels, and a myth of the one who will liberate the suffering underclasses (or Non-Affiliateds, N.A.s, who are not associated with any Family).

The first of a trilogy, this story can stand on its own with a climax, denouement, and resolution of the bulk of the plot elements. There's a few twists at the end. The rendering of one character's French accent was unpleasant, though bearable (wait till I get to 'Apollo 21'). The pacing is brisk, the technology sufficiently near-future, and the characters fairly well fleshed out.

I'll give this one a waxing half-Moon.

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"Millenium" by Ben Bova.

Published in 1976 by Ballantine Books, it weighs in at 294 pages. A fair amount of errors spread throughout. Probably rushed to press.

Back before Ben Bova wrote Moonrise and Moonwar he had a series of Moon-related stories regarding one Chester Arthur (Chet) Kinsman, a Colonel in the U.S. military and highest ranking American officer at Moonbase. The American facilities coincidently finds itself right next door to Lunagrad, the Russian facility, in the Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) near the crater Alphonsus (13.7S, 3.2W). The Russian commander is Colonel Leonov, a longtime professional friend of Kinsman's.

Everything works hunky-dory at Moonbase because there people can be free to achieve what's best in themselves, in science, engineering, medicine, what have you. Kinsman is such a wise and benevolent ruler that the entire staff sacrifices several kilos apiece to have a baby grand piano shipped up to the Moon base for his birthday. It is the last month of 1999.

Things aren't so copacetic on Earth. The U.S. and Russia each work to complete a space-based ABM network to neutralize the other's nuclear arsenal (remember, this is being written in 1977, a not very warm time in international relations, though with a glimmer of hope in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project), while sabotaging the efforts of their opponents. It's an economic strain that has both nations teetering on the edge of collapse. The militaries of both sides rest on a hair trigger, and the U.S. starts getting concerned about the goody-goody hippie Moon base being taken over by the Russians (They're even smoking pot up there!). Send in Franklin Colt, an All-American military guy with a racial-persecution complex. When the chips are down, he's expected to ensure that Kinsman doesn't do anything treasonous.

What Kinsman has planned is beyond treason. He wants peace on Earth, and will go to any length to make it happen. The plot he hatches is simple, yet the false eve of the millenium (just like we actually celebrated) finds humanity balanced on a knife's edge.

There are parts of the book that are definitely pulse-quickening, and the plot is interesting to reflect on in the aftermath of the first Cold War. Kinsman is a figure in a number of early Bova space stories, including one in which he commits the first killing in space, of a woman cosmonaut (which scars him for life and is the seed of his preserve-all-life philosophy). There's a lot of back-story in this one that's only touched upon, but has a much broader influence on the narrative. It really made me want to work on a Moon base, though.

I'll give this one a three-quarter Moon.

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"Farside Cannon" by Roger MacBride Allen

Published in 1988 by Baen Books, it weighs in at 406 pages.Not too many errors.

Garrison Morrow is a geologist on an expedition in Hrisey, Iceland. He's exploring a theory he has about the formation of Iceland in regards to the KT impactor some 65 million years ago (influenced by the real work of the Alvareses, pere et fils, in the late 80s). His theory is that the impactor buried itself north of Iceland, and he soon finds the proof he needs. Others, however, have their own agendas, and seek to sabotage the expedition and discredit his work.

It all seems to tie back somehow to an asteroid, Cornucopia, and the efforts of LuTech (Lucifer Technologies) to park the asteroid in LEO for mining purposes. It's clearly a dangerous situation for an object kilometers across to be parked so close to the Earth, and schemes are launched to stop that from happening. These intersect with schemes for Solar system domination of the Settler colonies that have begun to spring up around the Solar system, providing raw materials and other goods to an overburdened Earth. The UN is once again the bad guy, this time in the form of the UN Lunar Administration Council (UNLAC) and their pathetically incompetent governor Neruda.

Garrison ends up discredited and banished to the far side of the Moon to the astronomical base at Daedelus crater (5.9S, 179.4E). There, he takes advantage of the decision to construct a laser-relay station to increase the final number of lasers emplaced just a bit to create an array capable (hopefully) of dealing with the asteroid. Little does he know the crisis that having such a weapon potentially available to the forces from Earth will have on Settler/Terran trade and diplomatic relations. The test of the array sets off riots, and a military response that further gums up the whole situation.

The book explores a number of interesting concepts, especially regarding big rocks from space and their negative effects on Earth. The idea of a large array laser array where each element is manufactured as a fully self-contained unit, over and over again thousands of times, is compelling in some ways as a defense mechanism. There's some icky vacuum deaths, some nukes fired at the Moon, betrayal and deceit, the bumbling Lunar governor, and a new Lunar republic mid-wifed by the governor's ultra-capable assistant.

I'll give this one a half Moon.

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In honor of the over 2100 views so far, next up is:

"Apollo 21" by Frank Hogan

Full disclosure: The author is a fellow International Space University alumnus and sent me an autographed copy for review.

Published in 2006/2007 by Lulu, it weighs in at 197 pages of story, plus some addenda that flesh out the alternate setting invoked in the book.

In the earliest days of the space program a seed is sown that will unravel the last mission to the Moon in a horror of loss unlike any experienced before in the space program. In between are harrowing Moon missions that test the limits of human capability and courage. There's a plucky and intrepid journalist on the scent of a story that could shake NASA to its core. There's betrayal, cover-ups, conspiracy, and bad behavior at NASA (oh, like that ever happens...).

This is an interesting murder/conspiracy mystery set in an alternative Apollo program universe that flew through 21. The author has gone to great lengths to lay out the alternate history to help flesh out the characters, and has certainly done some homework on Apollo procedures. The story is laid out in a timeline pattern to help keep track of the action overlapping on the Moon and on Earth. The murders are deviously planned, though often come at great shock, and are rather wrenching in the context of the story. I thought the rendering of the German accent of one of the characters was a bit much (seemed a bit more like Dutch to me), but that's just me.

I'll give this one a waning half Moon.

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From the author:

Many thanks for your review of my book APOLLO 21!

I read it only minutes ago, and having written every word myself in the book I am very pleased with the review.

personal correspondance of May 7, 2006

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