Book Review: THE LAST ASTRONAUT by David Wellington
Some books grab me by title alone. As someone whose life has been spent very emotionally involved with the fortunes of the United States’ space program, I felt positively yanked by David Wellington’s The Last Astronaut. An actual last astronaut is something that I fervently hope never actually exists except in the extremely long-term “heat death of the universe” sense. The idea has haunted me since at least my teenage years when I grappled with Bruce Sterling and William Gibson’s melancholy short story, “Red Star, Winter Orbit.” In this story, there are still people going into space, but only for commercial gain; the tasks are finite, clearly defined, not even suggested if they don’t enhance shareholder value. Whatever the members of such crews are, they are not astronauts. They are not exploring the sea of stars. It’s a sad and all too plausible vision of the future of the space program. The Last Astronaut has its own unique take on the future of human space travel. Just look at the cover!
Book Reviews: THE CALCULATING STARS and THE FATED SKY by Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series began in 2012 when Audible.com published her novelette “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” within RIP-OFF, an original audiobook anthology. The Hugo-winning story subsequently saw print. Since then, Kowal has revisited the universe of that novelette with additional short stories, including “The Phobos Experience” in an issue of last summer’s The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Additionally, she has also taken the story back to its “origins,” starting a series of Lady Astronaut novels with The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky. The third novel in this series, The Relentless Moon, is due from Tor Books in 2020, meaning that you have plenty of time to catch up if you haven’t yet experienced this series of positivity and hope. Combining alternate history with science fiction, the series tells a story both progressive and uplifting. At the core of the series lies the principle that if space is the future of humanity, then the process of humanity’s movement beyond the confines of Earth should involve all elements of that humanity. The stories are about the societal and technical challenges that face the characters involved in reaching that goal of colonizing alien worlds. Starting chronologically in 1952, Kowal takes elements of history and spins in an imagined catastrophe to set in motion an alternate timeline where the space program could be built differently, perhaps with more diversity. The establishment of that diverse representation proves as great of a challenge for humanity as do the physical threats against extra-planetary survival. The Lady Astronaut series depicts its characters overcoming these challenges, one step at a time.
5 Films to Complement Ian Sales’ Apollo Quartet
The movie list game with Ian Sales continues. I have been challenged to come up with five movies to complement his Apollo Quartet, as the concluding volume of that series, “All That Outer Space Allows,” hit stores in late April. The following list of 5 is my attempt to come up with a few good films that fit the bill. First, a few “rules”:
