Other Space Ages

The 40^th Anniversary of the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with the death of Arthur C. Clarke, brings to mind how the Space Age might have been, as opposed to what it has been. I was particularly pleased to come upon a story along those lines entitled Recovering Apollo 8.

Recovering Apollo 8 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a Hugo Award nominee for this year. It's premise is that the mission of Apollo 8, which took place in December, 1968, ends in disaster when the lunar orbit injection burn goes wrong, sending the ship and crew out into deep space with no hope of rescue. The last message of the crew is a plea that their deaths not be in vain, that the landing expedition should follow, along with lunar bases and voyages of discovery to other planets.

The plea is answered and both government funded and eventually privately funded space expeditions are sent forth. The tragedy also begins a lifelong obsession for the main character, a boy in 1968, to find the Apollo 8 and her crew and bring them home. It is a heart lifting, bitter sweet story that will haunt the reader long after it is finished.

Recovering Apollo 8 is not the only vision of another space age. British Writer Stephen Baxter wrote a novel, Voyage, which has as its premise that the United States, instead of building a space shuttle in the 1970s, embarks on sending an expedition to Mars. It too is a bitter sweet story, as even though the Mars expedition happens, it may well be the last hurrah of Baxter's alternate space age.

The Tranquility Alternative by Alan Steele also takes up the theme of a space age running out of gas due to the exhaustion of political support. In Steele's scenario, the age of rockets started with a race in World War II, followed by an immediate post war space program. The technology developed looks very much like what was depicted in the early 50s Colliers Magazine, with wheeled space stations and winged space ships. But by 1995 it might all be coming to an end.

I should be remise if I do not mention my own effort at looking at another space age. In Children of Apollo, President Richard Nixon finds a geopolitical reason for extending the Apollo program. The decision leads to lunar bases, large space stations, Mars voyages, and-interestingly enough-the early commercialization of space travel.

Author S. M. Stirling has recently come out with a pair of novels set in a universe in which Venus and Mars are habitable. The Sky People depicts an adventure on a Venus with jungles filled with dinosaurs and primitive humanoids. In the Courts of the Crimson Kings is set on a Mars with canals, seas, and an ancient civilization.

Some stories focus on space missions that never flew. Ice by Shane Johnson depicts the voyage of Apollo 19 to the lunar south pole. The novel is filled with Christian mysticism, but depicts space travel-up to a point-in a stark, realistic way.

Finally one of the weirdest other space ages is described in Operation Luna by Poul Anderson. Operation Lunar is set in a world where magic works and has substituted technology. The story, of course, is of a strange expedition to the Moon using spells and magical artifacts.