Who were the men who fell to earth? you might well ask. Well, Andrew Smith has the answers to that question. Lots and lots of answers, to questions from the foreground of the brain and questions best motivated by the most human of curiousites, that fear of the unknown, driven by the urge to jump and see. And by heaven for a few years we jumped and saw. Here is the account by an author in search of nine astronauts who along the way details the history of the Space Race and beyond, to paraphrase Buzz. Buzz Lightyear that is, not Buzz Aldrin.
Whata question these men must have had to ask themselves.; What do you do once you return from walking on the moon? When you have stood on the surface of our nearest cosmic neighbour, trampled in the printless soil, possibly even blotted out the Earth with no more than a raised thickly gloved thumb? That tiny spot in space we occupy where everything that has ever happened, everything that is happening and everything that will ever happen is just a thumbs width from vanishing. Talk about seeing things from a certain perspective. Is one ever able to unsee? Would one even want to?
Moondust; In Search Of The Men Who Fell To Earth is a truly fantastic mix of history, reporting and personal memoir. In this multi-media age, people descriptions are reduced to user friendly sound-bites, everything must be easily explained, lazily described. In doing so the modern era can diminish the worth of heroism, not so much standing on the shoulders of giants, more like going through their personal mail to find out what they are really like. Not so with Andrew Smith. As the title suggests he is on a journey, a pilgrimage into the heart of Americanna, an age of marvels. And he does so with dignity and great insight. Along the way he registers many cultural bullet points or rather the points of cultural impacts. impacts shaped in the wake of a group of individuals who were, undoubtebly, lucky enough to reach the zenith of a professionalism that allowed each in their own way to literally blaze a trail to the stars. From all points of America , the children of the men and women who built America became pioneers at the very start of the next big trek, the trek to the stars ( Ugh, I know. I could not resist it.) Every piece of the hugely complex jigsaw of NASA's history is in place and the picture and the picture revealed is a staggering behometh of ingenuity and scientific hubris. A swaggering new kid on the block with Babel-like potential. It is the culmination of a thousand ambitions and dreams of traveling to space, to the moon, doing what you gotta do and returning safely home. Not quite mad, all truly glad and dangerous to know, the first and last of a dying breed. And for a brief moment in our shared history it truly felt as though mankind were singing from the same aspirational hymn sheet, a prayer to the ages, Wonderful.
This book is not just a book about the men who traveled to The Moon and back. It is also a book about what sort of man does that, who they were before and who they became afterwards. if it can be believed that any of us can really change who we are. Well, it tries to. Andrew Smith freely admits some of the personalities involved defy introspection, pre or post lunar dander. Stoicism is a word that rarely springs to mind in the modern era but this group of individuals are as steadfast as it is possible to imagine, as if such mental discipline can be programmed, which I suppose it must. To panic in any situation outside the bubble of the blue world is to invite disaster.
A fantastic read. A fantastic book.
Sprinkle a little Moondust on your book shelf.
