By Rocket to the Moon

by Otto Willi Gail, Robert Godwin (Foreword), Ron Miller (Illustrator)

First published in English in 1931, this novel for young adults is an accurate mirror of many of the space travel concepts that have been discussed by pre-war European experts. The author’s imaginative theories about the history of the Earth—many of which presage those of Velikovksy and von Daniken—are explored, and the original illustrations are included as well as an afterword about the author and his sources.

Genres: Science Fiction

216 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

From Wikipedia:

Otto Willi Gail (18 July 1896 – 29 March 1956) was a German science journalist and author.

Gail was born in Gunzenhausen, Mittelfranken. He studied electrical engineering and physics at the Technical University Munich. He worked for newspapers and radio broadcasting and wrote non-fiction books about physics, astronomy and space travel. He also wrote science fiction novels to delight the youth for these themes. He had good relations to the German space pioneers Max Valier and Hermann Oberth. As a result of these relationships he acquired special knowledge that influenced his books and gave them much details. His novels were translated into American English and influenced early American utopian literature. He died in Munich.

R. D. Mullen noted that Der Schuß ins All is "justly famous for the realistic detail with which it depicts the construction of a rocket ship, its launching into space, and the experiences of its crew."

Reviews

[Janne Wass]

Sceptical American reporter Tommy Bighead is invited by excentric German playboy scientist and aviator Hans Hardt to cover the construction of the world's first moon rocket. After trial, error and sabotage, the rocket finally takes off, with Bighead as a stowaway. The book describes in detail the space flight and moon landing. On the moon, the team must use their ingenuity to produce enough fuel and oxygen to make the trip back home.

Otto Willi Gail was one of the most popular juvenile SF authors in Germany before WWII. By trade he was a phycisist and science writer, and good friends with rocket scientist Hermann Oberth. His detailed knowledge of physics, electrical engineering and rocket science lend his stories with a scientific accuracy and credibility quite rare in pre-war juvenile SF. His books were widely translated and popular both in Europe and the US, where later critics have compared them with some of the early work of Robert Heinlein. "Rocket to the Moon" certainly has many similarities with Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo". Gail's characters are broadly drawn and somewhat burlesque, which gives "Rocket to the Moon" an enjoyable quality. And despite his scientific background, Gail avoids overpowering the reader with technical detail à la Jules Verne. The focus is always on the story, rather than the science.

Noted juvenile author Tauno Karilas' abbreviated Finnish translation for the Nuorten toivekirjasto is very good, following Gail's burlesque style, and the original illustrations by futuristic illustrators and twins Hans and Botho von Römer are exceptionally nice.

A very good juvenile hard SF!

[Chris Duval]

This book has not stood the test of time. Had it confined itself to rocketry, it would have been okay. It had escape velocity figures, the concept of liquid fuel rockets, and the soft landing of a capsule in the ocean. Unfortunately the author believed in Welteislehre, a 1913 pseudoscience that combined false cosmology with the Judeo-Christian flood myth and the classical Greek Atlantis myth. The book's mix of what could have resembled a Heinlein juvenile full of engineering with Van Däniken-like garbage puts off the modern reader. [Note: this book was published in 1931; no taint should attach to it from the subsequent promotion of Welteislehre.]

A sign of those times: In the 28th chapter is some anti-UK propaganda, nominally referring to Atlantis: "...and there arose a kingdom on which the sun never set....The world was oppressed by the plundering island people."

Regarding the edition, there are many typos throughout. I particularly noticed them in fourth chapter (license number inconsistencies, 'eigth'). On the plus side, the appendix covers the rocketry and pseudoscience familiar to the author.