Moon Shots

by Peter Crowther (Editor), Colin Greenland (Contributor), Ben Bova (Contributor)

In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon, a collection of original science fiction tales explores the moon once again, in tales by Brian Stableford, Alan Dean Foster, Robert Sheckley, Brian Aldiss, Gene Wolfe, and others. Original.

Genres: Anthologies, Science Fiction

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

About the author

Peter Crowther, born in 1949, is a journalist, anthologist, and the author of many short stories and novels. He is the co-founder of PS Publishing and the editor of Postscripts.

Reviews

[Ronn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was put together in honor of the 30th anniversary of the first moon landing, so they are going on 20 years old. That means nothing except for the fact that none of these stories are at all dated because of this. But as with any collection of short stories by different authors, this is a mixed bag. The quality of the writing is uniformly excellent, and yet only a couple of the stories were memorable a day after reading them. The fact that I remember vividly that night in 1969 is what prompted me to buy this book, but honestly, I wish there was more THERE there.

[Russell Fletcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not to detract in any way from the stories themselves but the best part of the book was the Introduction by Ben Bova. The book was (c)1999 and he wrote that "government's efforts in space would always be dictated by political considerations" and "private enterprise would be the driving engine that returns us to the Moon."

Ben Bova was right. Now we have (or have already had)the Google Lunar X PRIZE, the Ansari X PRIZE, the X PRIZE Cup, and the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X CHALLENGE.

There are stories from Brian Aldiss to Stephen Baxter, from Robert Sheckley to Gene Wolfe.

Samplings of stories are:
*finding the perfect asteroid for human use.
*working on virtual reality by the last man on the moon.
*the man who stole the moon.
*one story reminiscent of Jules Verne's story of going to the moon
*a dead post-apocalyptic Earth where people live on the moon and cannibalize people after their death.
*a wacky story that is a cross between an aging flower child of the '70's, the hokum of new age auras, and Douglas Fir seeds that were taken to the moon, brought back and now have special powers.
*16 stories in all.

The book is not hard to read (as in it is not difficult english). The only reason it took from July 4 to August 6, 2013 is because I accidentally left it at a movie theater thirty miles away from home and it took me a while to go back and get it.