A Fire on the Moon

by Norman Mailer

So America and the world would be in a round of congratulations – we had landed a man on the moon. The event was so removed, however, so unreal, that no objective correlative existed to prove it had not conceivably been an event staged in a television studio – the greatest con of the century – and indeed a good mind, product of the iniquities, treacheries, gold, passion, invention, deception, and rich worldly stink of the Renaissance could hardly deny that the event if bogus was as great a creation in mass hoodwinking, deception, and legerdemain as the true ascent was in discipline and technology. Indeed, conceive of the genius of such a conspiracy. It would take criminals and confidence men mightier, more trustworthy and more resourceful than anything in this century or the ones before. Merely to conceive of such men was the surest way to know the event was not staged.