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Moondust
Sat Nov 7 19:18:17 GMT 2009
Part historical documentary, and part personal search for the greater meaning behind the Apollo space program, Andrew Smith's Moondust is a curious and fascinating beast.
In between moon-landing trivia, nostalgia for a childhood spent in the wake of the Space Race, and the genuinely gripping descriptions of the various touchdowns on Luna's surface, Smith covers a lot of ground; and yet the core of this book seems to be something else entirely. Piece by piece, another agenda emerges from the text, morphing Moondust from a well-written documentary into a broadly philosophical treatise on what humankind's first forays into space mean to us all.
It is perhaps these philosophical musings that are the most striking and important part of the book. For all that our culture has readily absorbed the Apollo landings into our movies, television screens and printed pages, the wider question of "why bother?" hasn't really been satisfactorily addressed. Moondust's exploration of this question, and the somewhat unexpected conclusion it comes to, is ultimately fascinating reading.
This said, even if philosophy isn't your bag, Moondust is still a worthwhile read, capturing not only the excitement and inspiration that Apollo engendered, but also some candid interviews with many of the fascinating individuals involved in making the programme happen. If you've any interest in the history of space exploration, or even of a formative event in popular culture, you should find something to engage with.
And so to my conclusion: at first glance, Moondust is a fine retrospective look at a unique undertaking whose repercussions still ring clear some half a century later. Yet it is also much more than that: its' core of philosophical questing lends it a whole other dimension of interest and profundity. Either one alone would be a worthwhile read, the artful combination of the two makes for a most engaging and pleasurable book.