The 1987 book Welcome to Moonbase describes the "history" of colonizing the moon. The manual explains "lunar manufacturing," "job guidelines," and "lunar tourism," among other things. Stay tuned as we explore this fascinating book from the paleo-future.
See also:
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Sport in Space Colonies (1977)
Space Colonies by Don Davis
More Space Colony Art (1970s)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
Challenge of Outer Space (circa 1950s)
4 comments:
Glad you finally received your copy. I like to review this book every so often and pine for the future that never was.
That spiral staircase-shaped apartment block on the cover is brilliant.
I was pretty disappointed by this book, actually. I read it mainly because of the mention on the site here, and found that it was full of *extremely* dated science (even for 1987, much of the info was terribly obsolete), a hokey and unbelievable "Future History" that explains how the station came to be, and tons and tons of glaring omissions (such as any real information about the Soviet Base on the far side of the moon, or any serious discussion of the long-term effects of low gravity on health, child development, etc.).
Add to this the large typeface, amazingly broad margins, heavy use of sub-par illustrations, ridiculously long glosary and, well, the whole thing smacked of padding.
I liked the format of the book - that it's a guide you're given upon your arrival at the moonbase - but didn't feel Bova made much use of it, and really in the end it felt like I was reading the notes for an abandoned novel rather than a legitimate attempt at scientific prognostication.
Sincerely,
Inigo Montoya
Seeing as Ben Bova wrote this book, it probably was an early sketch of a novel about a lunar colony.
One redeeming feature was a future note to colony employees warning them not to use lunar buggies for "jaunts" out on the lunar regolith.
If only Neil and Buzz had known....
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