Story: Amid the tumultuous events of 1968, NASA mission planners watch a suspicious string of Soviet steps toward what may be a lunar mission, and begin preparing an ambitious swap of mission objectives. Instead of waiting until the lunar excursion module has been tested in Earth orbit, NASA will send its second manned Apollo mission to the moon using only the command/service module. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders are profiled from their childhood through their spaceflight careers, and followed closely throughout the mission in transcripts and the astronauts’ own remembrances.
Review: It’s not that the story of Apollo 8 has never been told; all three astronauts have published their own memoirs of their NASA careers, and Andrew Chiakin’s A Man On The Moon did an excellent job of putting it all together. But sometimes it’s hard to appreciate just how many risks NASA took with Apollo 8. If an accident along the lines of Lovell’s later experience aboard Apollo 13 had occurred, the Apollo 8 crew would have been doomed with no lunar module lifeboat to fall back on. The fears of NASA officials, and especially of the astronauts’ wives, are brought to the fore.
The biggest challenge in reading “Genesis” is that author Robert Zimmerman chose a rather unique structure, juxtaposing events both contemporary to the book’s 1968 context, and events which were already history by then. Sometimes Zimmerman takes his sweet time to pay off why he brings up certain events, but at least he does eventually complete his conceptual bookends.
A rewarding, if sometimes structurally unusual, take on the story of the first human visit to another world.
Year: 1998
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Publisher: Dell
Pages: 350 pages