The Moon is Hell

Hannes Bok cover to the 1951 Fantasy Press edition/isfdb.org

The Moon is Hell by John W. Campbell
Gateway/Orion, 2011
Originally published by Fantasy Press, 1951
Price I paid: $2.99

John W. Campbell was the man who made modern science fiction what it is today. As editor of Astounding Stories (later Analog), Campbell brought into the field such all-time greats as Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon and many others, while his own writing blazed new trails in science fiction reading pleasure. The Moon is Hell is this great writer-editor’s vision of the first men on the moon – written 18 years before Neil Armstrong made history. This is the story of the American space programme – not as it happened, but as it might have been.
From Goodreads

Continue reading →

Ecotopia

Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston by Ernest Callenbach
Heyday Books, 2014
Originally published by Banyan Tree Books, 1975
Price I paid: Property and wheel taxes

Twenty years have passed since Northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States to create a new nation, Ecotopia. Rumors abound of barbaric war games, tree worship, revolutionary politics, sexual extravagance. Now, this mysterious country admits its first American visitor: investigative reporter Will Weston, whose dispatches alternate between shock and admiration. But Ecotopia gradually unravels everything Weston knows to be true about government and human nature itself, forcing him to choose between two competing views of civilization.

Continue reading →