Featured New Release of the Week: The Last Astronaut by David Wellington

This week, we’re looking at another solar system space survival story in the vein of Andy Weir’s The Martian or Lisa A. Nichols’ Vessel. This week, we’re looking at The Last Astronaut by David Wellington.

Story wise, this book takes the idea of “What if Oumuamua wasn’t just a mysterious space rock?” and spins a story from that premise. It is a story neither NASA nor SpaceX will be overly happy with, though the fictional version of SpaceX – in the book, a company named so similarly that I’m almost positive lawyers were involved to make it just different enough – bears the brunt of the book’s criticisms of both agencies. But overall, it is a story that works as both a pyschological horror movie and a creature feature, and Wellington’s ability to combine both of those generally disparate stylings is to be commended.

Structurally, the book bends toward its similarities with The Martian early on during the setup stages of the tale as it uses space jargon pretty heavily. Later it bends to more of its similarities with Vessel and the jargon drops off considerably. The book’s chapters aren’t numbered but instead are named for various events, and just looking at the table of contents gives the reader a rough idea of the arc of the story – though I can assure you, it doesn’t actually give away any of the meat of the story and indeed just the slightest hint of the bones. It uses a mockumentary style blending of both documentary and storytelling similar to the 2005 movie Supervolcano very well and… well, to say more about that would be to drift into spoiler territory.

Overall a solid book, very much recommended, and I’m looking forward to more from Mr. Wellington.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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#BookReview: Mission to Mars by Buzz Aldrin

Legendary Man, Solid Vision. Often lost in the fact that Buzz Aldrin was on the first team to land on the moon and the second man to step foot on the moon is the fact that he actually had a PhD – from MIT no less – before that legendary accomplishment. Here, this former fighter pilot and lifelong engineer lays out a comprehensive vision to make humanity a dual planet species forevermore. Reading it several years after publication and just weeks before the 50th anniversary of his walk on the moon – an anniversary Aldrin repeatedly says would be a prime day for a definitive “We Choose To Go To The Moon” speech regarding Mars – it is interesting to see how this vision has been followed (or more accurately, not) over the last several years and how fiction (specifically, The Martian by Andy Weir) has actually hewed closer to Aldrin’s vision than NASA or the various real-world space agencies and corporations have. Very highly recommended.

This review of Mission to Mars by Buzz Aldrin was originally published on May 28, 2019.

Featured New Release Of The Week: Vessel by Lisa A Nichols

This week, we’re looking at a lone-survivor-in-space book from a debut author that could give still-new author Andy Weir’s The Martian a run for its money. This week, we’re looking at Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols.

This story is basically a combination of a psychological thriller ala say Dete Meserve’s The Space Between with a lone-survivor-of-space-disaster science fiction ala the aforementioned The Martian by Andy Weir, with a sense of a dash of Interstellar thrown in – all without going into really any techno-speak beyond the bare minimum necessary for such a story. Thus, it is very approachable for anyone from any background, and indeed it works very well as a very real introduction to how NASA tends to operate in real life, for better and for worse.

That’s right. This particular reader has somewhat followed NASA for most of his life, including reading several memoirs and biographies of different personnel over the last year in particular, and this story really gets what working at Johnson Space Center as an Astronaut is really like, almost as though Nichols has read the same memoirs and biographies I have. Thus, there is just enough realism to this admittedly science fiction tale to add that extra degree of gravitas to the entire story, and in the end that makes a big difference.

If you enjoyed The Martian or Interstellar, you really should give this book a try. It really is a solid effort in those lines. Even if you didn’t particularly enjoy those efforts, give this one a shot – particularly if it was their more technical elements you didn’t enjoy as much. Simply a truly stunning book that you really need to drop everything else and read.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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