BAN #371: The Apollo Murders, Killers of the Cosmos

1 November 2021   Issue #371

November 01, 2021

[The planetary nebula M 2-9, winds from a dying star. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Legacy Archive / Judy Schmidt]

Book ’em

Sometimes I read books

Oh, you’ve heard of Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield. His cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” has 50 million views on YouTube, for example. In 2013 he unveiled the new Canadian $5 note that had a drawing of the robotic Canadarm2 on it which he helped install on the International Space Station; the astronaut drawn next to it on the note is IMO widely and informally accepted to be him (though the Canadian bank is careful to say it represents all Canadians). He’s charming and personable, and has over two million followers on Twitter*.

Another way you should get to know him is by reading his new novel, The Apollo Murders. To cut to the chase: It’s really good, a brisk and fun read, and you should get a copy (affiliate link).

[The Apollo Murders cover, by Commander Chris Hadfield]

It’s a Cold War thriller, a (slightly) alternate-history mystery that takes place in the early 1970s as America prepares to launch Apollo 18 (as you may note, in our timeline the Apollo missions after 17 were cancelled), in response to Soviet activities on the Moon. A training mishap causes last minute crew issues, and the resulting chain of events leads to a mission that was not at all according to plans — including sabotage, murder, and an uneasy cooperation, kinda, between the two superpowers.

I won’t spoil any of the plot for you, because it’s a fun ride. I enjoyed the characters and their stories, and clearly Chris has great insight into how the space race worked. I’m an old Apollo buff — I watched the Apollo 15 Saturn V liftoff when I was a kid when my family took a special trip to Florida for the occasion, and getting involved with debunking brain-dead Apollo Moon Hoax theories renewed my love for the missions — and the level of detail was just enough to make me smile with geekiness but not so much that a non-space-nerd would get lost.

Let me put it this way: Under normal circumstances I don’t read books nearly as much as I used to because I write all day myself and I’m usually wiped by dinner time, and at the moment I’m also laboring under multiple imminent and serious deadlines, and I still couldn’t wait to get to pick the book up again to continue reading where I left off the night before.

And why not, here’s him floating around in orbit covering some David Bowie:

* Full disclosure: I’ve met Chris a couple of times, and we follow each other on Twitter. I quite like him. He really is as nice as he appears to be. I don’t know if this biases me about his book, but everything I wrote above is true to the best of my objective ability. I’m always very careful to only recommend things I really like myself!

[Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and me at San Diego Comic Con in 2015, posing with some fan whose name I didn’t get. Credit: Phil Plait]

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[Art depicting a black hole roaming the Milky Way. From Tuesday’s article. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; background, ESA/Gaia/DPAC]

Upcoming Appearances/Shameless Self-Promotion

Where I’ll be doing things you can watch and listen to or read about

This six-episode show is a lightly fictionalized science documentary about the various dangers the Earth faces from space, including asteroid impacts, black holes, aliens, and so on. The usual scary and fun suspects.

[Goodbye, Denver. The back of my bald head will miss you. Credit: Science Channel.]

The show is… different. It’s done like a 1940s film-noir detective movie with Aidan Gillen from “Game of Thrones” (and this staggering achievement in space mission promotion called “Ambition”, and yes, please watch that!) as the gumshoe, mixed with comic book styling and interviews with scientists. The look and feel of it are nothing at all like previous shows in this field, and I kinda dig it.

Of course <cough cough> I’m in it so it’s possible I’m biased. We recorded my parts in and around Boulder and Denver, Colorado in summer 2020, which was interesting — we had to adhere to COVID-19 protocols, which was the second show I’d done that summer that way (we had just wrapped on Series 9 of “How the Universe Works” a few weeks before this, but that was all indoors in a studio, so once protocols were set it was easy enough to record). Being outside, inside, on trails, sidewalks, and more made it a little more difficult but it was still fun and interesting to do.

This one involved a lot of me walking or standing and looking around, and it always feels weird and unnatural to me to do that. I’m not a great actor. I do better talking into camera (or looking just off to the side, documentary style) or doing off-the-cuff commentary while moving around. In one part I have to walk down a sidewalk in Denver absent-mindedly tossing an apple up and catching it in one hand, and I had to walk much more slowly than my normal pace, so to me it looks like I’m just a huge dork. That’s accurate, certainly, but I’d rather come across as a suave star of TV and silver screen. I suspect I need to curtail my aspirations.

[Goodbye, Denver 2: I seem pretty calm despite a black hole destroying the city behind me… though it does look like I’m saying a dirty word. Credit: Science Channel]

Anyway the show is cool and fun to watch. It premiered in September but is still airing on the Science Channel and discovery+. Set your DVR and you can catch up.

As an added funness, a few days ago I started getting notifications on Twitter about being on Gogglebox, a very popular UK show where they record people watching various TV shows and getting their reactions. I’ve seen clips from it and it’s surprisingly funny and engaging… and in the episode that aired on October 22 one segment is about folks watching “Killers of the Cosmos”, specifically me talking about a close encounter with a black hole! I’ve seen clips of it on various media-hosting websites and I was much amused.

I was pleased to see that they included the part where I’m talking on how unlikely such a black hole encounter is. A lot of folks do get pretty anxious about these things so I try to be very careful about relating the actual chances of them occurring.

And I have to laugh, given that my friend Brian Cox is a household name in England. Sorry to step on your territory, Brian!

Et alia

You can email me at [email protected] (though replies can take a while), and all my social media outlets are gathered together at about.me. Also, if you don’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter! And feel free to tell a friend or nine, too. Thanks!

Reply

or to participate.