Doc and Art go out to reconnoiter, and the first words said upon stepping onto the lunar surface are: Here’s an example: Doc Cargraves and his crew land on the moon. What’s quaint, and also interesting, about this novel isn’t how wrong it is about the science, engineering, cost and dangers of going to the Moon, but how it captures an instant in American cultural thinking. Here, Doc Cargraves enlists his nephew Art and two of Art’s friends, Ross and Morrie, and employs these three college-age teenagers as his crew for slapping together an atom-powered rocket and flying it to the Moon. It’s sort of a lunar version of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show” story. It happened that, a week or so after the death of Neil Armstrong, I picked up this 1947 novel, and to say it’s quaint is an understatement.
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