The space programme has finally lost its novelty, and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skilful PR men preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine.Review:But astronaut Richard Martin can tell a different story. Of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond the breaking point, of official indifference towards his own shattered life.
Martin is effectively put under wraps—until the pilot of a moon capsule, loaded with nuclear weaponry, goes beserk and a nightmare develops, threatening to engulf the world—a nightmare that only Marting could end.
Thematically similar to Beyond Apollo.
I'd give this 8,5/10.
Review by Guy Salvidge:
The first and arguably the best of the three Apollo novels (the others being Beyond Apollo and Revelations), The Falling Astronauts is a contemporary novel with only minimal science fiction content. The book deals with an astronaut, Richard Martin, who has been kicked off the active roster because of unfortunate happenings on the last Apollo mission, in which he was the man to stay orbiting the moon while the other two went onto the surface. The novel is thus split into two time-streams: the present, in which Martin is a PR man for the space agency, and the past, told not as recollection but as direct memory. Both narratives are told in the present tense.
As the novel progresses, we learn of the fateful mission and what transpires
afterwards. This technique, common in Malzberg’s novels, allows the novel
to be told as an actual reconstruction of events. Martin’s mind sorting
through the repressed material (in the Freudian sense of the word) allows
Malzberg great freedom to cycle back and forth between events, building
the novel up to a magnificent crescendo.
*SPOILERS WARNING*
We learn that Martin almost succumbed to the BUTTON (these scenes are some of the best in the book) while orbiting the dark side of the moon. Pressing the BUTTON would have led to the orbiter abandoning the astronauts on the moon. Martin is talked out of it, and that narrative ends. Of course, this is not the end of the book, which continues on to deal with Busby, the ‘third’ man on the next Apollo mission. In a brilliant finale, Busby takes control of the craft and threatens to launch nuclear missiles at the earth. Those in charge get Martin to try to talk Busby out of this and, in a magnificent Malzberg ending, Martin pleads to Busby to go through with it and drop the bombs. The novel ends with the apocalypse just hours away.
The Falling Astronauts contains some of the funniest, saddest lines of prose I have ever read:
"I don’t understand a single thing that has happened to me, not ever. None of it makes any sense."
The ‘falling’ astronauts are a metaphor for alienation in the face of
technology, and the novel can be read as a parable for the whole human
condition.