Tor.com turns one year old today, and in the finest hobbit tradition we are giving away presents to you!
Beginning imminently and over the next twenty-four hours, we will have a special prize (or prize package) every hour on the hour. These prizes will range from the silly to the sublime. But don’t take my word for it: stay tuned (or as we like to say, watch the skies) and pay attention to the giveaway posts, which will tell you how to enter to be eligible for these prizes.
When Tor.com launched exactly one year ago, we didn’t choose the day arbitrarily. July 20th is a special day in science fiction: it’s the anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first setting foot on the moon, while Michael Collins orbited above. Today marks the 40th anniversary of that momentous event, and as such we wanted to take a moment to reflect on history. (I am sorry that Walter Cronkite cannot share this day.) The official NASA website has a spectacular retrospective up right now, and wechoosethemoon.org has a really neat interactive archive if you want to explore and learn more about the Apollo 11 mission.
It’s easy now, with hindsight, to be cynical about the whole affair. We’re all familiar with the criticism: The Apollo program was an enormous money sink. It was a distraction from Vietnam. It began for all the wrong reasons. Astronauts died to get us there. There wasn’t much on the moon, and we didn’t learn nearly enough from our excursion to justify the price (either monetarily or in human lives). It was a waste.
All these things are true. And none of them matter.
My entire life I have known that men landed on the moon. This was not a moment I held my breath for, or dreamed of, or imagined only in books or films or art. It happened long before I was born and has never been anything but a fact. It’s so distant that to me, it’s science fiction. Yet more than any single event in scientific history, a moment that I was not even alive for is still the most inspiring goddamn thing I’ve ever known. Every time I look at those images I am moved by the breadth of human ingenuity. All my cynicism is replaced by a belief that with passion, hard work, and perseverance, we can overcome any barrier—even the ones we didn’t know we had set for ourselves. We can achieve any measure of greatness. We can become our fiction and make our dreams something tangible, attainable.
We can touch the sky.
Nothing in my own lifetime has ever filled me with that kind of hope or inspiration—nothing but science fiction.
With that in mind, I’ve asked authors, artists, critics, and fans in the science fiction community to send me their stories of what they were doing when the LEM landed on the lunar surface, and to tell me how it informed their relationship with science fiction. What you’ll be seeing throughout today on Tor.com are personal glimpses of a moment in history.
So where were you that day, and how did it inform your relationship with science fiction?
Housekeeping note: All the images you will see today are public domain images from NASA.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 12:12am EDT · amended on Monday July 20, 2009 12:58am EDT
OK, maybe it wasn't on my mind the first few years but it wasn't long before I was drawing a space scenes and taping them underneath my mother's desk, aka the "space craft", with my Curious George doll as my copilot.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 12:13am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 12:37am EDT
As for where I was when Mr. Armstrong walked on the moon? I was nary a gleam in either parent's eye. My mother had only graduated high school the year before! It would take nearly 11 more years for me to cause the world to tremble at my presence (or maybe that was Mt. St. Helens erupting a couple weeks before my delivery...who can tell?)
Monday July 20, 2009 12:54am EDT
It seemed to take forever; there was check after check. We dozed off and on. Finally, the moment came and we watched on our little black and white television. At least, that is how I remember it. I have to ask my sister what she remembers. :-)
Monday July 20, 2009 12:56am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 01:01am EDT
I couldn't have put it better myself. I, too, was a good ten years away from being even a mote in my parents' eye in 1968, and I've grown up with the knowledge that men have landed on the moon. It's history to me, certainly. But call me sentimental—whenever I see the footage, or hear the audio, I get goosebumps. I tear up a little.
Because even on this side of history, even despite having grown up with the iconic images in my grade school history books, even despite having Buzz Aldrin's space-suited, flag-hoisting likeness reduced to an MTV branding image, it's still a daunting achievement, and a testament to everything that humanity can accomplish if it puts its considerable resources behind an endeavour.
I bristle a little bit at the notion that it's an American accomplishment. Not because credit isn't due the American NASA team (quite the opposite, and that fact hit home as I was watching some documentaries about the Apollo program last week, and I really internalized how herculean a feat it really was), but because it's such a huge thing, something that all humanity should be proud of, and by all rights it should be everyone's. After all, it's humanity's destiny to reach for the stars, not one single nations'.
Despite the setbacks that the American space program has had, despite the designed-by-committee fiasco that has been the space shuttle, despite the relative lethargy with which private industry and other nations have taken up the slack, I'm still convinced that our long-term destiny is to become a space-faring race. As Stephen Hawkins has famously pointed out, we have no alternative from a practical perspective. Additionally, humanity's track record is clear: always exploring, reaching for the unknown, expanding our horizons, and the Apollo program was the epitome of that intrinsic, instinctual, and utterly human impulse. Leif Erikson, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins, and beyond.
Many lament the stagnation of the space program, and they are right to do so. It's a goddamned shame that we seem to have all the money in the world to wage wars, but we can't be bothered to resume peopled space exploration. It's also a bloody embarrassment that we have no problem intentionally sending millions of people to die in wars, but we balk at the accidental deaths of a handful of intrepid pioneers, and bring our peopled space exploration programs to a grinding halt.
But let's not forget that forty years is but a pinprick of time within the context of the whole of recorded human history, and a miniscule, almost imperceptible measure within the context of all that lies ahead. To paraphrase a favourite songwriter of mine: we are living in the pre-history of the future. As far as that future history is concerned, the Apollo program is a formidable beginning.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 01:06am EDT
But launchings from the Cape were visible, especially at night. Those were awesome, and impressed me with what people (scientists and engineers, specifically) could do. I wanted to find out everything about space, to the extent that, according to my mother, I repeatedly corrected the tour guide at the Kennedy Space Center- yes, apparently, I was That Kid.
But we made it to a whole 'nother place! Humans set a goal, mapped out plans and hypotheses to reach that goal, built and tested the tools and techniques needed, and did it!
Which meant that science fiction was possible.
Of course, this meant that I want the science in my fiction to make sense, but that's a different thread.
Monday July 20, 2009 01:28am EDT
"HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY."
-A. A. Milne
Monday July 20, 2009 09:15am EDT
Forty years ago, my family huddled around our black and white television with the rest of the world and watched Armstrong step out onto another celestial body. A surreal, beautiful moment that meant anything could happen.
Anything.
Monday July 20, 2009 10:47am EDT
I was 3 and we went over to my grandparents to watch on their big console television (big by the standards of the time). I will never forget that. Every time I've gotten to go to Washington, I've gone to the Air and Space museum. I wish they'd had space camp when I was a kid; I'd go now! I really wanted to touch a moon rock. I still stare at those amazing pictures of Earth. I remember people calling it the big, blue marble. When I was in high school, I got to hold a shuttle tile while someone held a blowtorch on the other side of it. I've gotten to see a night launch of a space shuttle.
The achievement honors everyone who was a part of it, especially the ones we'll never know about. For a brief time, something united people all over the world. And, as someone else said, this meant that anything is possible and science fiction can be real.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 10:47am EDT
My family was on vacation at the time, camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, but they tell me another family in the campground put a TV on top of their van and everybody gathered round to watch the landing.
Monday July 20, 2009 11:51am EDT
I really thought then there was a chance of being there myself someday, in spite of being near-sighted and female. Would I now? Yup.
Monday July 20, 2009 12:10pm EDT
Happy Anniversary Tor.com!
Monday July 20, 2009 12:11pm EDT
I've expected a lot more from the future than what has transpired. Is it time to go to Mars yet?
Monday July 20, 2009 12:14pm EDT
I was able to escape from that awful stress by immersing myself in the wonder of our country's achievement. I think that, though I was already a comics reader and SF fan, that day cemented my love of the genre forever after.
Monday July 20, 2009 12:37pm EDT
Monday July 20, 2009 12:46pm EDT
A nearly fifty year reader of Science Fiction, I have never lost that feeling of elation that went with the moon landing.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 01:34pm EDT
Anyway, happy anniversary Tor.com!
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 01:49pm EDT
Paradoxically, we listened to the landing on Cuban radio, relayed to Radio Rebelde in Santiago de Cuba from Kingston. We had as clear reception at night of Cuban radio as of Jamaican stations. The Cubans were just as fascinated by the landing on the Moon as anybody else in the world, for all that the United States were their enemies.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 01:49pm EDT
Paradoxically, we listened to the landing on Cuban radio, relayed to Radio Rebelde in Santiago de Cuba from Kingston. We had as clear reception at night of Cuban radio as of Jamaican stations. The Cubans were just as fascinated by the landing on the Moon as anybody else in the world, for all that the United States were their enemies.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 02:21pm EDT
I was hooked, and never forgot what the journey to the stars/planets/asteroids really meant for mankind: Profit!
Love ya Grandma! (and Tor gets to help!)
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 02:22pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 02:56pm EDT
I cannot begin to properly express the amazement and thrill of seeing the lander touch down on a celestial body that wasn't Earth. My earliest exposure to sci-fi was on the screen, with the classic Outer Limits and Twilight Zone shows, as well as feature movies like The War of the Worlds and such. By 1969, I had begun to form a love for written sci-fi thanks to Verne and Asimov. To watch the fantasies of those great minds become reality on that singular night was a phenomenal and moving experience.
Happy naming day, TordotCom, and may you be more than 'just a memory' 40 years from now.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 03:23pm EDT
I was 16 years old. Watching on a fairly large-screen TV, B&W of course. Dad repaired TVs, so we had an in.
Watching the landing, I was mesmerized, didn't eat, barely left the room. Wished again for a telescope.
I remember wishing later that week that a girl could be an astronaut. Wondered if it would ever happen.
Wished I wasn't born 100 years too soon.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 03:29pm EDT
We were visiting my parents house, and watched the landing there with my sister and youngest brother, who were 6 and 4 at the time. They didn't know quite what to make of it all, but they caught the excitement of the altitude countdown from the LEM as they came in for a landing. We waited for Armstrong to step out on the surface, and watched the slow-scan low-res picture as he did, and cheered. All except for my sister and brother who had fallen asleep a half an hour or so before Armstrong came out.
I knew the Apollo program was largely a public relations event for the US government, and a 9 day wonder to most of the billion people who watched the landing that day, but to me it represented a fulfillment of the promise of space that had been made to me all my life. Over the next few years as the program wound down and the follow-on projects became less and less venturesome I realized that I might not see anything more in space in my lifetime, a thought that still depresses me.
Apollo showed that a small group of dedicated people with a dream can perform great deeds given the backing of their country. Many of us who remember that day, and many who were too young then, but have caught the fire from those jerky videos of a man on another celestial body than earth, share that dream. If we knew better how to make the dream alive for the public at large, we could be doing more such deeds, even now.
Monday July 20, 2009 04:22pm EDT
I feel we have been short-changed since there has been so little progress after Apollo. We have been learning a tremendous amount, and we have better tools, but we still cannot seem to get off our... couches... to go out there. And I think we should.
Warren Ellis has written a fantastic story about this called "Orbiter", together with Colleen Doran. All who share my feeling of being "trapped on this marble" should read it, everytime I re-read it I cry at the end. It gives a huge boost of hope. I think all good SF does.
Good luck with your future years.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 04:39pm EDT
And I still remember the feeling of betrayal when I learned Apollo was canceled. I was stunned - "They can do that??"
We have to go back.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 04:40pm EDT
I still remember the 20th of July 1969. It was three days before my 10th birthday. We were on holiday at the German North Sea coast. We watched the whole night TV.
Monday July 20, 2009 04:46pm EDT
Monday July 20, 2009 05:00pm EDT
We went over to Grandma and Grandpa's because they had a color TV. (Grandpa was born the same year that the Wright Brothers first flew) The picture quality was terrible coming back from the Moon. But it was real! And then looking up at the Moon and realizing that there were two men on it!
I never thought we'd go no further for the next 40 years. That the American pioneer spirit was dying, and politicians without vision would eat up the budget with bread and circuses to buy votes.
What an indictment!
Monday July 20, 2009 05:10pm EDT
I've always been an avid reader of SF both before and after the moon landing. I don't think the landing did change my relation to science fiction - I've always believed. Just wish I could go too - maybe in my next life!
And, my big brother contributed to the design of the video circuits that brought us those live pictures! Way to go Rich!
Monday July 20, 2009 05:24pm EDT
I don't think I've ever been quite as envious of anyone as I was that day. As someone who was already a serious F&SF fan, I would have loved to have had even a minor part in that project.
One of them did manage to pick up a Univac Diagnostics Manual as a souvenir for me. It was stamped with the project logo, and all sorts of official looking stuff - unfortunately some rotten b&%#@*d stole it a year or so later.
Interestingly the only place in the world where the public saw the lunar TV direct, and not via Houston, was in Australia. As the TV was sent from Sydney Video to the Moree Earth Station, a spilt was sent to the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s studios at Gore Hill in Sydney’s northern suburbs. At Gore Hill, engineers used a locally-built optical scan converter (reportedly mounted on a wooden packing case) to produce a 625 line / 50 fields per second version of the broadcast.
Monday July 20, 2009 05:26pm EDT
Happy anniversary, Tor.com! Keep up the good work.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 06:08pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 06:50pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 07:15pm EDT
Monday July 20, 2009 07:16pm EDT
My husband watched it on the scoreboard at a White Sox game.
If you want to watch a wonderful movie about the moon landing, rent "The Dish." It's the story of the Australian dish telescope station that relayed the signals from the moon. Great flick.
Monday July 20, 2009 07:43pm EDT
I was on vacation with my family in Canada watching on a tiny TV. While we waited, I was freaking myself out by looking at a picture of Kim Hunter in her Planet of the Apes makeup. It was a few weeks shy of my 7th birthday. I didn't discover science fiction until I was older.
The thing that impresses me most even now is that so many of the astronauts left the Earth as scientists and returned as artists. Science alone was insufficient to describe what they experienced.
Monday July 20, 2009 08:09pm EDT
Secondly, I'd like to say a huge thank you to you and the contributing SF luminaries and their blog posts, sharing their thoughts and emotions on this celebratory day in history. They made for some heartfelt reading.
By the way? I watched every stage from lift off on earth, to moon landing, and subsequent lift off, through to splash down back here on earth, with my father on our tiny black and white TV, like so many more.
May we never forget any of these very special heroes!
Monday July 20, 2009 08:29pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 08:36pm EDT
He offers his own audio reminiscence of Apollo 11 at Vatican Radio.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 09:44pm EDT
I can just barely, recall the images on the screen, in the July of '69.
I have talked with astronauts, and with those who helped to send them to space. I look at the photos, of Earth, radiant in the black of space, above the Moon's horizon (sputnik means moon, and companion), and I long... with a quite painful ache, to leave the Earth.
I recall hearing Fred Haise, in 1982, talking about the Apollo 13 Mission. Barely a decade after it happened. He'd been so close; and it seemed we were never going to be going again (there are times I think it's still never going to happen), and he talked about it.
About seeing the moon out the window, cold and scared and not sure he was going to make it home.
He glowed. The sight of the moon out the window, as if of a distant shore from a ship, the memory of it uplifted him, and me, and everyone else in the room.
Space, and the travel trough it... is distilled hope.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 09:57pm EDT
Thanks again for putting this all together. As someone who missed the event (see @1) I seemed to have placed it outside of history and into a bubble all it's own. Reading people's every-day account of the day has placed it back into history and given even more emotional weight for me.
VIEW ALL BY · Monday July 20, 2009 10:40pm EDT
Clarke predicted we'd have a "self-sufficient moon base" by 2001. But it turns out we can't even deal with the glass shards of moon dirt. At this snails pace, we won't even land on Halley's Comet when it swings back by us in 2061!
Monday July 20, 2009 10:56pm EDT
The moment is crystallized in my mind. On July 19th, the Apollo 11 command and lunar modules separated and the lunar module made its way toward the moon's surface. I had just turned twelve years old and it was going to be my sister's fifteenth birthday if only the thing would take just a a few more hours for it to happen. It did and it was perfect.
Yes, it was grainy, blurry and gray, but there it was. We were on the moon. We exclaimed at how clear the pictures were, how short the lag was between audio transmissions. Haw far away is the moon, again? 240,000 miles, wow.
We held our breath. Neil Armstrong seemed to bounce down the ladder in slow motion. He and Buzz Aldrin were chatting, tech-speaking to each other, to Houston, to us. And finally, he was down, a last little jump, and we were there, a little dust puff, a little flag planting, a little earthrise. It was awesome. And it was only just beginning . . .
And so it goes, do you have to ask how this event informed my relationship to science fiction? What do you mean, fiction?
Tuesday July 21, 2009 01:50am EDT
These guys bounced out the spaceship onto the moon and put up a flag and walked around leaving footprints. It didn't seem strange somehow because I had read so often about it. To me, life was catching up to where it should be.
A few days later I was looking at the moon and realized that guys were walking around up there with their feet, kicking dust like they were at the beach. It made me dizzy to think it was now a place like any other travel destination, a short voyage away.
Tuesday July 21, 2009 08:14am EDT
Why oh why is there no permanent Moonbase now? That's my major disappointment.
Tuesday July 21, 2009 12:52pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 21, 2009 01:01pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 21, 2009 07:54pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 21, 2009 09:14pm EDT
Wednesday July 22, 2009 12:06am EDT
Thursday July 23, 2009 03:49pm EDT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY&feature=related
Thursday October 22, 2009 05:37pm EDT
I was at the lycee in Rambouillet as well when we heard of the moon landing. Later we were able to view on a television.
Do you have memories of the lycee and its location? I was 15 and was there with the Foreign Study League as well. I was from a group from Bowling Green, Ohio. I remember the old pines and the beautiful campus. Later we went on to a small town and lycee near Nice. I remember the day of the moon landing and the sense of wonder felt by many as well.