Another Brick in the Moon (Review)
Another Brick in the Moon (Review)
n this story, Adam Roberts does what I enjoy (when it’s done well) – he takes an older established story and polishes, reworks and updates it until it shines. And in this case, he focuses on The Brick Moon, reviewed HERE.
So here, our narrator Charles Bann, so very alive in our own gritty modern-day world, is hardly cut from heroic cloth. Mentioned in passing (and by his own account) as something less than a ladies man, a blind date who dumps him tosses him a bone in the form of a contact who knows something about “The Transcript”. And in this, we dig deeper and deeper into the legend of what really might have been launched 150 years ago.
The fascinating thing here is the backstory Roberts supplies us with, not only from the original manuscript but across the golden age of Science Fiction. We learn about our own beliefs of space stations, of space travel, how we viewed them and the degree of practicality we give it. Further, we lean… something… of what really took place on that long-ago launch site, what the double-flywheel was really a reference to, and what might have happened to the first artificial satellite. All this occurs against a spy-thriller backdrop as poor Charles falls deeper and deeper into the conspiracy.
I rather liked this – it was a nice companion piece for Jurassic (the publisher) to include with original manuscript. It (to use the overworked phrase) made it more real for me.
You’re going to have to work for this one, kiddies. I had to order through Forbidden Planet and pay nearly as much for postage as I did for the book. But if you’d like it, check out the F.P. site and order a copy of The Brick Moon. Even at the cost, it was a nice pair of stories that fit well together.