From Publishers Weekly
Nebula Award-winner Oltion (Frame of Reference, etc.) delivers a packed premise that never achieves its potential in this story of a young astronaut who makes a subconscious bid to renew America's space program. Shortly after Neil Armstrong's death, a phantom Saturn V appears on an abandoned NASA pad and launches itself to the moon. After two such supernatural launches, NASA puts astronaut Rick Spencer into the next ghost rocket with orders to decommission its engines on leaving the atmosphere and hitch a ride home with a passing shuttle. Once in space, however, Spencer abandons his flight plan and with two shuttle astronauts and the help of Russian mission control lands on the moon. When Spencer and his team return to Earth, they learn to harness the psychic power of the multitudes who have been following their lunar flight on TV. Oltion tries to explore the minutiae of the science and culture underlying the space program and to investigate collective paranormal psychology; unfortunately, he succeeds at neither. Though the protagonists are NASA-trained astronauts, they describe the most remarkable phenomena in unscientific layman's language. For all its ambitions, this novel never manages to create a single fully fleshed character, much less reach the overarching mysteries at its heart. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Rick, a young astronaut in an aging Shuttle program, is mourning the loss of NASA's glory days of manned space exploration when he sees something impossible-a new Saturn V rocket blasting off from a derelict Apollo launch site long designated "abandon in place." Soon ghost rockets are embarking regularly from it. The space agency orders Rick to destroy the next Saturn, but he takes control of the mystery ship instead. With two other astronauts-his girlfriend and a Japanese scientist-he completes the ship's mission to the moon's south pole. The three return to the Earth as heroes, hoping their exploit has rekindled the public's dream of space exploration. However, the world is more interested in the occult nature of the event-especially when it becomes apparent that the odd voyage has awakened paranormal powers in Rick and Tessa. After a thrilling escape from the CIA, followed by a hilariously hyperbolic wedding, the couple settles down to explore their new psychic powers in a reinvented space program. Based on a Nebula Award-winning novella, this fast-paced adventure has humor, strong characterizations, sharp contemporary insights, and real vision. Equal parts hard science and ghost story, New Physics and New Age, it has a cheeky disregard for the traditional boundaries of the genre that will infuriate some SF fans as much as it will delight others. General readers with a taste for the unusual can also appreciate this yarn.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
