Children of Apollo [Hardcover]

Mark R. Whittington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 2002

Buy Children of Apollo, the alternate history novel of high adventure and low intrigue against the backdrop of a space program that never was, but should have been.

July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 has landed men on the Moon, fulfilling the great dream of gen

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark Whittington is a writer and computer analyst residing in Houston, Texas. He is the co-author, along with his wife Chantal, of Nocturne, a Novel of Suspense. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris Corporation (April 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401045936
• ISBN-13: 978-1401045937
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,484,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An adventure story with some sly satire wrapped inside., March 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Children of Apollo (Paperback)

The author of Children of Apollo has a very shrewd eye for the time period he is writing about, even though in the style of alternative history he has changed certain events of the early 1970s to suit him and his story. His slightly enhanced Apollo program seems to have altered just about everything, to the course of the Vietnam War, to the Middle East, to the fortunes of one Richard Nixon, and even popular culture (at one point he has one of Stephen King's early novels taking place on board a haunted space station.)

While Children of Apollo is primarily an adventure story about space exploration, it also has a certain element of satire. Included in the list of the author's targets for gentle (and sometimes not so gentle ribbing) are the forementioned President Nixon, a young and randy Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Madeline Murray O'Hara, William Proxmire, liberal Democrats in general, the Soviet Union, and various spooks, federal agents, astronauts, and politicians.

The book is a delight to read. It has a feel of being about events that actually happened, even though they did not. I found myself sincerly wishing that a woman really had walked on the Moon around Christmas of 1975 and being sad that she did not.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great plot. Incredible amount of sloppy errors., May 15, 2009

By 

Diabolik - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children of Apollo (Paperback)

This book, for me, represents the best and worst about self publishing. The best because sometimes good books simply are not picked up by publishing houses, and this one deserved to be published. The worst because a commercial publisher would have cleaned up the prose and made this book really shine.

The plot is really good. Well crafted. Exciting. Good pacing. But the text is rife with spelling and grammatical errors (I didn't count but I'm thinking on average more than one per page). Even a mediocre copy editor could have fixed 99% of the problems with the text. Now, if this book had been crappy in general, I wouldn't have cared. But it is actually a great story. Thus, my frustration stems from the fact that a very good book is dragged down by easily fixable stuff, most of which MS Word would have picked up. It's just plain sloppy.

Some examples of what I mean: Berkeley is not spelled "Berkly". Camaro is not spelled "Camero". Taut is not spelled "taunt". Aide is not spelled "Aid". Applause is not spelled "applauds". Champagne is not spelled "champaign". Asti Spumante is not spelled "Asti Spurmanti". Las Cruces is not spelled "Las Cruzus". Alan Shepard (the astronaut) is not spelled "Alan Shepherd". To add insult to injury, the author does actually spell the name correctly once... Baikonour is spelled in three ways in the book, both incorrect. Proper grammar does not include things like "going to fight for if-no when-you send me to Congress." Stylistically, there are gems like "They looked at each other in for a moment, sharing the awful truth they had just shared."

Then we have the technical errors. I will grant that the author is not an aerospace expert but for this book a modicum of research would have been required. Finding a pilot to answer a few questions would have greatly improved the test flight passages. Certainly no pilot would ever "jerk the joystick". There's no jerking involved. In fact no pilot would EVER call it a "joystick". It's just a stick.

ARGH!

In conclusion. I would say that Mr. Whittington has some real talent. But he needs to let a real editor loose on the text before publication.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A woman lands on the Moon in 1975!, August 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Children of Apollo (Hardcover)

Children of Apollo is an adventure story, a spy story, a story about politics, and most important a story about people. I don't ordinarily read "what-if" books, but this one held my attention for some reason. I've always been a fan of the space program, so I found this story about space missions which never flew in "our history" compelling.

Besides, I rather identified with Wendy Pendleton, the first woman to walk on the Moon in the story. I found most of the other charecters, even the not so nice ones, well drawn.

I recommend this book highly.