Lost: a moon [Unknown Binding]

Paul Capon (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 222 pages
• Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill (1955)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0007E1MNS
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,346,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big impression on an eleven year old, January 2, 2007

By 

Ted Kaehler (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost: a moon

'Lost: A Moon' was my favorite book for many years. It treats the young reader as an adult, and explains logically how an alien robot happened to kidnap a boy and girl from a sailboat. Sibling rivalry is present as the kids are taken to Mars. They try to understand what is going on, and what is motiviating their unseen alien captors. Not a scary story, just great "hard" science fiction. It would be great if this book could be reprinted.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A moderately interesting bit of 1950s juvenile science fiction, August 20, 2009

By 

Molly Grue "Renaissance Woman" (SF Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost: a moon

Peter Salgado is a fifty-five year old artist residing on a remote English beach with his sixteen year old daughter, Daney. Visiting the two is Stephen Craig (aka Steve, age seventeen), an astrophysics buff and the only son of Salgado's oldest friend. While on the beach, the three see mysterious flashes in the sky. A metallic egg-shaped object with four slender legs is hovering and darting above their heads, and Steve snaps a photo of the machine. The photo is a double exposure, so the three decide to return to the beach the next day so that Steve can get a better photograph.

Steve gets his photo, but the machine is ominously close this time, and although the three flee on foot, the machine snares them with invisible tentacles, drags them inside, and takes them into outer space. The monotony of their journey is only broken every six hours, when they are given flasks of water and bland, white, fudge-like nutrition bars for sustenance.

After journeying for days, the three are taken to the Martian moon Phobos. There they meet Bill Shakespeare, a sailor who was kidnapped nearly two years ago while sailing an experimental plastic hulled boat on the Pacific Ocean. He tells them that Phobos is an intelligent artificial satellite constructed hundreds of years ago by the Martians, who eventually abandoned their planet for reasons unknown. Phobos was one of fifteen satellites built as launching platforms for the Martian fleet, but over time, the others wore out and fell to the planet's surface. Now only Phobos and Deimos remain, and Deimos is merely an empty hull with a decaying orbit.

Phobos, the most powerful of the satellites, generated the power for the space fleet and was the brain of the enterprise. Abandoned to its own amusements, Phobos investigates Earth and teaches itself English. While Phobos can think, reason and act, it cannot feel emotion, so it seeks a greater understanding of this concept. When it hears a radio broadcast describing William Shakespeare's uncommon understanding of human emotion, Phobos decides to locate and question Shakespeare. Then it hears a publicity broadcast from San Francisco describing Bill Shakespeare's plan to sail the Pacific in a plastic boat. The machine orchestrates his kidnapping, never realizing that it has the wrong Shakespeare!

During the daily interrogations that follow, the sailor describes painting as an expression of emotion and names the few living artists he knows, including Salgado. When Phobos discovers that Salgado speaks English, it sends a machine for him, and the teens are kidnapped as well.

Will they ever escape?

Lost: A Moon is a moderately interesting (though dated by current scientific standards) juvenile science fiction adventure that is fondly remembered by those who read it in their youth. Please note that the book was released in the UK with a different title, Phobos, the Robot Planet.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Favorite, January 25, 2012

By 

JaymesLFC (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost: a moon

Read this several times as a child, which was many, many years ago. Obviously loved it. Tried for years to find a copy. No one knew what I was talking about. Live in metro Atlanta, so used resources here. Gave up. That was at least 15 years ago. Spur of the moment decided to Google it since more information is available. Found the book and burst into tears. Might seem silly but that book sent me on a life long adventure throughout earth and space. Could not be happier that I've found it. Now to decide if I will pay the asking price. 99.9% sure I will.