Red Moon - Softcover

Michaels, David S.

3.94

93 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1930782128 ISBN 13: 9781930782129

Publisher: Fireword Pub Inc, 2000

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This much is fact: on July 13, 1969, three days before Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, a spaceship blasted off from the Soviet Union. Soviet records claim Luna 15 was a failed robotic probe. But this was a deception planted to cover up the USSR’s last attempt to beat America in the moon race. On board is Grigor Belinsky, a cosmonaut so disillusioned with his nation’s regime that he must be blackmailed into flying the one-way mission. RED MOON reveals Belinsky’s untold journey from Soviet hero to dissident and martyr.

RED MOON opens in July 2019 with the lunar landing of a multinational mission on the Sea of Crises. American astronaut Janet Luckman leads a team in search of a Mother Lode of lunar ice laced with Helium 3--a desperately needed energy source. The future of humanity rides on Luckman’s success. She unexpectedly finds the lunar lander Firebird and recovers the flight log, but the cosmonaut has disappeared. Luckman senses that his fate is linked to the elusive Mother Lode and she races the clock to simultaneously solve these two mysteries. Her ship must blast off in 51 hours or miss its return window to Earth. But a traitor in her crew will stop at nothing--including murdering her--to sabotage the mission and bury the secret of the Firebird forever.

The discovery on the moon ignites a firestorm on Earth as both American and Russian authorities attempt to cover it up. NASA dispatches renowned scientist Milo Jefferson to Moscow to investigate the Firebird mystery. Jefferson finds himself in a hall of mirrors created by the sinister genius who leads Russia’s new Tsarist government--a man who knows the revelation of Belinsky’s fate could topple his regime--a man who will risk the fate of humanity in his attempt to destroy the truth.

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From the Author:

RED MOON is the result of my lifelong fascination with space travel, and the Soviet space program in particular. The notion of firing men into space crammed in low-tech contraptions like the cannonball-like Vostok has always struck me as appealingly Jules Vernian. When I was in high school in the 1970s, I even wrote to the Soviet Embassy for information. They responded with this big package of propaganda, which I'm sure landed me on an FBI list!

The germ of inspiration for RED MOON came from a short story called "Sea of Crises," written by my close friend, L. George Daniels, in 1973. The story remained stuck in the back of my mind until I attended a Sotheby's art exhibition in 1993 and wandered into the basement. I was stunned to find a bunch of Soviet space hardware being prepared for sale! I ran into a bald, thickset little man and asked him, "excuse me, sir, but is that REALLY Alexei Leonov's spare EVA suit?" And he said, "da-- I am Leonov." Leonov, in 1965, was the first man to walk in space.

Inspired, I contacted L. George Daniels and suggested we develop RED MOON as a screenplay. We wrote an outline that was a straightforward account of the Moon race from the Soviet perspective. I pitched it to my screen-writing teacher, Pam Wallace (co-authored "Witness"). She said, "why am I supposed to care about this?" I thought hard and came up with the 2019 story line involving a return to the Moon and a search for the Mother Lode, which we wrapped around the 1969 Soviet account. This was too "big" for a screenplay, so I started writing it as a novel in late '97, with contributions from Dan. My dream became reality in November 2000, when RED MOON was a "launch title" for the new FireWord Publishing house.

I think you'll enjoy RED MOON. It's a big, sprawling epic of mankind's onetime obsession with exploring space, an obsession we need to regain if our species is going to survive.

About the Author:

David S. Michaels is a journalist and historian who has written numerous articles on technology, space flight, and world history. A California native, he now resides in Lancaster, PA with his wife and three daughters. RED MOON, his first novel, is based on seven years’ research into the secret Soviet lunar program.

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