The Eagle Has Landed: 50 Years of Lunar Science Fiction

When Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, itt was a giant leap for mankind and an inspiration to science fiction writers everywhere!

The lone survivor of a lunar crash, waiting for rescue in a solar powered suit, must keep walking for thirty days to remain in the sunlight keeping her alive . . . life as an ice miner turns ugly as the workers’ resentment turns from sabotage to murder . . . an astronaut investigating a strange crash landing encounters an increasing number of doppelgangers of herself . . . a nuclear bomb with a human personality announces to a moon colony that it will soon explode . . . hundreds of years in the future, art forgers working on the lunar surface travel back in time to swap out priceless art, rescuing it from what will become a destroyed Earth . . .

On July 20, 1969, mankind made what had only years earlier seemed like an impossible leap forward: Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the moon, and Neil Armstrong the first person to step foot on the lunar surface. While there have only been a handful of new missions since, the fascination with our planet’s satellite continues, and generations of writers and artists have imagined the endless possibilities of lunar life.

The Eagle Has Landed collects the best stories written in the fifty years since mankind first stepped foot on the lunar surface, serving as a shining reminder that the moon is a visible and constant example of all the infinite possibility of the wider universe.

• Bagatelle by John Varley
• The Eve of the Last Apollo by Carter Scholz
• The Lunatics by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Griffin’s Egg by Michael Swanwick
• A Walk in the Sun by Geoffrey A. Landis
• Waging Good by Robert Reed
• How We Lost the Moon by Paul McAuley
• People Came From Earth by Stephen Baxter
• Ashes and Tombstones by Brian Stableford
• Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s by Adam Troy Castro
• Stories for Men by John Kessel
• The Clear Blue Seas of Luna by Gregory Benford
• You Will Go to the Moon by William Preston
• SeniorSource by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Economy of Vacuum by Sarah Thomas
• The Cassandra Project by Jack McDevitt
• Fly Me to the Moon by Marianne J. Dyson
• Tyche and the Ants by Hannu Rajaniemi
• The Moon Belongs to Everyone by Michael Alexander and K.C. Ball
• The Fifth Dragon by Ian McDonald
• Let Baser Things Devise by Berrien C. Henderson
• The Moon is Not a Battlefield by Indrapramit Das
• Every Hour of Light and Dark by Nancy Kress
• In Event of Moon Disaster by Rich Larson

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld and Forever Magazine and owner of Wyrm Publishing, and a six-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.