About my afterword to The Man Who Sold the Moon/Orphans of the Sky

I mentioned in my blog yesterday that my author copies of this book had arrived and that seeing them made me happy.  (The book goes on sale generally on Sept. 3.)

Click on the image to see a larger version.

What I didn't say in that earlier entry is that I found the book waiting for me on Friday night, which was a nice after-work treat.  Upon seeing it, I offered to read the afterword to the small group of folks who were at my house then.  They accepted, so some time later, after dinner and a movie, I grabbed a copy of the book and read aloud the afterword.

That proved to be an extremely difficult task.

Much of the essay is a straightforward discussion of various aspects of the Heinlein stories that compose the two books this volume includes.  The very beginning, though, and the last several pages are extremely personal. 

I had a great deal of trouble finishing the reading.  I had to pause several times, choked up by what I had written.  By the time I ended, my face was wet, and I am not a man who cries.  (In my defense, I did not so much cry as leak.)  So, when Dave, in his comment on yesterday's post, says that it is a strong bit of work, I cannot argue with him, at least when it comes to how it hits me. 

I confess to being rather embarrassed at how uncomfortable the reading must have made the others present, so to them I must offer my apology.

I'm not sure if this entry will motivate people to seek out or to avoid the afterword, but if you want to read a piece of my writing that chokes me up, this is a fine place to start.

Photos of two happy things

The other day, I spotted this lovely butterfly and was able to get a reasonable photo of it.  I couldn't help but smile.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

As best I can tell from looking at online photos of butterflies, this is an anise swallowtail, but whatever it is, it's beautiful.

Yesterday, when I arrived home after work, I found to my delight my author copies of The Man Who Sold the Moon/Orphans of the Sky, to which I wrote an afterword.

Heinlein and I on the same cover!  You may have heard the fanboy squee throughout the U.S.

For what it's worth, the afterword is, I believe, a strong piece of work, so please pick up this book, enjoy the classic Heinlein stories, and check out my own modest contribution.

A book you should buy

I've promised to discuss those two deadlines I was working hard to meet.  The first (not the one related to my trip to Florida) was a project I mentioned a long time ago:  the afterword to the upcoming Baen combined edition of The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky. 

I really wanted to write this afterword, because The Man Who Sold the Moon was a very important book to me.  I also feel a huge amount of fan-boy squee at the thought of my name, however small, on the same cover with Robert A. Heinlein. 

Come September, when the book is due, I'll get to see just such a cover. 

This essay was very hard for me to write, for reasons I explain in it.  I believe it's one of the better essays I've ever written, so I hope you buy the book and read it.

Here are the first two sentences of the piece, all that I'll show of it.

I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone:  The Man Who Sold the Moon helped save my life.  Really.

Intrigued?  I hope so.

For the rest, pick up the book.

A fan boy dream coming ever closer to reality

Check out the cover of this 2013 Baen book:

Click on it to make it bigger; you don't want to miss that star burst.


Oh, yeah.  Oh, hell, yeah!

I now face the pleasant task of re-reading two Heinlein classics and writing a few thousand words about them.  I can't wait!

Please buy this book

No, I'm not pleading here for you to buy copies of No Going Back, though I certainly would like it if everyone in America did. 

Instead, I'm talking about a particular paperback edition of Robert A. Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon, which you can find online here and here and no doubt in other places, as well as in some bookstores.  Baen Books, which owns the rights to this particular Heinlein title, has about 2,000 of these in stock, so we need to find 2,000 people to buy them.  Until we do, Baen won't reprint the book.

I need Baen to reprint this book.

When it does, Publisher Toni will do the same things she's been doing with other Heinlein titles that have needed new editions: commission a new Bob Eggleton cover for it, and have one of her authors write an all-new afterword for it.  

That writer will, she assures me, be me. 

My name would then be on a cover with Robert A. Heinlein.

How cool is that?

I am so excited at the prospect that I am now hand-selling this book everywhere I go.  It's a marvelous volume, and its Harriman stories were incredibly influential on me when I was a boy.  You need this book.

My name with Heinlein's on a book cover.  Damn.

Planets from space

I've discovered that I love writing short descriptions of the views of planets from space. I just completed one in Slanted Jack, and seeing the images in my mind's eye made me happy. I'm afraid of heights, but watching from planes doesn't bother me at all. I assume staring down from a spacecraft wouldn't bug me either. Something about hovering in space and looking at a world turning slowly below strikes me as a perfectly beautiful moment, an act of bearing witness to art of the greatest kind, all courtesy of nature.

I applied to the mission specialist program in the late 70s when NASA announced it, but the damage I did to my right arm when I was six kept me from making it far into the process.

Maybe Richard Branson will make it possible for me to visit space one day.

Which thought, of course, inevitably leads me to Heinlein and The Man Who Sold the Moon, an old but great book, at least to me. I don't expect I'll ever write anything that touches as many people as that story, but I'm going to keep trying until I'm dead.

Speaking of which, it's time I roll my chair to the left and return to Slanted Jack.