Beyond Apollo

139 Pages·1991·0.5 MB·English

by  Malzberg Barry N

BEYOND APOLLO

BARRY MALZBERG
Beyond Apollo

Copyright © 1972 by Barry N. Malzberg
Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright © 2000 by
RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
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First electronic edition published 2000 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

CONTENTS
Table Of Contents

eForeword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Epilogue
eForeword
Beyond Apollo, Barry N. Malzberg's novel of a NASA mission to Venus
gone terribly and mysteriously awry, was published by Random House in l972
and won the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award the following year. Two
astronauts depart on a Venus expedition, upon their return, one astronaut is
missing and the survivor, Harry M. Evans, is assessed as mad and immediately
institutionalized. Evans is unable to explain what happened on the mission; he is
encouraged by the supervising psychiatrist to put his thoughts into a journal and
it is the journal of that expedition and its several conflicting explanations of the
outcome of the voyage, which comprise the text of the novel.
Barry N. Malzberg (l939 - ) published several novels on the space program
and NASA of which Beyond Apollo is the best known. Malzberg's view of
NASA was characterized as pessimistic and technophobic: writing of that
agency at the peak of its achievement and public relations success, Malzberg's
novels, raising questions on the efficacy and destiny of the space program, were
decidedly controversial. Prolific through the l970's, Malzberg's most recent
novel, The Remaking of Sigmund Freud, appeared in l985. He has since then
published short stories and non-fiction.
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For Joyce, Stephanie Jill and
Erika Cornell
And in memory of Herbert Finney
1898–8/27/61
RECOVERY

It is there, always—dead
Back of the bed, loosening
The fingers of your mind.
In sleep it takes you by the hair
A mile
Down until you watch, bailed out,
Your breath flattening
Into parachutes of mercury.
Speak, it says and watch,
Fluttering the air fall
Upward to the air.
It is in the mirror
When you wake
Anticipating.
It is there
Before you wake
Dancing; its hair
A wheel of hair, its hair
Afire.
You wake, the shadows just
Coming out from behind the chairs.
You try to pull that dance together
From the air.
Quit, capsized
In mere day.
Trim Bissell: 1968
Chapter 1
I loved the Captain in my own way, although I knew that he was insane, the
poor bastard. This was only partly his fault: one must consider the conditions.
The conditions were intolerable. This will never work out.
Chapter 2
In the novel I plan to write of the voyage, the Captain will be a tall, grim man
with piercing eyes who has no fear of space. “Onward!” I hear him shout. “Fuck
the bastards. Fuck control base; they’re only a bunch of pimps for the politicians
anyway. We’ll make the green planet yet or plunge into the sun. Venus forever!
To Venus! Shut off all the receivers now. Take no messages. Listen to nothing
they have to say; they only want to lie about us to keep the administrators
content. Venus or death! Death or Venus! No fear, no fear!”
He has also had, in the book, a vigorous and satisfying sex life, which lends
power and credence to his curses and his very tight analysis of the personalities
at control. “We will find our humanity under the gases of Venus,” the Captain
will say, and then the sounds of the voyage overwhelm us and momentarily he
says nothing more. I sit with hands clasped, awaiting further word.
The novel, when I write it, should find a large commercial outlet. People still
love to read stories of space, and here for the first time they will learn the
sensational truth. Even though it is necessary for me to idealize the Captain in
order to make the scheme more palatable, the novel will have great technical
skill and will make use of my many vivid experiences in and out of the program.
They cannot do this kind of thing to us and leave us nothing. I believe that
passionately. The novel will be perhaps sixty-five thousand words long, and I
will send it only to the very best publishers.
Chapter 3
On one of these nights I dream that the Captain is falling again. He is falling
through the capsule into the center of the sun. “Out,” he says, “enough of this.
I’m calling a halt to the bullshit before they turn me into a machine.” Backed
into a bulkhead, I beg him to be controlled and assume command of the voyage
again, but he says he cannot because of the forces of gravity. Gravity is making
him fall into the sun.
“I can’t do all this myself,” I cry as he begins to slither away again. “I’m only
equipped to be the copilot. My certification is limited.”
“I’m sorry,” he says with infinite regret, disappeared to the neck now, his fine
eyebrows poised as if for sex or intricate testimony. “I misjudged the whole
thing totally. It is a mystery. You will have to do the best you can, Evans: find
some answers of your own,” and then he disappears, not saying goodbye. The
ship convulses slightly as if the Captain were excrement just cleansed.
I wonder why I do not follow my commander into the sun and be done with it,
but there is not time for reflection; I have many things to do to keep the ship on
course lest it miss Venus and follow the Captain into the solar region. I resolve
to follow it through; perhaps this is another simulation testing my psychological
strength.