Moonfall (McDevitt novel)

Moonfall is a 1998 hard science fiction novel by American writer Jack McDevitt. The book depicts the impact of an interstellar comet on moon and how the catastrophic effects are dealt with. The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1998.[1]

Moonfall
First edition
AuthorJack McDevitt
Cover artistJohn Ennis
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherHarperPrism
Publication date
9 December 1998
Pages560 (paperback)
ISBN978-0061051128

Plot summary

In 2024, Charlie Haskell, the vice president of the United States, is on the moon to inaugurate the first moonbase. An interstellar comet is discovered to be on course to impact the moon and shatter it. A rescue mission gets underway to take the thousand-something population of the base off the moon, with the support of the L1 space station (near the Earth-Moon L1 point) and Skyport, a larger geocentric space station.

Haskell, in a moment of zealousness to show responsibility, promises the public to get off the moon only after every else has. Subsequent analysis reveals that the existing rescue plan would result in about 10 people not being able to get off the moon before the impact. The VP chooses to stick to his promise. Some volunteers, along with a few randomly selected people, also stay back.

The rescue plan moves along, with the help of about 5 large spaceships, 'SSTOs'. The SSTOs dock with smaller ferry spaceships, 'moonbuses' and a 'Micro', in the orbit to take in passengers. Also, a last-minute risky plan of using the Micro to take off the last few people is put into action and it rescues the last group off the moon just before impact.

The comet hits the moon, shattering it. The resulting debris of loose rock creates a danger to the rescue ships, as well as to the people on Earth.

Some impactors, presumably a few hundred meters large, hit the Earth. The western hemisphere gets particularly affected because of the orientation of Earth during the impact. The coasts of the US are hit by multiple tsunamis and the land areas also face some impacts, resulting in widespread loss of life and property. The president, who had earlier decided against a coastal evacuation, is distraught. Many characters who have to deal with these events, like the residents of the affected areas, journalists and extremist militia members, are discussed in the novel.

One of the SSTOs gets destroyed in space by a piece of debris measuring several hundred meters. The Micro also gets damaged and Haskell is forced to perform an EVA to fix the issues, which eventually succeeds.

The US capital is also subsequently hit by a tsunami, and the president dies due to an aircraft malfunction during his rescue. Still in space, Haskell takes charge as the president. Haskell and other passengers of the Micro, are subsequently rescued by Percival Lowell, a 'nuclear powered' ship (presumably nuclear thermal) originally meant for the first manned mission to Mars.

A mile-long piece of the debris, dubbed 'Possum' (from 'Possible Impactor'), is discovered to be on course to hit the US mainland, kill almost everyone in the US and possibly cause long-term worldwide disaster. The option of using nuclear missiles are put on hold due to concerns of even worse effects through radioactive fallout. Instead, a plan to redirect the Possum into a safe course, using the SSTOs and Percival Lowell, is put into action.

An extremist militia group, with a lack of understanding of the impactor and sensing a possibility to take over the governance, damages one of the SSTOs, before getting subdued. Nevertheless, with the remaining spaceships, the redirection plan is determined to have retained the possibility of success.

The redirection mission gets underway, despite risks like inadequate knowledge of the impactor's geology. One SSTO eventually crashes due to a geological imperfection in the impactor, midway through the mission. After the initial loss of hope, the mission is altered to a last-ditch attempt to coax the impactor, which happens to have a flat side, to skip off the atmosphere. The mission succeeds to delay the impact by several years.

The epilogue discusses the positive socio-political transformation due to the whole event, the steps taken to further deal with the Possum, a dedicated impact avoidance strategy, increased emphasis on the space program and the first anniversary of 'the birth of Space Age'.

Influences

In the book's acknowledgements, McDevitt mentions Ben Bova's Welcome to Moonbase as the basis of the moonbase depicted in Moonfall.

gollark: Usually just good *enough*, and then they get inertia.
gollark: Popular things aren't always *good*.
gollark: In short, horrible inconsistency, no design, and it's optimized for old models of doing stuff like CGI.
gollark: But if you say "PHP is worse for writing webapps than JavaScript", people will call it an opinion.
gollark: Generally if you say "PHP is better for writing webapps than Assembly", people will agree and call it a fact.

See also

References
  1. "Moonfall - The Nebula Awards". Retrieved 11 November 2019.
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