Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Moonbound continues his works of historical summary in graphic novel format, including previous works Battle Lines and Trinity, each of which helps expand historical knowledge with the accessibility of the visual format for both academics and lay audiences. Fetter-Vorm alternates between the events of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the history of astronomy – with particular attention to astronomy examining the Moon – as well as the Moon’s place in culture, from religious iconography to early science-fiction. Fetter-Vorm begins in the earliest mythologies of humanity before transitioning to the Renaissance with Johannes Kepler. From there, he shows how the science that made the Moon landing possible built upon centuries of knowledge and the work of hundreds – if not thousands – of mathematicians, engineers, and more. Fetter-Vorm warns, “In the decades since [1969], nostalgia has obscured just how divisive the Apollo program actually was” (pg. 233).

Complicating the narrative of space exploration amid the other issues of the 1960s, Fetter-Vorm writes, “Although the Apollo Program coincided with the Civil Rights movement, NASA was slower than the rest of the country to integrate” (pg. 152). Discussing the place of the Moonshot against the backdrop of the Cold War and domestic strife, Fetter-Vorm argues, “Going to the Moon was never about the Moon itself. Going to the Moon was a quest. And like any quest, the quarry was largely symbolic” (pg. 157). Tying his narrative threads together, linking Apollo to the earlier role of the Moon in mythology and popular culture, Fetter-Vorm writes, “Working backward, if there’s one day a month when the light is just right, and if it takes three days to get from the Earth to the Moon, then that’s your launch window. The world that Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were preparing to leave looked little like it did in the time of Johannes Kepler, and yet, in one essential way, three centuries had changed nothing: to the Moon, and its age-old arc across the heavens, these men were inescapably bound” (pg. 190). The result is a work that will appeal to historians, comic book aficionados, and particularly teachers looking for an accessible way to delve deeply into this topic with their students. A great third book from Fetter-Vorm!… (plus d'informations)

This is basically what the title indicates: a short history of the making, testing, consequences, and aftermath of the first atomic bomb, in graphic novel format. It doesn't go into the science and engineering aspects of things much, although it does give a very clear layman's-level explanation of how nuclear fission and nuclear explosions work. But it does cover the beginnings of the Manhattan Project, the Trinity test, the bombing of Hiroshima and Japan, and the changes that the existence of nuclear weapons brought about in the world.

Honestly, I was more impressed with this than I expected to be. From other things I've read on the subject, I think the historical accuracy is good. The writing is also good, using an effective mixture of the matter-of-fact and the appropriately portentous in its language. The black-and-white art illustrates its subject matter well (and quite harrowingly, in the case of its depiction of the bombing of Nagasaki). And, ultimately, it leaves us to sit thoughtfully with the moral questions involved and the implications of living in this Atomic Age future.… (plus d'informations)

Dang it. I wanted to finish 2021 with a sprint through a backlog of graphic novels to clear space on my shelves, but here I am so impressed by Moonbound that I don't want to let it go.

I expected a linear walk through the Apollo 11 mission, from conception to after effects. Given that its publication was timed for the 50th anniversary of the mission (in 2019), I expected something pretty uplifting and focused on the feel-good. Given that it's published by Hill and Wang, a division of the "serious" literary publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I expected some pretty deep and esoteric facts about the science behind the journey and the philosophical implications of spaceflight and exploration.

But while Moonbound does have some of these things, it's also much more.

We start the book with the moon landing, with the pages in full color. From there, the chapters alternate between full-color pages about the moon mission (and, later, what did and did not come after) and "flashbacks" in shades of a single color that explore the history behind humanity's relationship to the moon and the science that might get us there, from ancient beliefs to Renaissance and Jules Verne's science and speculation, to the experiments and atrocities that built the first large-scale rockets, to the unsung people and forgotten might-have-beens behind the U.S. space program. There are women, people of color, Nazis and their victims, Soviets and their situationally whiplashed scientists. So many U.S. stories about our space program focus only on us; author/illustrator Fetter-Vorm makes clear that our program did not and could never have existed in inspirational isolation from the world or from socio-political forces.

I should be clear that this is primarily a history book, not a science book, so my fears that I would get lost in engineering jargon were not met. At the same time, Fetter-Vorm doesn't neglect the fundamental physics of spaceflight; science nerds should go somewhere else for details, but history nerds will know enough to appreciate both the simple elegance and technological complexity of navigating gravity. (He also differentiates science and engineering, which makes me feel a tad guilty categorizing this book as "science", but I kind of use that tag as a STEM catch-all.)

It's impossible not to be inspired by the size of the U.S. space program, its dedication to its mission, the forthright attitude of the astronauts to their job, and, of course, the whole going-where-no-man-has-gone-before. At the same time, Fetter-Vorn doesn't let us forget everything lost along the way: the human toll of the Nazi rocket-building program, the casually cruel Soviet attitudes toward its scientists, the repeated "losses" of firsts to the Soviet program (and dang, I didn't realize that they sent Gagarin to space only one month before the U.S. got Shephard up there), the squandering of human potential when NASA dismissed women and people of color. He also touches on how controversial the space race actually was and, because the book was published so recently, is able to briefly talk about the current outlook for spaceflight going private.

All in all, I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to and I highly recommend it for anyone who knows a little and wants to know more without getting bogged down on technical details.

Quote Roundup

p. 44) Note to self: look up Johannes Kepler's The Dream, which Fetter-Vorm describes as the first work of science fiction.

p. 84) "The V-2 rocket was a novel, if not particularly [relatively] deadly, weapon. Actually, in one way, it was quite deadly. For every one person killed by V-2 strikes, two workers died on the assembly line at Mittelwerk."
I'd known that Werner von Braun was a Nazi but I'd never heard about the Nazi V-2 program. … (plus d'informations)