The Gollancz SF Gateway is a wonderful treasure-trove of classic science fiction in ebook format. In particular, their SF Masterworks series identifies and makes available truly great works in the genre. Rogue Moon certainly deserves to be among them.

Published in 1960, it stands out from other contemporary works in the genre by being strongly based on character rather than on speculative gimmicks. And its overriding theme is death.

Yes, there is a science-fiction gimmick. Well, there are a few, I suppose. Unbeknown to other nations, by 1959 the United States has secretly developed the capability of sending rockets to the Moon. One such unmanned probe, in its last moments before crashing, photographs a mysterious structure on the lunar surface which is clearly artificial, and not human-made.

As the novel opens, we know none of this. Instead we are introduced to Dr Edward Hawks, talking to Rogan, a man who it appears has become insane. Who has been driven insane, it appears, by something Hawks has had him do. It turns out that Hawks and his colleagues have developed a method of scanning objects and transmitting their ‘pattern’ to a remote receiver where they are reassembled. The original is destroyed in the scanning process. And the objects include human beings, with all of their thoughts and feelings. It is this system which has been used to send humans to a remotely-landed receiver on the Moon.

It’s not this process which has driven Rogan (and several other previous volunteers) insane. Indeed, the Navy has been able to send enough people safely to the Moon through the transmitter for them to establish a modest (and still secret) base next to the mysterious alien artefact. No, what has driven Rogan crazy is that he was one of those who volunteered to investigate the artefact itself. And the artefact kills people if they do the slightest thing wrong while inside it. What is ‘wrong’? Simple, anything which kills you. Discovering what these ‘wrong’ things are has taken the lives of quite a number of volunteers. Rogan was one of them, killed by the alien machine.

But if he was killed, how can Hawks now be talking to him? Simple. When transmitting a volunteer’s pattern to the Moon, a second copy is created on Earth. For a short period of time, the minds of the two copies are in a kind of synchrony (today we would say they are ‘entangled’) and the Earth copy can experience everything that the Moon copy sees and hears. But when the copy on the Moon is killed, the copy on the Earth suffers a tremendous psychic shock, which can kill them or send them mad.

A fascinating science-fictional scenario, that’s for sure. I have said, though, that this novel is primarily about character, and so it is. It’s remarkable, really, that the book doesn’t need to dwell much on the nature or origin of the alien construction itself. Instead, it’s all about the people involved.

Primarily it focuses on the character of Dr Edward Hawks, an engineering genius, but a humane man who suffers tremendous remorse for what he is doing to the volunteers yet feels bound to continue.

Then there’s the character of Al Barker, an ex-soldier who continually dices with death in reckless, near suicidal exploits. It is Barker, already drawn to death, who Hawks approaches to volunteer to explore the alien artefact, gambling that such a man will not be driven mad by experiencing the shock of death. In this he is correct.

Then we have the character of Claire Pack, Barker’s girlfriend, also seeking self-destruction but in a quite different way; and Connington, the sleazy HR man who first introduces Hawks to Barker, and who has lustful designs on Claire.

And finally we have the character of Elizabeth Cummings, a young fashion designer who Hawks meets by accident and falls in love with.

Some of the interplay between Claire, Barker and Connington verges on the histrionic and is a little overwritten; but is nevertheless engaging. Hawks’ mental struggles, though, are much more authentic and thought-provoking, as is the slow dawning of his love for Elizabeth. His interactions with her are again far deeper than those of most of the contemporary genre. And the author’s serious treatment of women is remarkable, I think, for the time in which he was writing.

"‘Do you want to know what it is with you and women?’

Hawks blinked at her. ‘Yes. Very much.’

‘You treat them like people.’

‘I do?’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never been able to understand them very well. I don’t know why they do most of the things they do. I’ve — As a matter of fact, I’ve had a lot of trouble with women.’

Elizabeth touched his hand. ‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. But that’s beside the point. Now, you think about something: I’m a good deal younger than you are.’

Hawks nodded, his expression troubled. ‘I’ve thought about that.’

‘Now you think about this, too: you’re not charming, dashing, or debonair. You’re funny-looking, as a matter of fact. You’re too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you’d be so out of place that I couldn’t enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won’t be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don’t feel that you’ve scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don’t try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?’"

This would be a refreshing passage to read even in much of today’s literary fiction (“Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?”). Certainly, these are complex characters a far cry from the flat 2D characters of much SF of the period.

At the same time, the novel raises serious philosophical questions. If two copies of a human being are made, which of them is the ‘real’ person? Does the soul exist, and is it lost when a duplicate human is made and the original destroyed? What is death? Could we face death calmly if we knew that a duplicate of ourselves could be recreated from a stored pattern?

The last sentence of the book, which I won’t spoil by quoting, is a punch to the gut.

A classic indeed, and well worth the read more than 50 years after it was written. ( )

Story: 6 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 7
Prose: 4

An incredibly strong start, but irrelevancies detracted from the story. In the end, the book is a bit obscure.
Tags: Technological death, teleportation, masculinity ( )

With "Rogue Moon," Budrys struggles to play out philosophical discussions on life, death, the meaning of True Manhood, and whether memory is immortality or not. To cause these to play out, he's whipped up an alien puzzle box much like that the Strugatski Brothers would perfect in "Roadside Picnic" and put it on the Moon, but it is more a MacGuffin than anything else; also, the matter transporter central to the plot presages that in 'Star Trek' by five years but ends up being the source of a massive, unspoken moral dilemma. Having created sentient, slave dopplegangers that have no rights or individual futures just seems to be a part of the job to everyone involved: ain't that nice?

The SF value is moot, though. The philosophical digressions are banal and blustery; the overarching frame of the story is both dated and unbelievable. But what makes this book nearly unreadable is the reduction of characters to theatrical masks, like in Greek tragedy: they are archetypes. There's the Rational But Clueless Man (Hawks), the Arrogant & Toxic Male (Barker), the Whore of Babylon (Claire), the Superficial Fool (Connington), the Blowhard Boss (Cobey), and the Patient Penelope (Elizabeth). What forgiving reviewers call "character development" reads to me like episode after episode of toxic posturing bathed in cigar smoke, Scotch, and pheromones.

This book is not just dated, but fails. Stanislaw Lem wrote a better, similar book then ("Eden," publ. 1959) and Alastair Reynolds intentionally improved on this more recently (novella "Diamond Dogs," 2001). Perhaps its air of sophistication and cerebral ruminations wowed the audience in 1960, but this is nothing more than an artifact now and should be read as such. ( )

El científico Ed Hawks ha creado el transmisor de materia, una máquina increíblemente poderosa que puede enviar a un hombre a la Luna al tiempo que crea un duplicado suyo aquí en la Tierra. Pero todos los voluntarios que son enviados a la Luna mueren unos pocos minutos más tarde en el laberinto alienígena que ha sido descubierto allí, mientras que sus duplicados terrestres, unidos telepáticamente a ellos, se ven sumidos en la locura. Hasta que aparece Al Barker, un aventurero que ha pasado toda su vida desafiando a la muerte, y que ahora está dispuesto a desentrañar definitivamente ese desafío alienígena.

Another book from the SF masterwork series: Rogue Moon was published in 1960, but its characters seem to belong to the 1950's rather than the 1960's and this is important because Budrys works as hard to present his protagonists as he does to tell a science fiction story. It is the dawning of the age of space travel and a mysterious artefact has been discovered on the dark side of the moon. It defies description, but occupies a space probably as big as a football field and it kills anybody trying to enter it. Doctor Edward Hawks has built a matter transmitting machine in an effort to probe the artefact. His machine can make duplicate copies of volunteers from earth, which it can transmit to the moon, allowing them to explore the artefact. Unfortunately the duplicates have not been able to last more than a few seconds inside the artefact without being killed and their destruction leads to insanity for the original copy remaining on earth. Hawks is running out of time and monetary support and so when the chief of human resources: Connington (the clue might be in the name) presents him with a candidate who has no fear of death, Hawks grabs at this last chance and agrees to meet Al Barker (for that is his name).

Hawks meets the thrill seeker and genuine all American hero at his home and walks into a tangled web of relationships. The girlfriend Clair Pack (where does he get these names from) is a wisecracking femme fatale who is weighing up her options with Barker and Connington, admitting to Hawks that she cannot help acting like a bitch (the dialogue is typical hard bitten detective novel fare). Hawks himself is not at ease with women, but after the stormy meeting at Barker's home, where the host and his girlfriend are as infuriating as each other, he meets and becomes attracted to a woman: Elizabeth Cummings (yes really) who picks him up on the long walk home.
While all of this has been going on, the artefact on the moon is largely forgotten, but the reader might have guessed by now, that it may have some influence on life on earth. Of course Barker cannot resist the challenge and agrees to be duplicated so that he can explore the mystery on the moon: the second part of the novel details his attempts to conquer the space inside the artefact with the help of Hawks and his team.

The main theme that emerges from the novel is death. Barker must conquer his own repeated deaths to explore the artefact. Hawks assistant Sam Latourette (another significant name) has terminal cancer and must soon accept his mortality. Hawks and his new girlfriend who genuinely fall in love, may have found a way to circumvent their fears with a more humanist approach. Clair Pack and Connington's attempt to ignore and run away from the human condition because of their own ego's is another approach. The puzzle for the reader is: what is the connection with the artefact on the moons surface? All well and good, but in my opinion Budrys's characters are so sharply conformist to 1950's cultural norms; for example the egotistical hero, the femme fatal, the inexperienced lover and the conniving cheat, that they lose some of their influence on the story. The actual exploration of the artefact is also a bit of an anticlimax. I could say that the novel is almost as crass as the names of its characters, but that would be unfair, as after all it is a 1960's science fiction novel that did hold my interest and so 3.5 stars. ( )