The Translunar Narrative in the Western Tradition

Long before Neil Armstrong made the first human footprints on the surface of Earth's Moon in 1969, writers have imagined what such a voyage would be like. This book discusses the most famous translunar literary voyages-from Dante's Paradiso to H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon-and examines how humanity's fascination with flight away from the earth coincides with our anxiety about technology and the growing schism between the sciences and the humanities. Authors of post-Apollo era novels such as John Updike (Rabbit Redux) and Saul Bellow (Mr. Sammler's Planet) reiterate much of the awe and many of the concerns expressed by their literary predecessors. This study shows how the translunar narrative is an especially fruitful locus for examining the rift between "the two cultures," and how the translunar accounts might also be a place to begin searching for ways to overcome that rift.