High Vacuum
Encyclopedia
High Vacuum is a science fiction
novel
by Charles Eric Maine
. It was first published in 1957 by Ballantine Books
.
, and crashes, killing one of the four-man crew and marooning the rest. The novel follows the castaways as they struggle to survive and return to Earth.
wrote
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Charles Eric Maine
Charles Eric Maine
Charles Eric Maine was an English science fiction writer whose most prominent works were published in the 1950s and 1960s...
. It was first published in 1957 by Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
.
Synopsis
The first manned moon ship, Alpha, runs out of fuel just before landing in the Mare ImbriumMare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium, Latin for "Sea of Showers" or "Sea of Rains", is a vast lunar mare filling a basin on Earth's Moon and one of the larger craters in the Solar System. Mare Imbrium was created when lava flooded the giant crater formed when a very large object hit the Moon long ago...
, and crashes, killing one of the four-man crew and marooning the rest. The novel follows the castaways as they struggle to survive and return to Earth.
Critical reception
In the June 1958 issue of Science Fiction Stories, Damon KnightDamon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
wrote
Maine's style is stiff and pompous, but it moves the story along purposefully; his characters are oversimplified but vivid and forceful at times...The only thing really wrong with the book, in fact, is the science in it. Maine's physics is bad, his chemistry worse...The gross errors in this novel are in the area of common knowledge (as if a Western hero should saddle up a pueblo and ride off down the cojone): any one of them could have been corrected by ten minutes with a dictionary or an encyclopedia.
External links
- High Vacuum at The Open Library