G. L. Vandenburg 11 min read

The Ajax XX becomes the first American craft to land on the Moon, orbiting a day and a half first, exploring the dark side, before Captain Robb makes history with an utterly novel twist.

G. L. Vandenburg's 1958 story puts a fresh spin on the well-worn first-Moon-landing tale. Clever, surprising golden-age SF. Read it for a story that takes humanity's first lunar landing somewhere no reader will quite expect.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).