Back to the Moon Back to the Moon Back to the Moon is a science fiction novel and Homer Hickam's first fictional book. Published in June 1999, Hickam wrote Back to the Moon using insider information he learned from NASA. The prologue of the novel begins with a dramatized account of the second EVA of Apollo 17. Astronaut Jack Schmitt discovers orange soil in Shorty Crater at the very end of the EVA and gathers samples in a race against time to get back to the LEM. Meanwhile, Wernher von Braun is watching the end of the mission on TV with other NASA engineers.
What the Moon Brings things. He comes to a stream: He sees that now the garden has no end, and where the walls used to be there are now more trees and plants and terrifying stone idols and pagodas. The dead faces urge him on farther and farther, as the stream becomes a river and leads him to the shore of a sea. Here the frightening moon makes the lotus-faces vanish: What the sea has uncovered are the ruins of an ancient city, a city of the dead. The narrator sees a black condor and wishes to ask it about the people he knows