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Two-time Sidewise Award-winning author, Alan Smale, brings us an exciting alternate 1979 where the US and the Soviets have permanent Moon bases, orbiting space stations, and crewed spy satellites supported by frequent rocket launches.
Apollo 32, commanded by career astronaut Vivian Carter, docks at NASA's Columbia space station en route to its main mission: exploring the volcanic Marius Hills region of the Moon. Vivian is caught in the crossfire as four Soviet Soyuz craft appear without warning to assault the orbiting station. In an unplanned and desperate move, Vivian spacewalks through hard vacuum back to her Lunar Module and crew and escapes right before the station falls into Soviet hands.
Their original mission scrubbed, Vivian and her crew are redirected to land at Hadley Base, a NASA scientific outpost with a crew of eighteen. But soon Hadley, too, will come under Soviet attack, forcing its unarmed astronauts to daring acts of ingenuity and improvisation.
With multiple viewpoints, shifting from American to Soviet perspective, from occupied space station to American Moon base under siege, to a covert and blistering US Air Force military response, Hot Moon tells the gripping story of a war in space that very nearly might have been.
"Smale (The Clash of Eagles trilogy), a NASA astrophysicist and data archive manager, cleverly uses his insider knowledge of the American space program to craft a nail-biting thriller set in a plausible alternate 1979. The Cold War is heating up in space. The Soviet Union’s desire to beat the U.S. has led to a reckless approach to its cosmonaut program, which has cost Russian lives, but also enabled the Soviets to land the first man on the Moon. For NASA astronaut Vivian Carter, however, there’s been an upside to the competition; because the third Russian cosmonaut on the Moon was female, NASA responded by bolstering the roles of American women within its own program. Now Carter heads the Apollo 32 mission—but her planned lunar landing is jeopardized when the space station she’s docked at comes under attack from a Soviet craft. Carter scrambles to keep herself and her crew safe—but this attack is just the opening salvo to what soon becomes all-out war. Smale makes the most of this conceit, coupling suspenseful plot developments with fully realized characters. Fans of Chris Hadfield’s thematically similar The Apollo Murders will be hooked. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Assoc. (July)"— Publishers Weekly
"I loved it. Great 'hard' science fiction with convincing space battles." —Hugo and Nebula-wining Grandmaster, Larry Niven (author of Ringworld)
“The pace is headlong… the perfect balance of danger and courage wrapped around science details that remind us that we’re in the hands of a writer who has the facts right. Masterful work.”— Rick Wilber, award-winning author of Alien Morning and Alien Day
“Hot Moon is a provocative science fiction novel set in an alternative but plausible reality. It follows a war in space with original, imaginative flourishes." —Foreword Reviews
"I loved it. Great 'hard' science fiction with convincing space battles." —Larry Niven, Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author of Ringworld
“Alan Smale is one of the brightest stars in the hard-SF firmament, and Hot Moon is his best novel yet. Enjoy!” —Robert J. Sawyer, Nebular and Hugo Award-winning author The Oppenheimer Alternative
"As the well depicted and conceived military action unfolds, the conspiracy that pits astronauts and cosmonauts against each other begins to surface. Not all enemies are actually enemies—and some friends and allies are anything but that." —Eric Flint, author of 1632
Alan Smale is an award-winning science fiction (hard SF and alternate history) and fantasy author who has sold over fifty pieces of short fiction to Asimov’s, Galaxy’s Edge, Abyss & Apex, and other magazines and anthologies. His short story “Gunpowder Treason” earned him a second Sidewise Award in 2022. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Lightspeed, Journey Planet, and Galaxy's Edge. Alan grew up in England, and received degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from Oxford University. Until recently he performed research into Galactic neutron star and black hole binary systems at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and served as the Director of one of NASA’s big-three astrophysical data archives.