Interesting bit of SF.

[kengr]

There's obscure SF book that is about an interplanetary race. It's called the Armstrong Classic after the first man to land on the moon.

Nothing strange there, right?

Except the book is copyright 1952, and has Major Armstrong landing on the moon in 1964. and the first Armstrong Classic is in 2000.

The book is Rocket Jockey by Phillip St. John (a pen name of Lester del Rey).

Comments

[fayanora]

Oh that's right up there with one I've known about since I was a kid. Apparently there was a book about a ship called the SS Titan, said to be unsinkable, sinking in the north Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. The book is called "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan" by Morgan Robertson. And it was written 14 years before the Titanic sunk on its maiden voyage! The Titan on the cover of the book even looks just like the Titanic!

https://unrealfacts.com/the-sinking-of-the-titanic-was-predicted-14-years-earlier-book/

I first read about that book in a book called "Welcome to Weirdsville," which was all about strange coincidences, Fortean occurrences, and other weird but true stuff.

[siliconshaman]

Either someone had their crystal ball tuned in just right that day, or Lester del Ray is a time traveller and couldn't resist putting just enough fact in his fiction to weird people out...

[kengr]

Well, he still had Mercury as a "one face" world. But he did have Venus as a nasty place with a poisonous atmosphere, so he was closer to right there than all the "wet, jungle planet" folks.

His Mars had just an unusable wisp of atmosphere, but still had some plant life. So that's a 50/50 split.

And, of course, like everybody else he totally missed Jupiter's radiation belts. Of course, back then we didn't know about *Earth's* radiation belts.

[siliconshaman]

Well, IRL Mars could still have some lichen or unicellular plant life under a rock or hiding in the sand.

[acelightning73]

I met Lester del Rey a couple of times, and it would be perfectly reasonable to think he was a time traveler. He was an extremely weird little man, and one hell of a clever writer.(Nerves made a big impression on my adolescent mind.)

[mdlbear]

I remember reading that book a l o o o o n g time ago.

[kengr]

I read it before Apollo 11 (probably more than once). And I've read it a few times since.

The book is available at the Internet Archive for free.