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

[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.)