To all appearances the launching of Capricorn One, the first spaceship to Mars, seemed perfectly normal. Everybody in the country was watching the countdown on television. But behind the scenes, two and a half hours before lift-off, a strange and terrifying drama was being played out. A NASA director was warning the three astronauts that their spacecraft was faulty. He told them they must fake the trip via computer magic. This way they could convince the President the mission had succeeded. Failure would mean the end of the space program. Nothing would stop these madmen. Not the truth. Not reality. Especially not the astronauts, who become unwilling conspirators. For them, a special fate had been arranged...
Author
Pseudonyms: Howard Lee; Frank S Shawn; Kenneth Robeson; Con Steffanson; Josephine Kains; Joseph Silva; William Shatner. Ron Goulart is a cultural historian and novelist. Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction—including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972)—Goulart has written for the pulps since 1952, when the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. Since then he has written dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson. In the 1990s, he became the ghostwriter for William Shatner’s popular TekWar novels. Goulart’s After Things Fell Apart (1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award. In the 1970s Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1980 he published Hail Hibbler, a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series. Goulart has also written several comic mystery series, including six books starring Groucho Marx. Having written for comic books, Goulart produced several histories of the art form, including the Comic Book Encyclopedia (2004).
