Aiming for the Moon

After almost five decades, I finally had the time and space to get back into a hobby that I enjoyed very much as a kid: building scale models. Of course, things had changed somewhat, not only in the hobby and in my own life, but in the world as well. Models were much more expensive and harder to find since model shops seems to be heading toward extinction, as are bookstores. As a lad, my hands were more nimble in handling small parts and they were not stricken by arthritis. Not everything has changed for the worse, though. I am much more patient now and and there are loads more resources available now, primarily the internet and YouTube. There was no one to ask about model building when I was a kid, but now all the information I want is just a few keystrokes away or accessible with an Amazon Firestick.

One of the models I built was the Luna, the spaceship from Destination Moon. It was not a complicated build, but still very fun. It's more of a painting project, really, than an assembly project. The ship itself is classic silver, hand painted, not sprayed. The based was very colorful by the time I got through with it, using various metallic acrylics, as I did when I built the Dick Tracy Magnetic Space Coup.

I've seen the film several times, but decided to read up on it anyway. I was rather shocked when, according to Wikipedia and IMDB, the film was based on the Robert A, Heinlein novel Rocket Ship Galileo. I knew this was wrong, that the the film was based on his novella The Man Who Sold the Moon, but everywhere I looked confirmed the information. I wondered, at least briefly, if I had slipped into an alternate history, you know the kind of place where the children's books about the Bears are Berenstein rather than Berenstain, or where Nelson Mandela did not die in prison.

I read Rocket Ship Galileo in second or third grade, and several times since then. For those who don't know the plot, three teenagers go to the Moon in a rocket ship invented by one boy's uncle. There they discover a secret Nazi base. There are no kids in the film, no uncle, and definitely no Moon Nazis. The film has much in common, however, with The Man Who Sold the Moon, an industrialist building a lunar rocket and using his project to lead humanity into space. Well, I know films often do not come out much like the books upon which they are based.

David Morrell, author of First Blood, made a comment in his book, Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Writing, that when Hollywood gets their mitts on a book, it will be changed in ways the author never dreamed. In the film contract for First Blood was a clause for a sequel. He wanted to know how the heck there could be a sequel since nearly everyone in the book died. He was told (paraphrasing): "Listen, kid, if the film is successful and they want to make a sequel, there will be a sequel, even if they have to turn it into a pirate musical set on a submarine." There are reasons why I live in dread of success, and having to deal with Hollywood comprises almost all of them. Still, no teenage inventors, no crazy uncle and, most of all, no Moon Nazis. On the other hand, look what Hollywood did to World War Z ("The film contained everything you loved about the title"), I am Legend and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

However, if one wants Moon Nazis (and who doesn't?), there's always the unabashedly satiric, goofy and occasionally funny Iron Sky and its rather pulpish sequel Iron Sky: The Coming Race. Personally, I think it easier to make a case that Iron Sky is a loose (very loose) adaptation of Rocket Ship Galileo than was Destination Moon. It's the Moon Nazis, you know.