Robots had been there, and Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 had orbited the moon, but—until today—manned expeditions to the moon had been taken only in fancy: Lucian on a waterspout, Francis Godwin’s Gonsales in a chariot pulled by geese, Cyrano de Bergerac on a firework, Baron Münchausen on a silver hatchet, Edgar Allan Poe’s Hans Pfaal in a balloon, Jules Verne’s Baltimore Gun Club in a capsule fired from a giant cannon, H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon in a diving bell coated with anti-gravity paint, Hergé‘s Tintin in a red-and-white chequered rocket and Arthur C. Clarke’s Heywood Floyd on a Pan-Am lunar shuttle. Once NASA boot-prints scarred lunar dust, would the memory of these shadow-pioneers fade? Clarke, still alive to see how close his guesses would turn out, did not seem unduly concerned he was about to be out of a job.
— Moon Moon Moon, by Kim Newman
