By Sam Graham
It’s a title that makes Aron Ralston look like a pussy. 5 days trapped under a boulder? Yeah, try 7 days on the fucking moon, son!
Horror in space has always been a soft spot of mine. It appeals to both of my major houses of interest: Horror and science fiction. As the last great unknown, space is the last great source of intrigue and unexplainable terror outside of YouTube’s Comments section.
Written by Norwegian Johan Harstad and published in 2008, 172 Hours On The Moon (DARLAH in Norway) had a fairly creative advertising campaign behind it. Live action adverts and interviews were made to generate the idea that it was a real life current affair, similar to that of The Blair Witch Project back in 1999.
The story opens strong with a secret meeting of government officials. They’re discussing the Moon and why no Apollo missions have been there for a while. Hints of something strange, then the chapter ends. This part alone is very well presented, with certain text being blacked out, preventing you, the reader from seeing it for confidentiality. It lets the reader know they’re privy to something ultra-top secret.
The bulk of the story is about NASA’s plan to send teenagers to the Moon with proper astronauts to do some research, but we already know that’s just a front, because they said so in the prologue. There’s something on the moon and top brass want to know what it is.
Enter the three heroes: Mia, from Norway, Midori, from Japan, and Antoine, from France. They’re selected at random by NASA for the Savage Garden treatment of flying to the Moon and back.
Once the team arrive at the moon however, shit gets real. What was on the moon is quickly revealed and through some brief exposition, we learn that it’s worse that we thought. The presence of these entities again tie into real events such as the Apollo 13 mission. Then, once all’s been said, it hits the fan.
The story ramps up into full-blown John Carpenter territory and carries on through to an ending that perfectly fits the bleak tone of the last couple of acts.
It’s interesting to note that Harstad weaves real life astronomical events into this story of moon monsters. The most prominent standout was the ‘Wow! Signal’. This is a real life event that tin foil hats still argue over today. Each of the kids go through a separate unnerving event that relates to this signal. There’s also the Apollo missions. Not just Apollo Eleven (Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins - who no one cares about), and gives the real story of Apollo 13 (the one Tom Hanks did a film about). The author clearly has a vested interest in astronomy and he’s put it to good use here.
It might sound a little hokey, sending teenagers to the moon, but it works within the confines of the story. It’s all spin to get public opinion on their side, basically. After all, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. It’s about time someone other than middle-class helicopter parents are thinking about the children!
I was surprised to find that this book is classed as a YA story. There’s an awful lot of brutality in it, and not in a ‘precocious girl hunted by government’ kind of way either. It gets horrible, which is what makes it worth reading.
It’s not perfect however. While the opening paragraph sends shudders through the rest of the book, it’s a fair while before the crew actually get to the moon. So while the kid’s confrontations with the Wow! Signal stuff is eerie, it does seem shoved in to keep some horror in the first half of the book to keep the reader hooked. Actually tying it in with the Wow! Signal was a stroke of genius, but also the presence on the Moon is exactly that: on the Moon. If it can interact with Earth those 3 times, why not do it all the time? It never gets much of a mention once they get to the Moon anyway. It doesn’t seem to follow the rules of the presence on the Moon. Interacting with the kids before they leave Earth implies a sort of clairvoyance, but we never see anything like this when they’re face to face. It’s like the rules to how they work are a little too fluid, or they just weren’t set out.
My only other gripe would be the cover. Obviously I know that the authors rarely have the clout to dictate the cover art of their books, but whoever decided that this was a good one at Atom HQ is an idiot. It looks like an advert for Mothercare.
Be that as it may though, this book had me hooked from the moment I first heard about it. I started it the day it arrived and finished it 48 hours later. It’s got some great set pieces, and while you do have to wade through a bit of teenage angst to get there, it makes the massacre all the more satisfying.
Enjoyed this piece? Then 'like' The Crusades of A Critic on Facebook. Sam also has a Tech Noir novel, 'An Inside Joke', which can currently be viewed here; his first novella 'Iron Country' is available to buy here; a horror short story, 'We Must Never Found Out', published here; and finally, another short horror story 'Eagal' available to buy here. Phew.
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