Jed Mercurio & Gerard DeGroot
An unlikely pairing discuss the only topic they have a shared interest in: space
| 20 Aug 2007
There is more to the Book Festival’s apparently spurious pairings of authors than initially meets the eye. Jed Mercurio and Gerard DeGroot are unlikely to be friends, or colleagues, and they will never write similar or even complimentary books. Mercurio is a lauded television writer and novelist, who hits greatness when he is handed the right project (Bodies), but throws up dirt when he messes in suspect territory (Invasion Earth). DeGroot is a professor at the University of St Andrews and a popular conflict-historian, responsible for the grim analyses of The Bomb: A Life and Blighty.
But for their most recent work, they have each set their sights on space. Mercurio’s second novel, Ascent, is the story of a self-possessed Soviet fighter pilot-turned-cosmonaut. DeGroot’s history of the space race, Dark Side of the Moon, is also a document of the Cold War, although far more conclusive: “Hubris…everything that is good resides on Earth.”
Despite the grotesque spending, political abuse and NASA’s failure to realise the promise of the sci-fi pulps of the forties and fifties, the ‘voyage out’ is still a collection of ideas tainted with optimism. DeGroot quashes this entirely. The push for the moon, and beyond, was a story told to the American public by “cynics, demagogues and criminals.” More cash was used up reaching the moon than was spent on developing the atomic bomb, and it was all “to kick lunar dust in Soviet faces.” Needless to say, the book has not sold well across the Atlantic, and the hate mail and lawsuits coming DeGroot’s way have been plentiful. He bemoans an America addicted to “shallow gestures,” and finds an unlikely villain in JFK, who cynically appropriated the space programme to assist public and international relations, and an unlikely hero in Eisenhower, whose belated warning of the military-industrial complex is a ghostly voice likely to trouble us for some time.
DeGroot’s case against the futility of future exploration of space – he condemns Bush’s plans for Mars (“another futile planet”), for example – is so compelling, Mercurio’s novel gets limited attention, although his reading is good. His work, though, seems marginally more optimistic – any description of the wastes of space is bound to be tinged by some sense of wonder. And he provides the best confutation to DeGroot’s book, which is that NASA’s budget would have likely gone nowhere near social welfare, but into the arms race. The $35 billion spent on space is, after all, cheaper than a year in Vietnam.
Late in the talk, there was a sly dismissal of science-fiction (“based on faith rather than reason” according to DeGroot), which I did not applaud. The genre is big enough to make all cases, including the professor’s. With any luck, this will be demonstrated by Mercurio’s next project, an adaptation of Frankenstein for ITV, perhaps the best-known interrogation of the tragic implications of urgent dabbling, and big gestures.
But for their most recent work, they have each set their sights on space. Mercurio’s second novel, Ascent, is the story of a self-possessed Soviet fighter pilot-turned-cosmonaut. DeGroot’s history of the space race, Dark Side of the Moon, is also a document of the Cold War, although far more conclusive: “Hubris…everything that is good resides on Earth.”
Despite the grotesque spending, political abuse and NASA’s failure to realise the promise of the sci-fi pulps of the forties and fifties, the ‘voyage out’ is still a collection of ideas tainted with optimism. DeGroot quashes this entirely. The push for the moon, and beyond, was a story told to the American public by “cynics, demagogues and criminals.” More cash was used up reaching the moon than was spent on developing the atomic bomb, and it was all “to kick lunar dust in Soviet faces.” Needless to say, the book has not sold well across the Atlantic, and the hate mail and lawsuits coming DeGroot’s way have been plentiful. He bemoans an America addicted to “shallow gestures,” and finds an unlikely villain in JFK, who cynically appropriated the space programme to assist public and international relations, and an unlikely hero in Eisenhower, whose belated warning of the military-industrial complex is a ghostly voice likely to trouble us for some time.
DeGroot’s case against the futility of future exploration of space – he condemns Bush’s plans for Mars (“another futile planet”), for example – is so compelling, Mercurio’s novel gets limited attention, although his reading is good. His work, though, seems marginally more optimistic – any description of the wastes of space is bound to be tinged by some sense of wonder. And he provides the best confutation to DeGroot’s book, which is that NASA’s budget would have likely gone nowhere near social welfare, but into the arms race. The $35 billion spent on space is, after all, cheaper than a year in Vietnam.
Late in the talk, there was a sly dismissal of science-fiction (“based on faith rather than reason” according to DeGroot), which I did not applaud. The genre is big enough to make all cases, including the professor’s. With any luck, this will be demonstrated by Mercurio’s next project, an adaptation of Frankenstein for ITV, perhaps the best-known interrogation of the tragic implications of urgent dabbling, and big gestures.