Rogue Moon

Rogue Moon is a short sf novel by Algis Budrys, published in 1960. It was a 1961 Hugo Award nominee, losing to Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. A novella-length version of the story was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2, edited by Ben Bova. Before 1969, every science fiction writer wrote his or her own version of the first Moon landing. Few carry the horror of Budrys' unsettling story. During all recorded history, the Moon has hovered above our heads, a timeless symbol for lovers' ecstasy. Goddesses & Gibson Girls have tripped the light fantastic of her beams while sonneteers & scientists have scanned her changing phases. Now humans had actually reached the Moon, & on it the explorers found a structure, a formation so terrible & incomprehensible that it couldn't even be described in human terms. It was a thing that devoured people; that killed them again & again in torturous, unfathomable ways. Earthbound are the only two men who could probe the thing: Al Barker, a homicidal maniac, whose loving mistress was death, & Dr. Edward Hawks, a scientific murderer, whose greatest mission was rebirth.