Talk:Marooned (novel)

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Question: Should Martin Caidin's Marooned (1964) be classed as a science fiction tale or as the first 'space' story? The space hardware described in it already existed in when the book was written. It only differs from reality historically rather than technologically, in that no Mercury astronaut was ever stranded in space by failed retro rockets, and likewise no Apollo-Skylab astronauts as in the 1969 revision. Neither did any manned Gemini flights take place in 1964, nor any manned orbital lifting body flights in the early 1970s, but Caidin assumes that NASA could have prepared and launched these craft under the pressure to mount rescue missions. Caidin's attention to the possible gives the story more in common with aviation-themed fiction. Perhaps it is a "space" story, the first of a genre presently underdeveloped due to the difficulty for most thriller writers of creating gripping tales within the real-life boundaries of the still underdeveloped field of manned space travel. --360decrees (talk) 02:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 03:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC). Substituted at 23:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)