Major Tom Pilots the Mind Rocket
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
Today I cataloged one of the most intriguing and beautiful books I’ve ever seen, a sort of Steampunk homage to the Lunar landing, called the Apollo Prophecies:
Rumor has it that the surviving members of the only twelve humans to have walked on the moon call themselves the Order of Ancient Astronauts. Much has been written of these voyagers of yore, but if the Order of Ancient Astronauts should ever gather together like knights of the Round Table for a reverie, it is fairly certain that they would favor a new publication about their exploits titled The Apollo Prophecies.
Published by a non-profit organization called the Aperture Foundation located in New York that is dedicated to the advancement of photography in all its manifestations, The Apollo Prophecies is one of the most creative works produced to date about the moon exploration program. It consists of a slipcased package containing a dual sided, 19-foot long duotone photographic panorama that unfolds into a richly visual fantasy of a time-bending Moon expedition, together with a 16-page booklet telling a saga-like tale of Moon-dwelling civilizations predating and predicting the arrival of Apollo.
The photographic panorama is segmented into 60 panels and it can be paged through like a book or unfolded accordion style for a flowing mural effect. Free of text, we see a rocket launch a stylized space capsule to the moon. The pair of Apollo-era astronauts aboard land on the lunar surface, unpack the lunar rover, and embark upon the tasks of observation and rock collecting. They soon encounter a friendly civilization of Edwardian-era explorers, in addition to helpful space-suited monkeys and elephants, living on the moon. The truly ancient astronauts help the Apollo spacemen prepare their craft for the return voyage to Earth. Children will love the whimsy of these images and anyone with an appreciation of space as a frontier will admire the extravagance of the publication’s production.
Pictures can been seen here and here.
The book is for sale in all the usual places.
And I call dibs on a novel called the Order of Ancient Astronauts.
