Rocket Dreams by Marina Benjamin, Chatto & Windus/Free Press in April, £12.99/$24, ISBN 0701169265/ 0743233433 Reviewed by Simon Ings
WE HAVE heard this story before: how the pioneering ambitions of the space age were only a local manifestation of our ancient desire to transcend mortal flesh. Then, when we discovered how hopelessly difficult it was for us ever to colonise space, how we disappeared into spaces of our own devising: the consensual hallucinations of the World Wide Web, strip malls and the Big Brother house.
And when we read contemporary novelists such as M. John Harrison and Gordon Burn, and see…
