A novel about astronomical research
Against the Fall of Night is a story about astronomical research, of one man’s battle to prove that there is another universe out there, hidden below the light of the night sky. It is centred in that glorious epoch between 1960 and 2010 when mankind at last broke free from Earth’s atmosphere and had to confront the Cosmos as it truly is: vast, mysterious and very likely beyond his puny comprehension. But will he realise that, or seize on comforting fairy stories that will only serve to conceal the truth?
Tom Morgan the protagonist, often facing starkly contradictory evidence, is suspended between exultation and despair. Half heroic and half tragic, his quest becomes an obsession which drives him round the world in search of the killer clue, forces him into confrontation with a highly sceptical Establishment.
Starting in the swinging London of the mid-sixties the action moves on to remote observatories in Arizona, Australia, Africa, the Soviet Union, the Andes, Hawaii, …..and culminates on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, for Morgan’s quest eventually leads him to become one of the designers of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Morgan is no scientific cipher. An emotional single parent, he needs friends, comrades and lovers. He climbs, flies a glider, sails his boat and forges Van Gogh’s. Worse still he enjoys fighting a growing phalanx of enemies led by Sir Adrian Bellfounder, the unscrupulous Astronomer Royal. He is an extreme type: individual, competitive, irascible, passionate, imprudent. Throughout what will be a quartet, each part completely self-contained, but with the same central characters and spine plot, (see below) he is contrasted with his opposite, and lifelong friend and rival Frank, who has his own astronomical tale to tell. Frank is the attractive, balanced, unselfish character who can get men and women to work together to build dreams beyond the reach of any single one. The story starts with the two friends leaving their universities, with very different prospects before them.
The author was himself a professional astronomer throughout this epoch. From 1976 until 2010 he was a key member of the Hubble Space Telescope team. Hubble’s story, our story, which he had been preparing to write for 20 years, is packed with dreams, heroes, shocks, villains, and the odd rare triumph. Like one of Magellan’s crew he saw great wonders and has tall tales to tell; the fight to get born, the Challenger disaster, the crippled mirror, the astronaut repair missions, cancellation following the Columbia tragedy, renaissance, the race to prevent the space-craft dying, the huge discoveries… he was there; he was there; he was there. He knew the people, felt the pain, drank the wine.
ENTIRE QUARTET: ‘Written in the Stars’
‘Against the Fall of Night’ (1964 – 1974) .
‘The Whispering Sky’ 1976 – 1983) ,
‘Crouching Giant’ 1985 – 1995,
‘Beyond the Western Stars’ 1997 – 2014,
All four – each about 200 thousand words, i.e. 400 pages long have come out on Amazon, almost simultaneously (2020), as paperbacks £12.99 or as e-books £3.99 (2021)
Tags: a novel, astronomy, cosmology, galaxies, hidden galaxies, space telescope
June 13, 2021 at 3:26 am |
neumestno.ru
ABOUT MY BOOK ‘AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT’ | Thinking for ourselves