Reviews and Comments

Adventure, science, philosophy, discovery, environmentalism, camaraderie, humor... this book hit high marks on so many levels for me. Steinbeck and his best friend Ed Ricketts meld into a composite character as they narrate the voyage of the Western Flyer in the Gulf of California, picking up tide pool specimens, interacting with the locals, and shooting the breeze. Powered by 90 cases of beer, their six-week expedition turned out to be fertile ground not only for exploring a fascinating part of the world, but also for plumbing the depths of thought. The writing is almost universally top-notch, and whether this is attributable to Steinbeck's mastery of his craft, or Ricketts' singular mind, or both, it is difficult to say, but in the end perhaps it doesn't matter. Following the log is an excellent character sketch of Ricketts by Steinbeck, written after the former died when his car was hit by a train. The characterizations in the main text are also excellent, including the captain and crew of the Western Flyer, the ship itself, and even the temperamental outboard motor they used on their skiff.

"And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Frances, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."

Without a doubt, this is by far best book I've read about the space program. Collins was uniquely positioned to write such a singularly important book, being the closest eye-witness to one of humanity's towering achievements. Not participating directly in the landing, but listening to it from orbit 60 miles above the surface of the Moon, gives him an enhanced perspective, detached yet supremely interested, as evidenced by his futile attempts to locate his crewmates via his ship's sextant. This perspective, along with Collins's predispositions, yields fertile ground from which to reap rich meaning and context, commodities perhaps hard to come by for test pilots who have been trained to operate complex machines and collect raw data. Among his Apollo 11 crew, Collins represents a sort of middle ground between cool and reserved Neil Armstrong and hot and flamboyant Buzz Aldrin, possessing personality traits that served him well while flying solo in Columbia, and while writing this book. By this I mean that Collins offers the reader a balanced combination of technical information regarding his flights and those of his colleagues, and honest discussions of what all of this meant to him personally. After all, we send humans in space not only to collect data, but to hear their stories.

Project Gemini is often overlooked due to its position between the firsts of Mercury and the Moon landings. In some ways it's my favorite phase of the early space program though, as it represents, and indeed contains, much of the journey, the trial-and-error figuring out of basic yet complicated problems such as "how do you bring two spacecraft together in orbit?" and "how do you get around outside your spacecraft?" and "how long can astronauts live in space anyway?" Or indeed, "how do you put crews together?" These are things that were top-line prerequisites for going to the Moon. Collins flew on Gemini 10 with another legend, John Young, and performed one of the hairiest spacewalks in the program. The chapters covering Gemini are standouts in this superb book.

As mentioned earlier, Collins doesn't hesitate to personalize his narrative, to describe frankly his point-of-view and give his opinions on space exploration, politics, conservation, or less serious matters, all the while relating to the reader in a very personal way. This, along with his unique perspective and excellent writing style, makes Carrying the Fire a perennial essential read.