This National Moon Day, take a giant leap into the cosmos without leaving your armchair! Whether you’re a budding astronomer, a history enthusiast, or simply captivated by our celestial neighbor, there’s a book about the Moon for everyone. Celebrate humanity’s enduring fascination with its closest companion by exploring these top reads, from thrilling accounts of lunar missions to deep dives into its mysteries and magic. Let’s dive in!
1. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel’s ambitious novel, Sea of Tranquility, sweeps across time, from the Canadian wilderness in 1912 to a Moon colony in both the 2200s and 2400s. As I was finalizing my own novel, Moonrising, which focuses on the founding of the first Moon colony in 2073, I thoroughly enjoyed Mandel’s unique perspective on a lunar settlement across different eras. I was particularly fascinated by the Night City, a colony dome that lost its artificial sky projection and was plunged into perpetual darkness.
2. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
I was instantly captivated by the audacious first line of Seveneves: “The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” This epic novel unfolds in two distinct parts—a near-future narrative of humanity’s desperate race to survive the apocalypse, followed by a far-future story detailing the return to Earth five thousand years later. In my own writing, I drew inspiration from Stephenson’s grounded, realistic approach to the science of living in space, examining everything from the impact on the human body to the harsh realities of resource scarcity.
3. Red Rising series by Pierce Brown
The Red Rising series introduces us to Darrow, a low-ranking Red performing dangerous work under brutal conditions on Mars, who ultimately infiltrates the ruling Gold class to dismantle his oppressors. While the initial books are primarily set on Mars, we catch glimpses of the pivotal role played by Earth’s Moon, Luna. Luna serves as the capital planet and the seat of power for the solar system’s ruling family, House Lune. Its low gravity and lack of atmosphere made Luna the ideal port for humankind’s colonization efforts across other planets and moons in the solar system.
4. Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan and Don Davis
For an unparalleled first-hand account of walking on the Moon, I highly recommend the astronaut memoir Last Man on the Moon. Accessible, witty, and deeply poignant, Eugene Cernan recounts his experience as the last person to walk on the Moon in 1972. Eugene even gets a shout-out in my novel, Moonrising, including the powerful final statement he made before departing the lunar surface: “And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we come and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
5. Bonus: The Moon in Fantasy
My “to be read” pile features several Moon-related fantasy books that I’m eager to dive into. I’m looking forward to Courtney Floyd’s Higher Magic, which features a magical system intricately tied to Moon phases. Millie Abecassis’s novella, Daughters of the Blue Moon, offers an adult Red Riding Hood retelling where the Moon is an abstract deity. And Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess is a fantasy novel inspired by the Chinese Moon goddess legend, with its main character raised on the Moon itself. I love how stories about the Moon continue to ignite the imagination across such a diverse range of genres.