By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
History tells us that, mere days before Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, a document titled “In Event of Moon Disaster” was delivered to the White House.
According to the document, if the two astronauts ended up being hopelessly stranded on the Moon, President Richard Nixon would first telephone “each of the widows-to-be”.
He would then deliver a doomsday speech to America and the world:
“[These two men] are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding… They will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.”
“For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
This is the harrowing scenario expertly illustrated in Australian author David Dyer’s brilliant
novel This Kingdom of Dust, where the Eagle has landed but is now dead.
Unless Neil and Buzz can fix it, they will suffer a slow, agonising death in the Moon’s “magnificent desolation”.
In exquisite prose, the story is told from the perspectives of Buzz on the Moon, his wife Joan on Earth, and Aquarius, a writer and journalist who is determined to write her story.
Their observations of the unfolding drama form the story’s backbone.
Further, individual reflections upon this tragedy are set against the backdrop of the political and social turmoils of the 1960s America.
Particularly noteworthy is the character Madalyn, whose attack against NASA serves to highlight Buzz’s profound faith.
Another prominent character is Neil, an extraordinary gentleman who shines true and bright in Buzz’s eyes. Their friendship is inspiring yet heart-wrenching.
It is an intellectual connection only to be rivalled by the solid sisterhood among the “astrowives”, those women who stand “proud, thrilled, happy” beside their astronaut husbands in public but suffer endless heartache and emotional drain in private.
Perhaps the most impressive character in the story is Joan, and the nuanced presentation of her multifaceted life is astonishing. Here is a woman with courage and dignity, whom the later generations only get to know via her obituary.
She is given not just a voice but an AGENCY in the story, for which we are grateful.
Meanwhile, in This Kingdom of Dust, Aquarius is not just a character, but one who writes himself and the others into his own book of the same name.
Such contest between the writer and the written appears to be a theme that Dyer enjoys exploring.
As with the case of his previous book The Midnight Watch, meticulous research helps imagining the multidimensional and multidirectional reality.
Indeed, in his “Author’s Notes”, Dyer recounts how he learned from Michael Collins’ 1974 book Carrying the Fire that scorpions like to hide in people’s clothing. “Perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing in this novel,” he confesses before signing off as “Scorpio”, an invitation for readers to merge facts with fiction.
Highly recommended.
