Man Who Missed the Moon
“Kirk Hammond found himself facing the dangers of the space age he pioneered”
in: The Star Weekly (Aug. 15, 1959)
Illustrated by Terry Sevier

The Star of Life
Toronto : Dodd, 1959. –

The Star of Life
Greenwich : Fawcett, 1959.10. –
187 p. ; 18 cm. – (Crest Book ; S-329) (Fawcett World Library) NUC: 70-72300
Cover: Powers
“The strange and terrifying adventure of the first man in orbit around the moon” – Cover
How Long Had He Been Lost In Space?
Slowly, Kirk Hammond pushed his way back to consciousness. He remembered then that there had been trouble – that his ship Explorer 19, earth’s first manned satellite, had failed to orbit properly – that he had gone astray in space.
Hammond looked up at the sky to get his bearings. He was a man who knew the constellations thoroughly, but it seemed to him there was a something wrong with the stars. Something terribly, insanely wrong.
Frantically he checked again. No, the vast star clock did not lie.
The Truth hit him then like an icy belt of terror. Either he was mad, or dead – or he had been asleep in space for nearly a thousand centuries!

Book review

• Heatley, Tom, in: Vector, no. 9, Sep 1960

The Star of Life (Book Club Edition)
New York : Distributed by Dodd-Mead, 1959.4. –
192 p. ; 22 cm. – (A Torquil Book) LCCN: 59-6638
Note: No price
Note: “BOOK CLUB/EDITION” at the lower right corner of the front flap of the original, first printing dust jacket is unclipped. — Currey
Note: Has printing code “4” on page 192 — Currey
Note: A second printing has printing code “A14” on page 192 — Currey
Kirk Hammond was a man alone.
He had been chosen to ride in the first manned satellite to go out around the Moon and back to Earth. But when the satellite failed to orbit properly, it went on past the Moon into the vastness of outer space, and a whole world watched helplessly as he was borne toward an unthinkably lonely death.
Yet destiny decreed that Kirk Hammond should suffer, not death but a pseudo-death. And he awoke from it to find that a hundred centuries had passed and that the space age which had begun in the 20th Century had now grown into a vast galactic civilization that had carried the sons of Earth to countless stars and worlds. But, unexpectedly, the conquest of space had changed Man himself, and the human race had become not one but several species.
Hammond was plunged into the climactic struggle between the new races. And in his quest with a desperate band for the mysterious Star of Life that was the key to the struggle, in his relations with the strange and beautiful Thayn Marden who was not a human woman, in his odyssey through the mighty suns and earthly worlds of the galaxy, a man of the 20th Century found himself facing the dangers of the great space age which he himself helped pioneer.

The Star of Life
New York : Distributed by Dodd-Mead, 1959.2. –
192 p. ; 22 cm. – (A Torquil Book) LCCN: 59-6638
Note: First edition, trade issue, the earliest, with price 2.95 at upper right corner of front dust jacket flap — Currey
Note: Has printing code “4” on page 192. – Currey
Book reviews:

• Analog. 64(4):152. December 1959. (P. Miller)