One Against the Moon

A stowaway on the first rocket to the Moon. That's how Robin Carew, a factory apprentice with stars in his eyes and nothing to lose, crashes the biggest launch in history. An orphan who's spent his whole life watching rocket tests from afar, talking his way onto a vessel never meant for human passengers, Robin finds himself trapped alone in the lightless caverns beneath lunar soil when the mission goes awry. He has two rabbits, a monkey, and a desperate hope that someone will find him before the rations run out. But the Moon has secrets. An underground river leads him deeper into alien passages where strange plants grow in absolute darkness and something else moves in the shadows, something that speaks in a language no human ear has ever heard. Wollheim delivers a latter-day Robinson Crusoe narrative refracted through atomic-age wonder: a lone human against an alien world, forced to become something more than the orphan boy who snuck aboard. It's bold, it's desperate, and it captures the 1950s dream of space exploration with genuine teeth. For anyone who wanted to run away and join the stars.