Rocket Ship to Hell

by Jeffrey Ford

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60's space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard.
At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

32 pages, ebook

First published July 20, 2013

About the author

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the Fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.

He lives in southern New Jersey and teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County. He has also taught at the summer Clarion Workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers in Michigan. He has contributed stories, essays and interviews to various magazines and e-magazines including MSS, Puerto Del Sol, Northwest Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Argosy, Event Horizon, Infinity Plus, Black Gate and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

He published his first story, "The Casket", in Gardner's literary magazine MSS in 1981 and his first full-length novel, Vanitas, in 1988.

Reviews

[Gregor Xane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford has written himself into a number of his short stories. It's a nice technique for establishing a sort of instant verisimilitude, while at the same time keeping the reader guessing. This is another of these stories. It's a bizarre pub story that takes place near a science fiction and fantasy convention he attended twelve years ago.

You can read this story for free at Tor.com.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 'story within a story', this one by Ford relates the premise of a Sf author that slips out of a Sf Con, ends up at a bar, and begins to relate his own story/account to other drinkers of being chosen for an orbital ship mission to transcribe what space is like. Pretty interesting idea, but as a line from the story says, "the money never came", and that's how I felt about the lackluster ending.

[_eol_ · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whole time, I waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn't - just slowly slid off this story's foot, deflated and died.

I hate anticlimactic endings.

[Arkapravo Bhaumik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to classify, literary fiction meets scifi meets horror meets humour meets magical realism. Ford builds it up nicely, but the ending is not fulfilling, and leaves more questions open to inquiry and the reader's imagination.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fictional story of a mission kept under wraps as told by the author/astronaut Cole Werber. It details start off in the wonder and grueling work to go off in space exploration. But then it all goes awry as claustrophobia and space sickness take effects on the aspiring candidates chosen. All that glory of space travel hard hit by the dangers of reality. It makes me wonder, if it could have occurred?

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very "reflecting on the golden age" short. Definitely not a horror, so don't be mislead by Tor.com's labelling. It was... a decent read. Nothing too exciting, but serviceable. A drunk writer talks about his secret mission into space.

[Kinsey_m · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent short story by Jeffrey Ford. An iroical homage to golden age sci-fi. I loved the dig about slipstream.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three writers walk into a bar at Worldcon. Wait, one's the bartender!

Shaggy-rocket story. Pretty good, but overlong: 3.3 stars. Collected in Ford's "A Natural History of Hell: Stories."

[Heni · Rating 3 out of 5]

It leaves more questions than answers, although I like the rocket journey. Who is this Rocket Club, though?

[Patrick Bruss (Crypticus) · Rating 1 out of 5]

An utterly pointless story lacking a climax and completely devoid of any horror. Apparently the "Hell" of the title is diarrhea and claustrophobia. Like the people in the bar, I feel I was ripped off by a story that wasted my time.