Captain Future: Lost Apollo

Captain Future (Allen Steele) #6

by Allen M. Steele, Michael Kaluta (illustrator), M.D. Jackson (illustrator)

From the dawn of the Space Age comes an unexpected visitor … and a new challenge for CAPTAIN FUTURE and the Futuremen as they confront the enigma of the LOST APOLLO!

The spacecraft that has emerged from a cosmic rift between Earth and the Moon looks like something from a museum, yet history has no record of either an Apollo 20 lunar mission or the three NASA astronauts who are aboard the archaic vessel. Have they travelled here from a parallel universe? And if so, then how and why?

Curt Newton and his heroic team intercepts the 20 th century space vessel and offers sanctuary to its baffled crew. Together with an old foe, they seek to return the stranded astronauts to their own timeline. And it’s there that they encounter a menace that threatens not only the two universes but many others as well, as Captain Future searches for a way to bring home the LOST APOLLO.

Classic space adventures featuring the greatest space hero of science fiction’s Golden Age continue with a NEW storyline that begins here! a long-lost interview with Space Opera masters EDMOND HAMILTON and LEIGH BRACKETT!

“The right way to revamp classic pulp characters.” — The Pulp Super-Fan

Genres: Science Fiction

169 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 11, 2024

About the author

Before becoming a science fiction writer, Allen Steele was a journalist for newspapers and magazines in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Missouri, and his home state of Tennessee. But science fiction was his first love, so he eventually ditched journalism and began producing that which had made him decide to become a writer in the first place.

Since then, Steele has published eighteen novels and nearly one hundred short stories. His work has received numerous accolades, including three Hugo Awards, and has been translated worldwide, mainly into languages he can’t read. He serves on the board of advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also belongs to Sigma, a group of science fiction writers who frequently serve as unpaid consultants on matters regarding technology and security.

Allen Steele is a lifelong space buff, and this interest has not only influenced his writing, it has taken him to some interesting places. He has witnessed numerous space shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center and has flown NASA’s shuttle cockpit simulator at the Johnson Space Center. In 2001, he testified before the US House of Representatives in hearings regarding the future of space exploration. He would like very much to go into orbit, and hopes that one day he’ll be able to afford to do so.

Steele lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, Linda, and a continual procession of adopted dogs. He collects vintage science fiction books and magazines, spacecraft model kits, and dreams.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lost Apollo is a new installment of Steele's Captain Future reboot. Captain Future was a pulp science fiction hero with his own titular magazine during World War II. There were seventeen issues published from 1940- '44, and adventures continued to be published in Startling Stories magazine until 1951. The character was created by Mort Weisinger and Leo Margulies (which makes the title of the current series, "Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future," a little problematical, though Hamilton did write the majority of the novels in the original series), and the magazine was announced at the very first World SF Convention in 1939. Captain Future was something of a Doc Savage in space character. His parents were killed by a political criminal they were hiding from in a secluded base on the moon, and he was raised by a robot, an android, and a brain-in-a-box scientific genius, who became his "Futuremen" team when he grew up and started his career as a crimefighter of the space-ways. He acquired a girlfriend and makes friends with some other members of the planetary police and solar guard and even the president of the solar system. Steele updated and rebooted the character from its 1930s origins to current scientific knowledge and social conventions in five previous volumes. (Curt and Joan got married... wow, it only took eighty some years.) This one is the start of a new adventure. (But not the end... it unfortunately ends on something of a cliffhanger.) The Lost Apollo of the title is a 1970s lunar mission which didn't happen in our universe. It's somehow been transported from where it started into Captain Future's universe and jumped far forward in time. Steele does a very good job in balancing three very different styles and outlooks: the colorful juvenile pulp exuberance of Hamilton's (who am I to argue?) original, his own jazzed up reboot (as evidenced by the nifty cover from none other than the legendary Michael Kaluta), and the gritty true history of the Apollo program straight from Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff. The fifty-fifth anniversary of the first landing is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I found Lost Apollo to be a great read for the 4th of July.

[Dale Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curt Newton, AKA Captain Future, along with his friends Otho, Grag, Simon Wright, and his new bride Joan, have fought criminals, anarchists, and pirates across not only the nine planets of our solar system, but also to planets circling far away stars. Those battles have been strange and, in many cases, taking them to the edge of the eternal blackness, yet, they have survived and persevered against some of the most evil beings the universe has ever given birth to. But now, amazingly, the strangest adventure for Captain Future and the Futuremen takes place nowhere further away than within hailing distance of the place of his birth, as the most mysterious and seemingly impossible happens as visitors from an improbable place hint at something even darker and more deadly for an unsuspecting Earth...Just not the one that the team of the Futuremen has promised to defend...

LOST APOLLO is the 5th in the updated, and more mature, series of Captain Future (the 6th overall if you count the stand alone AVENGERS OF THE MOON that was Allen Steele's first foray into the Captain Future Universe), as well as starting a new story arc after the previous 4-book arc. A reminder that, this is not your father's CAPTAIN FUTURE. The pulpish and mostly young reader, teen type stories of the 40s and 50s provide the underpinnings and elements of these new stories, but Steele has turned the writing up and created more of a young adult feel with more adult themes and storytelling. And, while Steele has updated much of the feel and atmosphere, he has definitely kept the general feel of what it made Captain Future the premiere future science fiction hero pulp of its time with his avowed love of the space opera readily visible in every page and chapter. NEW READERS: you won't have to have read any of the original pulps, OR any of Steele's previous Captain Future stories to enjoy this story, though i definitely recommend picking them up if you enjoy this one. Can't wait until the next entry.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great pulp adventure, but this publisher desperately needs to hire a copy editor.