Of a Fire on the Moon

Mailer's book on the Apollo 11 moon landing, expanding his three 1969 Life installments. Little, Brown, 11 January 1971; the London edition (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 3 September) was retitled A Fire on the Moon. Nominated for the National Book Award in the sciences category.

Of a Fire on the Moon is Mailer’s book-length meditation on the flight of Apollo 11, published by Little, Brown on 11 January 1971 — the first of eight Mailer titles the firm would publish. The British edition (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 3 September) appeared under the shortened title A Fire on the Moon. Because both editions carry a 1970 copyright date and advance excerpts had appeared in Life in 1969 and 1970, the precedence and true publication dates of the editions have been a recurring source of confusion; the dates above are Lennon’s.

The book incorporates, with major revisions, Mailer’s three-part Life series on the 1969 moon shot — “A Fire on the Moon” (69.81), “The Psychology of Astronauts” (69.83), and “A Dream of the Future’s Face” (70.1). It is here that Mailer fully develops the third-person persona of Aquarius, the detached and slightly deflated observer through whom he registers NASA’s triumph as both a technological sublime and a victory of the bland, corporate, and over-managed forces he distrusts. The dedication reads: “For Susan, for Dandy, for Betsey [sic] and Kate, for Michael and Stephen Mailer.”

The book was nominated for the National Book Award in the sciences category (see National Book Awards). Mailer later reported that he received $450,000 from all sources — hardcover, softcover, serial, and foreign rights — for the Life serialization and the book (see 71.21).

Reviews ran the full range: Morris Dickstein praised it in the New York Times Book Review (“A Trip to Inner and Outer Space,” 10 January), as did John P. Sisk in Commentary (“Aquarius Rising,” May); Richard Poirier (“Ups and Downs of Mailer,” New Republic, 23 January) and Benjamin DeMott (“Inside Apollo 11 with Aquarius Mailer,” Saturday Review, 16 January) were mixed; Pearl K. Bell was negative in the New Leader. Mailer’s letter “Unseemly Scourged Bystander” (71.8) answered DeMott’s treatment of his friend Eddie Bonetti. The book has since drawn substantial criticism, from Alvin Kernan’s “The Taking of the Moon” (1982) and Joseph Tabbi’s Postmodern Sublime (1995) to the Mailer Review essays of Nicole DePolo (2012) and Michael Glenday (2015). Portions reappear in The Time of Our Time (98.7).

Related pages

• A Fire on the Moon (69.81) | The Psychology of Astronauts (69.83) | A Dream of the Future’s Face (70.1)
• The Siege of Mailer (71.2) — Mailer’s fullest comment on the book
• Aquarius | Little, Brown and Company | National Book Awards
• 1971
• Norman Mailer's Side on 'Harper's' (71.21) | Unseemly Scourged Bystander (71.8) | The Time of Our Time (98.7)

First published: 1971-01-11
Form: nonfiction-narrative
Lennon & Lennon: 71.1
Cite as: /works/1971-01-11-of-a-fire-on-the-moon
Last updated: 2026-06-04