ALL THE MOONLIGHT ON EARTH

After the Soviets’ launch of the Sputnik satellite, a company behind a secret project that’s already built a moon base using teleportation prepares to go public in Muehlbauer’s alternate-history thriller.

In a more high-tech 1957, America remains shocked when the USSR launches its first Sputnik satellite into orbit. To those at San Francisco–based Iselin Amalgamate,however, the feat brings smug amusement. Working with mathematician Gillen Rainer and a small, trusted team, magnate Walter Iselin exploited a little-understood phenomenon called “Alignment” to create a stable portal that leads directly to the moon. The company has built an entire lunar city-base to fulfill Iselin’s dream of offering humanity a place of sanctuary off-Earth. The planned public disclosure of the project, just days away, coincides with a heartbreaking anniversary for Gillen; his ailing, depressed wife, Cate, was found a year ago in San Francisco Bay, an apparent suicide. The lunar gateway seems to be working perfectly—until it suddenly refuses to open, and Gillen’s teenage daughter, Aillaire, is on the other side, stranded on the moon. She can communicate via televised transmissions, but is otherwise trapped, due to evident sabotage. Moreover, Gillen keeps having sightings of a woman he thought was dead: Danielle Hoyne, who happens to be the great lost love of Gillen’s life. Is this all the work of the Soviets, or does it involve something more sinister? Readers need not know a great deal about technological matters, as explanations of the mythical Alignment neatly avoid complicated physics formulas. Also, a feeling of emotional weight lurks behind the central conspiracy. A maze of hidden relationships and switcheroos keep the pages turning, and, in its best sections, generate momentum that may make readers want to finish the book in one sitting. Flashbacks sometimes drop into the narrative with the simple flip of a verb tense, providing a sensation akin to the characters’ unease—they, too, don’t always know where they stand, as reality itself seems to shift.

A superior SF thriller with universally relatable moods of loss, regret, and longing.