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A book in the grand tradition of William Kaysing's We Never Went to the Moon. Expelled Mensa member Ren pulls no punches, spills all beans, and proves that the Apollo flights were hoaxes perpetrated solely to increase government funding for NASA. (We shall hereafter use the derisive term astro-nots when speaking of the NASA actors who lied about going to the moon.) Ren (call him, affectionately, Astro-Nut ) makes a point of citing only secondary sources (books written by astronots, newspaper articles, backs of cereal boxes) for information - "not having a suicidal urge, I refrained from blandly traipsing in the government archives." As well he should: Ren puts the likes of less inventive conspiratologists to shame when he uncovers that NASA, as an agency, exists solely to rub out its own employees - astronots and secretaries alike - if they threaten to reveal too much of the real story. He explains his thesis in pointless, worthless, mindless detail. Noting that some Mercury astronots saw stars and some did not, he explains that NASA apologists claimed that the eyes need a long time to adjust enough to see the stars in the blackness of space. "That's one of the dumber lies they ever told - because we can stare at a street light and then look quickly at a star and see it!" Coming upon such material, the reader quickly grasps Mr. Ren's savant-like comprehension of subtleties of the scientific method. When he imagines he has made especially undeniable observations, he is prone to making asides such as Gotcha! or Heh! Heh! - this reader instantly recalls Dr. Sivana, in the old Captain Marvel comic book. Every page is a delight in Mr. Ren's charming expos. An especially memorable passage occurs when, in order to prove (puzzlingly) to the reader's satisfaction that the supposed door on the supposed LEM was not large enough to allow the astronots easy egress on hands and knees, he details the experimental method by which he uncovered the truth. "Stripped to my shorts I tried to use hands and knees to get under the edge of my kitchen table." He finds he had to employ not hands, but elbows - Heh! Heh! Case closed. Mr. Ren includes with copies of his book a flyer which reproduces the letter he sent to actor Tom Hanks, noting he has been a fan of the actor since Bosom Buddies, and also predicting "after you read my book you will get your lawyers to remove you from Apollo 13." Hanks foolishly ignored Mr. Ren's urgent warning-more's the pity. Also available from Mr. Ren is his "The Last Skeptic of Science", wherein, among much else, he includes a section that reduces Einstein's Relativity to an absurdity; and speaks of his invention of the Ren Two Leaf Electroscope. He next threatens to write novels of mystery and yes - God help us! - science fiction. |
