Born and raised in the coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia, Hickam was a voracious reader of science-fiction. While many assumed he’d eventually go on to become a writer, he was somewhat sidetracked by the launch of Sputnik, which inspired him to go into rocket science instead. His autobiography, Rocket Boys, the story of how a kid from a coal-mining town became a NASA engineer, was a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into the 1999 film October Sky.
Today, Hickam wants to inspire a new generation of rocket scientists by telling that story again, in a new context. Hickam describes his new young-adult novel, Crater, as “Coalwood on the Moon” – it tells the story of Crater Trueblood, a teenage boy who, like Hickam, lives in a small mining town. The difference, of course, is that Crater’s mining town is on the Moon, and the miners are digging for the highly valuable isotope helium-3.
Young adult novels are currently an extremely popular genre, and there’s certainly plenty of room for a few science-fiction stories amidst the sea of Twilight and Harry Potter knock-offs. The first book of a planned trilogy, Crater has already more than met its publishers’ sales demands, and hopefully it will lead a new generation of engineers to the stars.