The Moon Is Hell!

The Moon Is Hell!
Dust-jacket from the first edition
AuthorJohn W. Campbell Jr.
Cover artistHannes Bok
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherFantasy Press
Publication date
1951
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages256 pp
OCLC1453762

The Moon Is Hell! is a collection of two stories, one science fiction, the other sword and sorcery, by American writer John W. Campbell Jr. It was published in 1951 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 4,206 copies. The title story, published for the first time in this collection, deals with a team of scientists stranded on the Moon when their spacecraft crashes, and how they use their combined skills and knowledge to survive until rescue, including building shelter from meteor showers, and creating their own oxygen from Lunar rock. The second story, "The Elder Gods", Campbell rewrote, on a short deadline, from a story by Arthur J. Burks purchased for Unknown but later deemed unsatisfactory. It originally appeared in the October 1939 issue of Unknown under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.[1] The title of the eponymous story is occasionally found without the exclamation point, but the punctuation is used for the title of most editions of the collection itself.[2]

  1. ^ Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow, World Publishing, 1965, p.45
  2. ^ ISFDB bibliography