Thursday, February 3, 2011

First Vacation on the Moon / Premieres Vacances Sur La Lune (1967)

OK as promised your "First Vacation on the Moon".  This is a very interesting French book that seems to have been published using photographs from a space flight movie of the time.  I will welcome any corrections to my guesses since my French is very poor.

Heimer, Marc. Premières Vacances Sur La Lune. Paris: Presses de la Cité, #2 p., 32 cm. 1967


What makes it especially interesting to me is the photographs of a child visiting the Moon. This is very much like "You Will Go to the Moon (1959) but with photographs of the Moon.


The other topic of interest is the Moonbase they visit.  This is probably just the design from the film but it gives the book the sense of it being a visit to a real place.

 I have not been able to find out very much about the book but did find this quote:

"In 1967, Mark Heimer, inspired by images from the film "Luna" the Lennaoutchfilm, imagine the holidays out of the ordinary for a small boy in the "First Holiday on the Moon"  "

I have tried to find out more about "Luna". It may be the 1965 Russian film that was released in Europe as "La Lune"

Having never seen the film I really like the models and details they used for the moonbase.

As a collector I get kind of blasé about having found all the books out there. I have dabbled in finding original books from other countries but having poor language skills has limited me to tripping across them.  This one is an astrofuturism classic. 

I also like some of the details shown like the hydroponics room:
There is also what looks like a monorail and an electromagnetic launching system for return to orbit:

This book is a visual treat. It even has the classic image of how when you walk on the Moon gravity lets you do some fun tricks.

It happily crosses that line between what is fantasy and what might be reality one day.

3 comments:

  1. Love the blog! I've always been fascinated by early space flight concepts. Those film stills are variously from 'Road to the Stars' and 'Moon', both by the Soviet film-maker Pavel Klushantsev, and you can actually download for free a 52-minute documentary about Klushantsev here: http://stagevu.com/video/tedyncafxrjs

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  2. The pictures are from the 1965 soviet movie The Moon, by Pavel (Road to the Stars) Klushantsev. The entire movie is in Youtube.

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  3. Thank you, I've had this book since I was a kid, was wondering what the story was behind it,

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