Like the term 'Moon Bus', 'Moon Prospector' has always fascinated me. It has a great ring to it and a hint of a lunar goldrush! So where did it come from? It's probable that it's very first appearance lies buried somewhere in NASA files when the US Army and JPL first designed a Prospector around 1958 as mentioned on this JPL Timeline. Having skimmed through the more scientific literature accessable to Moonbase - Rob Godwin's excellent Lunar Scrapbook, Swift's Space Flight Book [thanks WOTAN] etc - I can't find any reference to the 'exact' term where both words are together. Being a bit of a romantic I would like to think that it was actually the artistic community who first gave us 'Moon Prospector'. Possibley the most famous use of the term and the first one I saw online over 10 years ago is the 'Moon Prospector' short story appearing in Analog in April 1966 [below].
Written by William B. Ellern with wonderful cover art by renowned space artist Frank Kelly Freas, Ellern, fascinatingly had worked previously for JPL! Ellern is discussed in abundance online such as DDB's page, which includes a comment from Ellern himself in 2001. But it's the link the story has to E.E.Doc Smith's Lensman books that creates the most interest. Doc Smith gave Ellern permission to base Moon Prospector in the Lensman world in 1965, which you can see in writing on Ethan Fleischer's wonderful Lensman site, which sets out the publishing history of Ellern's short story [I love that it later became 'Moon Inspector' in 1975!]. I have never read any Lensman and I wonder if it sits well with the SWORD world? And are there any Lensman toys?
In July 1968 another short story, 'Masks,' appeared in Playboy. By sci-fi author Damon Knight, it describes an experimental being's plight.
There are some amazing passages including what could be a description of a Century 21 box artist! :
"He sat down at the drafting table, clipped a sheet of paper to it and with a pencil began to sketch a rendering of the moon-prospector design. When he had blocked in the prospector itself, he began to draw the background of craters. His pencil moved more slowly and stopped; he put it down with a click."
You can read 'Masks' in it's entirety on mystic Ran Prier's site. It's short so doesn't take long but be warned, there is a particularly grim description of killing a dog [never popular with me]. Overall I found it haunting and love the very final line, which could be straight out of SWORD!
But before all of these creative talents came another 'Moon Prospector'. Burt Schonberg [1933-1977] was an artist and mystic living and working in California during the 50's, 60's and 70's. His unique style of mosaical painting is infused with cosmic themes. In 1965 using 'casein on masonite' and 'commissioned by a private California Corp' Shonberg painted the startling and beautiful 'Moon Prospector' [below], as it appears on the site 'The Art of Burt Schonberg' in the 'paintings' section. I particularly love his 'Napkin Art' and the 1950's Jazz ambience of the 'Frankenstein Cafe' in the 'Photographs' section - well worth a look and a great homage to the late mystical artist, very much a man of my own heart!
BurtShonberg.Com
This then, Shonberg's painting, I believe to be the first 'popular' usage of the term 'Moon Prospector', albeit for a limited audience in 1965.It's likely that Ellern's 1966 story in Analog will have first brought it to the attention of a mass readership and, like Arther C.Clarke's 'Moonbus' in 'A Fall of Moondust', a sci-fi based one at that and one in which a young Century 21 toy designer/artist found himself seeding the idea for a our very own plastic Moon Prospector a year later in 1967 perhaps?
To finish my own 'prospecting' of this rich cyber vein, I give the last word to Damon Knight and the haunting written image at the very end of his 1968 'Masks':
"The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive."
Damon Knight 1922-2002
Try saying Purulent after a couple of pints!
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