SPACE CASE

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield launches his first novel The Apollo Murders, a thriller set in 1973 against the backdrop of the Cold War and the space race. The author shares insights on the process of crafting a novel that borrows heavily from his own space adventures and experiences.

- DAVID MCGUFFIN

On art imitating life

Everybody says write what you know. When you return from having flown to space three times and living off the world for six months, you’re faced with the question of what to do with this human experience. How can you share this? That’s why I teach, do interviews, write about it and do TV series about it. I thought writing a fiction book that would really give people a feel for what spaceflight is like would be an interesting personal challenge — but would also give readers an almost intuitive feel for the extremely rare experiences that I’ve been lucky enough to have.

On creating Russian characters

I lived in Russia for about five years. I was NASA’s director of operations in Russia for a couple of years. I have a good understanding of the Russian space program and, to some degree, Russia and its people. It’s so easy to categorize some other part of the world as one-dimensional or maybe just two-dimensional. But, of course, every single Russian person is different, and they each have their own desires. And there is no uniform, monolithic definition of what a Soviet or a Russian person is. People are motivated by their own goals and their own dreams, and they’re trying to be good contributors to their own particular part of society. That’s been my experience. In The Apollo Murders, I wanted to show that every single person in the book is imperfect and is motivated by different goals.