The literature of the space race begins before Sputnik: in the immediate post-war years, assessments of the German V-2 programme pose the question that would haunt the next two decades: what will rockets be for? The answer came on 4 October 1957, and triggered a publishing explosion across the world: explaining satellites to the general public became a genre in itself.
The 1960s brought the actors themselves into bookshops (astronauts and cosmonauts, test pilots, engineers), while the Moon race could be followed book after book. After Apollo the tone changed: there came the political, economic and moral readings of an adventure hitherto told only as exploits.
The strength of the theme is that it can be read in the present tense: testimonies written in the heat of the moment, by authors who did not know how the story would end.