Ben Mezrich

Elements of our lives undoubtedly impact not only what we read but how we read it. Growing up during the Gemini and Apollo programs left me with a continued interest in space-related topics. Later training in a "just the facts ma'am" approach to journalism tends to leave me feeling terms like "creative nonfiction" have more than a hint of oxymoron. What happens when the two collide, as they do in Ben Mezrich's Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History?

The show more book is a highly readable account of a seemingly impossible and wholly unparalleled crime, the theft of moon rocks from NASA. Mezrich shows us how Thad Roberts overcame the odds to have a promising science career and the chance of accomplishing his dream of being an astronaut and how he threw it all away in an unimaginable and foolhardy fashion. As with his prior books, though, Mezrich makes the story captivating by utilizing a novel-like approach to telling the story.

Despite being disowned by his strict Mormon family as a teen, Roberts pursued degrees in geology, geophysics and physics at the University of Utah, hoping to become an astronaut. Happily married, Roberts was devoted to his studies and even formed a student astronomical society and volunteered at the Utah Museum of Natural History. It was there, though, that a character flaw that would doom him revealed itself. When Roberts realized some fossils in the museum's collection would forever sit unnoticed in closed containers, he decided to bring some home and make them his own.

Roberts was fortunate enough to be accepted into NASA's Cooperative Education Program at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Leaving his wife in Utah, Roberts remade himself and became a leader among the other "co-ops," viewed as an adventurer and risk-taker. While fascinated by what the co-op program allowed him to do, Roberts was particularly intrigued when one of his mentors told them that the lunar material in his safe was considered "trash" by NASA because they had been used for experiments and outside the agency. He began pondering how it might be possible to steal some of the moon rocks, among NASA's most highly protected materials. The idea became an obsession. At first, it was to come up with money to fund his education and perhaps even his own laboratory. (At his eventual trial, the 101.5 grams of lunar material he stole was appraised at $5 million, a figure some considered low.) By his third year in the co-op program, though, Roberts met and fell in love with a younger intern, "Rebecca," and decided to give her the moon, literally.

Before the theft, Roberts posted on-line notices on the sites of various mineral collector groups as "Orb Robinson." He eventually reached an agreement with a Belgian mineral collector so in July 2002, working with Rebecca and a younger intern, "Sandra," the three made off with a 600-pound safe containing not only rocks from each Apollo moon landing but a bit of the meteorite NASA scientists believed provided evidence of life on Mars. What Roberts didn't know and his amateurish approach toward selling the moon material made easier, the collector was working with the FBI on a sting operation. Mezrich unfolds the tale, from conception through arrest, in a flowing and engaging fashion, taking readers inside not only Johnson Space Center but the growth of the idea to steal the "trash" rocks and the sting operation.

A reader, though, likely will encounter two problems with the book. First, apparently because Roberts was his primary source, Mezrich admits the story is told largely from his perspective. We are never quite sure of the extent to which Roberts' version of events fit with objective reality. For example, were Rebecca and Sandra the willing adventurers Mezrich portrays or was Roberts able to exert some sort of Svengali-like influence on them? The second issue is more important and one that arose with each of Mezrich's prior nonfiction works. The book's readability comes from an amplified form of "creative nonfiction" or "literary journalism". As Mezrich says in an author's note that opens the book, Sex on the Moon contains dialogue that has been "re-created and compressed" and certain names, characterizations and physical descriptions "have been altered to protect privacy."

Mezrich used the same approach in both Bringing Down the House, the basis for the movie 21, and The Accidental Billionaires, the basis for the Oscar-winning The Social Network. Mezrich even says on his web site that he has "created his own highly addictive genre of nonfiction." But readers may well pause and wonder how far this goes.

Here, even Rebecca and Sandra aren't the real names of the women involved and, as far as I can determine, Mezrich changes their physical descriptions and the age of at least one of them. This is despite the fact Rebecca (actually Tiffany Fowler) and Sandra (actually Shae Saur) pleaded guilty in federal court and their names are a matter of public record. Combined with "re-created dialogue" and descriptions that feel novelistic, at what point do such changes push a work from nonfiction to a novelization or "based on a true story" status? (The latter may become even more fitting in the future as Sony Pictures optioned the film rights to the book this past January.)

Undoubtedly, Sex on the Moon is an entertaining and enjoyable read. From the perspective of a space-age reader, I found it quite intriguing. Ultimately, though, the question confronting each reader is the extent to which the entertainment value undercuts trust in the author and, hence, the story.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.) show less

I like books like this one, but I can't recommend it. There are a couple reasons it falls far short of its brethren:

1. There is no resolution. There is no theory advanced. There is no content, basically. The last page, in which we might see the climax of the story, is heavily redacted to the point that it is either useless or obviously fake.

2. There is no synthesis. This is essentially the story of a single man going on UFO quests, told in short snippit chapters. The author adds quite show more literally nothing to the story, so I wondered why he was even there. (Note also that another main player, according to the footnote, was never even interviewed for this book. No explanation for this is given, yet thoughts are attributed to this un-interviewed person. That is questionable at best and unethical at worst.)

3. Because this is the story of one man, everything that man says, does, and believes is taken at face value. Again, the reason that a journalist writes a book like this is to add that synthesis or content beyond what we could get. I could read any number of books written by UFO watchers themselves and get the same. There is no added value here.

4. It seems that #3 is because the author didn't bother to do any research. This is obvious in a couple of places, including his descriptions of the "Anasazi" -- an outdated and unwanted term, first of all -- and complete lack of knowledge about the Native populations of the US Southwest. In addition, the author never questions the obvious sampling bias inherent in a men from Nevada and Colorado predominantly seeing alien activity in that region of the country. This is never addressed. How are we to believe that the 37th parallel is real -- because the map does seem to indicate something could be happening -- if obvious threats to validity are never even considered?

Skip it. Read something better. show less

This "historical fiction" of Musk's takeover and subsequent ruination of Twitter focuses on the events of Nov 2022 - April 2023, as recounted by a few "Tweeps", now fired, and also the author’s imagination. Somehow, despite his alleged "genius", Musk emerges as a petty, thin-skinned dictator who suffered through a miserable childhood and who surrounds himself with yes-men who cater to his inflated ego and rabid need to be liked. Sound familiar? He has no patience for details nor warnings show more of disaster, and so blunders into losing essential employees and the advertisers who kept the site funded. The book seems hurried and shallow, spiced up with a few juicy stories - sounds like Twitter, doesn't it? Maybe worth a read for the very curious about the how the weaknesses of the world's wealthiest man caused social media's biggest disaster. show less

First, some advice: do not be attracted to this book because you care about the space program, NASA, astronauts, or astronomy; you will certainly be disappointed. Thad Roberts (the real- life protagonist in this dubious work) is no brilliant hero; in fact, his actions are downright stupid,and ethically beyond contempt. As an undergraduate intern at the Johnson Space Center, Roberts violated the trust placed in him by NASA and destroyed a budding career by stealing a quarter pound of moon show more rocks for personal gain. What’s more, he devastated the career of his kindly mentor, space scientist Dr. Everett K. Gibson, by trashing 30 years worth of carefully- collected analytical data that span the history of the space program. The data were literally irreplaceable and their loss to science incalculable. Roberts did not just steal from Gibson or NASA or even the USA– he stole from the scientific community and the world at large. But to pop author Ben Mezrich, Thad Roberts is a madcap James Bond- like adventurer who is worth a book; and with a movie deal now pending, he and Roberts will laugh all the way to the bank. It may even turn out to be worth the >8 years that Roberts spent in prison, and the lives of the four people (his wife, his lover, and two friends) that he devastated by his criminal activity.

This is at best a work of historical fiction, and a badly written one at that. Mezrich presents the tale with what he calls “re-created dialogue.” That means that in describing events that took place as much as 15 years ago, Mezrich makes up words and puts them into the mouths of the various characters (most of whose names he admits that he's changed). He also reports their alleged thoughts, feelings, and physiological states, routinely in the first person. But Mezrich’s omniscience does not stop there. He also knows the psychological causes of his characters’ aberrant behavior: Roberts is a Mormon; his parents had disowned him for having sex with his girlfriend; his wife didn’t understand him; he wanted to be cool and attract “chicks” ( yes, “chicks,” in a book written in 2011); and so on.

All this is done for the sake of a story, sensationalized on the book cover as “the amazing story of the most audacious heist in history.” Under the circumstances, how reliable is the book from a factual standpoint? Not very, because we have nothing but the author’s own conjectures that events happened as he claims, and much is clearly invented and exaggerated for effect. Was the theft really “from an impregnable high tech vault”? Certainly not; it was a simple combination safe in a scientist’s lab, one that Roberts picked up on a dolly and took away by jeep. (The college students were able to remove the safe's door with simple power tools). What about the millions of dollars worth of moon rocks? In fact, they stole 1/5 of a pound (100 grams) in tiny pieces, and the illegal booty was only worth what someone might be induced to pay (which turned out to be nothing). How about the “sex on the moon” line? Supposedly Thad Roberts stuffed a bit under a hotel room mattress before he and his girlfriend went at it – get it? (Did anything like that ever happen? Not likely, given Mezrich's reputation for making things up in his books). And then there's the criminal genius, Thad Roberts: the boy advertises the moon rocks on the internet, falls for a transparent FBI sting operation, and gets carted off to prison along with his accomplices.

Sorry, I gave this book a fair shot. The story doesn’t come close to matching the hype, and the writing is terrible. Further, I cringe to consider that the perpetrator now gets to profit from his crime. show less