Beyond Apollo — Barry N. Malzberg

Winner of the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award. “A mind-bending read . . . certainly entertaining, often very funny and very thought-provoking.” -- Medium
 
A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted; when it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications; his journal of the expedition -- compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him -- offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans's guise.
 
As the explanations pyramid and the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans's madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity's incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.
 
“Barry Malzberg's dark, bleak vision of the future is one of the most terrifying ever to come out of science fiction.” -- Robert Silverberg
 
“Beyond Apollo is a masterpiece; a multi-faceted rumination on repression; a virulent critique of the space program and America's obsession with space.” -- Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
 
“A light shone through a crystal. The reader never gets to see the crystal or the light, only the resulting refraction . . .  a very satisfying work of post-modern science fiction.” -- Speculiction
 
“Veins of gold . . . a beautiful and heart-breaking book.” -- Fantasy and Science Fiction
 
“Written with wit . . . the most original and pleasing SF novel of the last five years.” -- Brian Aldiss, New Review