Homer H. Hickam
Biographical Information
Author and rocket scientist Homer H. Hickam was born on February 19, 1943. He grew up in Coalwood, WV, a coal company town in southern West Virginia. His father was a mine superintendent. It was here that he saw the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik fly overhead after its launch in October 1957. His life until then had revolved around the mining industry - "I ate supper after Dad saw the evening shift down the shaft, and I went to sleep to the ringing of a hammer on steel and the dry hiss of an arc welder at the little tipple machine shop during the hoot owl shift." (Rocket Boys). After the Sputnik launch, Homer became obsessed with rockets, studying and reading all he could. He found in new hero in Wernher von Braun, the German scientist leading America's space program. With a group of his friends, Homer formed a rocket club, The Big Creek Missile Agency, and began to build and launch rockets. The group's first launch destroyed Homer's mother's picket fence. After another unfortunate launch mishap, the group moved its headquarters outside of town, building "Cape Coalwood" - complete with blockhouse for missile projection and a cement launch pad - at a dumpsite. The jeers of the town ended when one of the boys' rockets broke the one-mile mark. Teachers helped the group by recommending and supplying books; miners helped construct rocket parts of mine scraps. Hickam graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960. He went on to attend Virginia Polytechnic Institute, completing a BS in Industrial Engineering in 1964. He served six years of active duty in the US Army, including serving as First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam (1967-68), for which he earned the Army Commendation and Bronze Star. Hickam worked for the US Army Missile Command in both Germany and in Huntsville, AL from 1971 - 1981. He then went to work for the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) at Marshall Space Flight Center as an aerospace engineer. While at NASA, he worked in propulsion, spacecraft design, and crew training, including training astronauts on science payloads and extravehicular activities (EVA). Before his retirement from NASA in 1998, Homer Hickam was Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program.Homer Hickam's first book was published in 1986. Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War off America's East Coast (Naval Institute Press) is the story of the North Carolina Capes during World War II, when some 275 American ships were sunk by German U-Boats. The Germans called the Cape "the American shooting gallery" because only one Coast Guard cutter, the Dionne, guarded the entire area. Merchant captains in the area defied naval orders to hunt down and destroy the submarines. Hickam spent ten years researching Torpedo Junction - reading war logs, diaries, and conducting interviews. The book was a military history bestseller,
Hickam's second book, the memoir Rocket Boys, began as a story for Air and Space Magazine in 1995. He took the story of the pivotal year in his life and expanded (and admittedly embellished) it, dividing his life into a before-Sputnik phase and an after-Sputnik phase. Rocket Boys was a popular success - named a New York Times Great Book of 1998 and nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Best Biography of 1998. In 1999, Universal Studios released October Sky, its critically acclaimed adaptation of Rocket Boys. After the film's release and success, the re-titled memoir was released as a mass-market paperback. October Sky became a Number One best seller on the New York Times list.
Hickam followed Rocket Boys with his first novel, Back to the Moon, in 1999. He returned his readers to Coalwood with The Coalwood Way in October 2000 and then in October 2001 with his third Coalwood memoir, Sky of Stone. His latest book is an inspirational volume entitled We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town that Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie October Sky (February 2002).
Homer Hickam and his wife Linda, an artist and editor, live in Huntsville, AL, Rocket City, USA.
Critical Responses
Homer Hickam has enjoyed much success as a writer; his work has been well received by both readers and critics. Torpedo Junction, his first book, was a military history bestseller. Writing for the West Coast Review of Books, Brian Firth commented: "Hickam shows what an enormous strategic effect was achieved by a small force of only simple submersibles, devoid of snorkels or any modern refinement."Rocket Boys/October Sky, Hickam's first memoir of his Coalwood childhood, reached number one on the New York Times paperback bestseller list and was selected on of the "Great Books of 1998." The National Book Circle Critics Award also nominated it for Best Biography of 1998. Critics praised the novel as "thoroughly charming" and described it as an "eloquent evocation of a lost time and place" (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times). Writing in Smithsonian, Bruce Watson remarked that the narrative of Rocket Boys "rings like a nine pound hammer on coal." His second Coalwood memoir, The Coalwood Way, reached number twenty-six on the New York Times bestseller list. Gilbert Taylor, writing for Booklist, calls the novel "gritty nostalgia" and describes its chronicle of Homer's senior year as "mini-dramas with anecdotes that are by turns lively, pensive, wry, or self-deprecating." The third Coalwood memoir, Sky of Stone, focuses on Homer's first summer vacation from college. In Coalwood visiting his father (his mother has moved to Myrtle Beach), Homer takes a job laying track at the mine, suffers the pangs of unrequited love, and tries to find out what happened in the death of a mine foreman, a death being blamed on the negligence of Homer's father. Publishers' Weekly described Sky of Stone as a "cleverly constructed, richly detailed mystery peppered with colloquial dialogue and vivid characters."
Works Published
- Torpedo Junction
- Rocket Boys/October Sky
- Back to the Moon
- The Coalwood Way
- Sky of Stone
- We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town that Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-winning Movie October Sky
Selected Bibliography
Dugger, Charles M., Jr. Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War off America's East Coast, 1942. (book review). Sea Frontiers, Jan-Feb 1990. 36(1), 62.
Gates, Anita. Space Cadets: this novel by Homer H. Hickam features an unlikely shuttle crew on its way to the moon (review). The New York Times Review of Books, June 27, 1999. 104(26), pg.19, col.4.
Hickam, Homer H., Jr. Keep Your Faith in Space: A Message to the Next Generation of Rocket Boys and Girls. Ad Astra, May-June 1999. 11(3), 28.
---. A Reflection on Rocket Boys/October Sky in the Science Classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, May 2000. 29(6), 399.
Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (aerospace engineer and writer). Current Biography, October 2000. 61(10), 35.
Morgan, Robert. Notes from Underground (Sky of Stone review). The New York Times Book Review, Oct. 21, 2001. 106(42), 22.
Owens, William T. Country Roads, Hollers, Coal Towns, and Much More. The Social Studies, July 2000. 91(4), 178.
Struckel, Katie. Remembering with Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (interview). Writer's Digest, December 2000. 80(2), 30.
Sturdevant, Rick W. The Infinite Journey: Eyewitness Accounts of NASA and the Age of Space (book review). Air Power History, Winter 2001. 48(4), 59.
We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage for Our Nation from the Town of "October Sky" (book review). Publishers' Weekly, Jan. 28, 2002. 249(4), 283.
We Know Our History (pride in knowing who you are). Publishers' Weekly, Jan. 14, 2002. 249(2), S1.
Author Website
www.homerhickam.com