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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


John Williams – Raider’s March

An evening pause: From one of the best films ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). As I wrote about it at the time for a comic book fan group, it recognizes that there is good and evil, and that there is something in the universe that casts judgement on each. Such concepts had and continue to be largely rejected by modern intellectualism, at our peril.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • wayne

    Raiders, is an excellent movie. -First-date with my future wife, and at her preference.

  • Andrew

    I think our modern intellectualism is not that powerful. All of these films, Star Wars, Raiders, Even Pirates of The Caribbean, all of them play against that very backdrop! All of these films make millions of dollars! Why? Because right in our guts, we resonate to these underlying truths. We all know, at a very deep level, that there are good guys and bad guys and we all KNOW that the Good Guys ALWAYS face stiff odds. And we like it that way. Because we love our heros. No Evil? No Heros. Those films flop, because most people don’t resonate to that.

  • Steve Earle

    If you love ROTLA, as I do, then don’t watch this episode of the Big Bang Theory:

    “The Raiders Minimization”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfUUGrSMmxI

  • Frank

    The tone of the horns is splendid in this version.

  • eddie willers

    I, too, was (am) enamored with Raiders. I couldn’t find fault with any aspect of the film.

    That brings me to the most disappointment I ever had in a movie, and that was the followup. When I heard there would be a second Indiana Jones movie and that it was going to be a prequel I was ecstatic. That meant that Belloq and the nasty “I know you will” Nazi could return! We might get the story of Indy and Marion and Professor Ravenwood. The possibilities were endless.

    Instead, we got a screaming mess of a Goonies movie that had absolutely no reason to even be placed “in the past”. Leaden and unfun.

    I’m thinking the difference was Lawrence Kasdan.

  • wayne

    eddie–
    Yes– the follow up movies went in an entirely different direction, in my opinion. . They sorta degraded into a caricature of themselves, and not in a way I found appealing.

    (I do however enjoy the “Back to the Future” franchise, possibly because they made II & III at the same time, and I’m a sucker for time-travel tales.)
    (I am waiting for “them” to completely ruin Star Trek.)

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