October Sky · The Rocket Boys of Coalwood
The real story
Homer Hickam told his story first in a magazine article, then in a memoir, and then it became a Hollywood film. Here is how each came about, what the film kept, and the changes that the author and the press have described.
One story, told three ways
The article, 1994. Homer Hickam first wrote about his boyhood rockets for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine, in an article called "The Big Creek Missile Agency." The book grew from it.
The book, 1998. Delacorte Press published his memoir, Rocket Boys, in September 1998. It is told in his own voice and covers the years from Sputnik to the 1960 science fair, along with his family, his town and its mine. The New York Times named it one of its great books of 1998, and it was nominated by the National Book Critics Circle for best biography. It won the W. D. Weatherford Award, an award for books about Appalachia, and has been translated into eight languages.
The film, 1999. Universal Pictures made the book into a film directed by Joe Johnston. It came out on February 19, 1999, Homer's birthday. It was filmed in East Tennessee, around Oliver Springs, Harriman and Kingston, from February to April 1998. Homer worked on the screenplay before filming began.
Why the new name? The studio called the film October Sky, which uses the same letters as Rocket Boys. Homer has said the studio's research suggested that women over thirty would not go to a film called "Rocket Boys." The paperback of the book was then sold under the film's title, so you will find it under both names.
What the film kept
The heart of the story is true in both: Sputnik in October 1957, a coal-town boy who wanted to build rockets, the friends who joined him, early rockets that failed, a science teacher who believed in them, a launch site on old mine land they called Cape Coalwood, and a national science fair prize in 1960. The tension between Homer and his father, the mine superintendent, is in the book too.
What the film changed
Every film based on real life trims and reshapes. These are the changes that are documented, from Homer Hickam's own website and from his interviews, as gathered in the Wikipedia article on the film. We list only those.
| In the film | In real life | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Homer's father is named John. | His father was Homer Hickam Sr. The name was changed so audiences would not mix up father and son. | al.com, 2014 |
| Four boys build the rockets. | There were six Rocket Boys. Some film characters combine more than one real boy. | al.com; homerhickam.com |
| The boys take parts from the railroad. | They did not steal railroad parts. They tried to pull a cast iron pipe out from under the tracks, and Homer was nearly killed. | homerhickam.com |
| The boys are blamed for a forest fire and held, and Homer has to prove a rocket did not start it. | They were never held. The police dropped it once they saw the rockets could not have flown the three miles or more to the fire. | al.com |
| Homer quits school to work in the mine. | He never dropped out. He worked in the mine the summer after his first year of college, a story he told in his book Sky of Stone. | homerhickam.com |
| Homer meets the rocket engineer Wernher von Braun at the national fair. | They never met. Each was looking for the other at the fair, and they missed each other. | al.com |
The book also differs from the film in what it has room for: all six boys and their families, more of the town and the mine, and the slow, many-month work between launches. Reviewers have noted that the book, too, takes some liberties with characters and events.
The real people
The Big Creek Missile Agency
The six boys were Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr., Roy Lee Cooke, Sherman Siers, Quentin Wilson, Jimmy O'Dell Carroll and Billy Rose, who joined about a year after the others. All of them went on to college. See what became of them.
Freida Riley
Freida Joy Riley was born on March 1, 1937, in Squire, West Virginia. She graduated from Big Creek High School herself, then from Concord College, and did graduate work at Ohio State and West Virginia University. Back at Big Creek she taught chemistry and physics, often bought supplies with her own small salary, and urged the boys to take on advanced math and enter the science fair. She had Hodgkin's disease through those years and died of it on August 5, 1969, at 32. A national award for teachers who overcome hardship to serve their students, the Freida J. Riley Award, is named for her.
Homer Hickam Sr.
Homer's father ran the mine as its superintendent. He and his son clashed, in the book as in the film. He also helped: as Homer wrote in 1994, it was his father who approved the use of the old slack dump for Cape Coalwood, and the mine's machinists and carpenters made parts for the boys.
Look it up
On Grokipedia: October Sky (the film), October Sky (book), and Homer Hickam.
Next: The Space Race · Learn the math the boys learned in Rocket Boys Math and Physics, a Physics Ladder course.