Godwin, Robert 1958-

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GODWIN, Robert 1958-

PERSONAL: Born 1958, in Little Horton, England; immigrated to Canada, 1978; married; children: two. Education: Attended St. Oswald's College (Shropshire, England).

ADDRESSES: Home—Canada. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Collector's Guide Publishing Inc., 1440 Graham's Lane, Unit 2, Burlington, Ontario L7S 1W3, Canada.

CAREER: Music management and production, 1983–95; founded Griffin Music, 1985; founded Collector's Guide Publishing, 1987. Writer, 1984–. Has also worked on road crew for a rock group, managed a string of pubs, owned a night club, produced rock concerts, and taught management at a college.

AWARDS, HONORS: Space Frontier Award, 2002, for "NASA Mission Reports" series.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Illustrated Led Zeppelin Collection, Blue Flake Productions (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada), 1984.

The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Led Zeppelin, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1987, revised edition, 1998.

The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Kate Bush, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Hawkwind, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

Led Zeppelin: The Press Reports, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1997, revised edition, 2005.

The Making of Led Zeppelin IV, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

(Editor) Space Toys of the Sixties, Collector's Guide Pub. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Rocket and Space Corporation Energia: The Legacy of S.P. Korolev, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(Compiler and editor) Dyna-Soar: Hypersonic Strategic Weapons System, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

(Compiler and editor) The Rocket Team, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

(Compiler and editor) The REAL Space Cowboys, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

(Compiler and editor) Edison's Conquest of Mars, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

"NASA MISSION REPORTS" SERIES; WITH CD-ROM

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 9: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Friendship 7: The First Flight of John Glenn: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 11: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 12: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 13: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 14: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 7: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 10: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Gemini 6: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) X-15: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(Compiler and editor) Freedom 7: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 15: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(Compiler and editor) Space Shuttle: STS Flights 1-5, Including Approach and Landing Tests: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

(Compiler and editor) Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 17: The NASA Mission Reports, introduction by Harrison H. Schmitt, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

(Compiler and editor) Apollo 16: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

(Compiler and editor) Sigma 7: The Six Orbits of Walter M. Shirra: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

(Compiler and editor) Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

(Compiler and editor) Saturn 5: The Complete Test and Construction Records: The NASA Mission Reports, Apogee (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

Also director and producer of the film, Apollo 11: Moonwalk. Occasional contributor to music magazines.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on the crossover between space exploration and popular culture.

SIDELIGHTS: Robert Godwin has combined a love of music with that of space exploration to create an award-winning body of work that covers the career of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Hawkwind, as well as the history of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) exploration. A publisher as well as writer and editor, Godwin has produced almost all of his books from his publishing house, Collector's Guide Publishing, and its imprint, Apogee.

Godwin, born in England, moved to Canada in 1978, and managed pubs, nightclubs, and bands before turning to publishing. His first publishing venture was a record label, Griffin Music, which he operated from 1987 to 1995, bringing out works by David Bowie, Hawkwind, Motorhead, and others. He also founded a book publishing company, Collector's Guide Publishing, and that soon became his primary interest. His first publication, The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Led Zeppelin, traces and rates the band's albums, provides an alphabetical listing of the songs, and gathers illustrations from pictures of the band to album covers. Explaining the origin of that book to Larry LeBlanc of Billboard, Godwin noted: "I was a big fan of Led Zeppelin and had accumulated this ridiculous collection of records, enough to fill a 180-page book with roughly one album per page." Updated several times, this was the first of several books Godwin has written about that band. Other musicians featured by Godwin in book-length studies are Kate Bush and the band Hawkwind.

In 1998 Godwin's writing took a different turn. That year he was invited to take part in a celebration to honor the crew of Apollo 7. There he met astronaut Buzz Aldrin who gave Godwin the idea of writing a book in honor of the first voyage to the moon. So taken was Godwin with this idea that he initiated the Apogee imprint at his Collector's Guide Publishing, and set about not only documenting that voyage, but the entire NASA missions in his series "The NASA Mission Reports," begun in 1999 and over twenty titles strong by 2005. Contributors to the series have included former astronauts, such as Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, as well as science-fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, and movie people who have been involved in space films, including Tom Hanks and Ron Howard.

Thus, from a rock music fan and writer, Godwin became a respected author and editor on space exploration, and advocate of further space exploration. The series was launched with the 1999 Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports, which combines actual NASA reports on the mission, with press kits and post-mission information. A special feature of each of the books in the series is an accompanying CD-ROM with a short film documenting each mission using actual NASA footage. Wayne Hicks, writing in the Denver Business Journal, felt that this "gimmick … will surely lead any wavering buyer into the checkout line." Thus, the format of the entire series was established with Apollo 8. In Booklist, Gilbert Taylor suggested that the "series' marquee attraction … is NASA's written documentation for the mission." Hicks also noted that since Godwin is the chief architect of the books, there are no separate author royalties to be paid out by the series. Godwin therefore funnels part of the profits to The Watch, part of the Space Frontier Foundation, which is on the lookout for asteroids that might be headed toward Earth.

Since 1999 Godwin has turned out a score of titles in his "NASA Mission Reports," series. Reviewers, both in technical and general journals have praised the results. A contributor for Astronomy, for example, reviewing Godwin's Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, felt the author supplies "everything you ever wanted to know about NASA's Mars missions." The same reviewer also called the work "a valuable reference tool." In the accompanying CD-ROM, Godwin provides images from missions such as Mariner 9, Viking, and Pathfinder, and also goes into detail about the loss of the Mars observer and climate orbiter. A Publishers Weekly contributor found that the same book gives the "enthusiast little-known details" about these missions, providing a behind-the-scenes look at scheduling, goals, and hardware. This first volume on Mars covered missions from 1964 to 2000; with Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2, published in 2004, Godwin takes the story forward, reviewing reports from more recent probes, including the Martian Global Explorer and Beagle 2. W.E. Howard, III, reviewing that update in Choice, felt that reading Godwin's book "is like peering into an exciting, up-to-date NASA archive." Similarly, Stuart J. Goldman, writing for Sky and Telescope, found the same work a "salvation" for those who follow Mars missions but may have missed some aspect.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Astronomy, November, 2000, review of Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, p. 110.

Billboard, September 28, 1996, Larry LeBlanc, "Godwin Turns Fandom into Business," p. 67.

Booklist, July, 1999, Gilbert Taylor, reviews of Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports and Apollo 9: The NASA Mission Reports, p. 1912.

Choice, October, 2004, W.E. Howard, III, review of Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2, p. 314.

Denver Business Journal, February 11, 2000, Wayne Hicks, "Publisher Sees Sales from Space," p. A33.

Publishers Weekly, June 21, 1999, review of Friendship 7: The First Flight of John Glenn: The NASA Mission Reports, p. 51; September 11, 2000, review of Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, p. 84.

Sky and Telescope, September, 2004, Stuart J. Goldman, review of Mars: The NASA Mission Reports, Volume 2, p. 114.