Omon is a boy chosen to be trained in the Soviet space program, the fulfillment of his life-long dream. However, he enrolls only to encounter the absurdity of Soviet protocol and the program's inadequate technology: a bicycle-powered moonwalker; the terrifying Colonol Urchagin ("a kind of Soviet Dr. Strangelove" -- The New York Times); and ultimately his one-way assignment to pilot an unmanned lunar vehicle to the moon. Omon Ra has been widely praised for its poetry and its wickedness ("full of the ridiculous and the sublime", says The Observer (London)). The New Yorker proclaimed: "Omon's adventure is like a rocket firing off its various stages -- each incident is more jolting and propulsively absurd than the one before".