We Never Went to the Moon outlines the vague shape of the conspiracy theory as we know it today: the urgent political need to best the Soviet Union; the perceived optical anomalies in lunar photographs (“Stars? Where are the STARS?”); a subterranean soundstage in Nevada; and the involvement of Stanley Kubrick. (2001: A Space Odyssey was supposedly a cover, the Argo of its time.)

No shred of evidence was too small or insignificant for Kaysing to manipulate in support of his conclusion. The way the astronauts’ relatives sometimes referred to the “unreality” of events? That was because the events were unreal. The astronauts’ lengthy stay in quarantine after their return? They simply could not bear to face hordes of cheering people so soon after their deception. The fact that many Apollo astronauts ended up as well-paid corporate executives? That was their real reward for their moon “trip.” Buzz Aldrin’s post-mission nervous breakdown? The result of a guilty conscience.

And what about all those photographs and television transmissions? Easily faked. Obviously the astronauts should have made “some visible signal from the moon” instead — as if going out of their way to prove they were really on the moon had been the whole point.

The likelihood of a successful lunar mission, Kaysing reports, had been calculated at 0.017%. By whom and when and how, he never says. And yet he would repeat the figure without context for the rest of his life. Elsewhere in the book, with the same casual authority, he compares the various operations of Apollo 11 to “rolling nine sevens in a row” and claiming that, according to “statisticians,” a successful lunar descent was “beyond probability.”

The book’s centerpiece is a scenario that Kaysing dubs the ASP, or Apollo Simulation Project, a reimagining of how the awesome deception might have played out. In Kaysing’s version of the events, as the empty Apollo 11 rocket was lifting off, the Earth-bound astronauts were spirited to a simulation set. Once out of sight of the spectators and television cameras in Cape Canaveral, the rocket was simply rerouted, shut down, and jettisoned in the South Polar Sea. (Elsewhere in the book, Kaysing criticizes NASA for “cluttering up space” with jettisoned Apollo modules.)

The detailed moon set — “a tribute to the painstaking work of the simulators on an unlimited budget” — was built on a soundstage, codenamed Copernicus, in an underground cavern. The bunker was equipped with high-intensity lighting to imitate the glare of the sun as well as scale models of the Earth, sun, and moon. With Hollywood experts on hand, staging the astronauts’ lunar frolics was easy.

When Fox aired a documentary asking if we’d really landed on the moon, NASA issued a one-paragraph press release with the heading “Apollo: Yes, We Did.”

To simulate the splashdown, the Apollo 11 astronauts were picked up from a secret island near Honolulu, packed in the command module, and dropped by a cargo plane from a great height. Kaysing eventually discloses that the whole idea of the ASP, which is richly imagined if sketchily presented, is a “documentary fantasy,” a “best guess” — but not until the “summary” at the end of his book.

Perhaps the most bizarre section of We Never Went to the Moon is its fully illustrated travelogue on the heady delights of Nevada. “Clerks and secretaries for the ASP control center,” Kaysing writes beneath a full-page photograph of a cavorting, laughing woman in a bikini, “were recruited from Las Vegas casinos, which added to the general appeal of the location.” Most of the time, the astronauts were “free to wander about and play the slots.”

Kaysing wrote the book in Las Vegas, which might go some way toward explaining the advertorial tone and the glowing mentions of one establishment in particular. “MGM Grand Hotel, at right, is booked up solid for three years. Try the Dunes for a room.” (Come for the exposé of the scam of the century; stay for the advice that the “finest buffet in the world” is served on the 24th floor of the Dunes Hotel.)

More darkly, though Kaysing lacks anything resembling evidence to suggest it, he proposes that the accidental death of an Apollo safety inspector, Thomas Baron, in a car-train crash was a NASA hit job. In later interviews, he would add the crew of Apollo 1 to the list of potential whistleblowers that the space agency had allegedly murdered. These were grave and attention-grabbing accusations — offered up without a shred of real evidence.

The book culminates with a return to the theme that had long preoccupied Kaysing: Society was the real con all along. Years earlier, he writes, he realized that “my family and I were being swindled; that living a life style arranged by others was actually a very serious hoax.” The moon-landing conspiracy was not unique; in fact, Kaysing concludes, now back on familiar ground, the “real point” of his book is that “it is not the only hoax perpetrated by those in power for their own personal gain.”

Finally, Kaysing implores the reader to follow his example, quit the rat race, and “question everything and everyone.”