It was an alternate 'Book-of-the-Month' selection for Doubleday book club. Hickam's hometown he calls 'not a sequel but an equal,' was published by Delacorte Press and is available in abridged audio, eBook, large print and Japanese. It has also been translated into Chinese. Hickam's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon (1999) that was also simultaneously released as a hardcover, audio book, and eBook. October Sky reached the New York Times # 1 position on their best-seller list. Delacorte subsequently released a mass market paperback of Rocket Boys, re-titled October Sky. In February, 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys (The title October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys). Rocket Boys was also nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as Best Biography of 1998.

Among it's many honors, it was selected by the New York Times as one of its 'Great Books of 1998' and was an alternate 'Book-of-the-Month' selection for both the Literary Guild and Doubleday book clubs. Rocket Boys has since been translated into eight languages and also released as an abridged audio book and electronic book. In 1998, Delacorte Press published Hickam's second book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, the story of his life in the little town of Coalwood, West Virginia.

This resulted in his first book, Torpedo Junction (1989), a military history best-seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press. Then, after diving on many of the wrecks involved, he branched off into writing about the battle against the U-boats along the American east coast during World War II. At first, he mostly wrote about his scuba diving adventures for a variety of different magazines. Hickam has been a writer since 1969 after his return from Vietnam. He served six years on active duty, leaving the service with the rank of Captain. Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967-1968 where he won the Army Commendation and Bronze Star medals. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960 and from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in 1964 with a BS degree in Industrial Engineering. Hickam, Jr., the second son of Homer and Elsie Hickam, was raised in Coalwood, West Virginia.

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