Part of the continuing saga of Hawk Carse. (The Affair of the Brains came first). Hawk and his two companions have wrecked Ku Sui's asteroid base and escaped in three stolen anti-gravity space suits. They fly 30,000 miles by the seat of their pants to Jupiter's jungled third moon where they discover they didn't do as much damage to the evil doctor as they thought. With only a ray gun an the formidable space suit Carse attempts to steal back papers from Sui's Venusian henchman. The illustration with the story is apt.
Pulp writing: thin characterizations, tired descriptions, random plotting.
A fun story of an 11 year old boy and his antics, thoughts, and desires. I love the author’s line: "This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime-he never knows." The follow-up book is Penrod and Sam, I plan to read next. Despite being a story about a child, the reading level and entertainment is geared towards an adult reader. As is common in novels of that era, there are some terms that are considered disrespectful to African American, but the references are infrequent and two of Penrod’s friends are black.
A good, short, short story, written at a time when separate-but-unequal was U.S. law. That's the law of Mars, and the Martians are now the minority, with the Earthlings grudgingly inching towards equal rights.
I had to read the ending three times before I got the twist. Nice characterizations, good manipulation of the reader.
Recommended.
Plot bullets
Plot bullets
The newfangled atom drive (ion) rocket has to race the standardized chemical rocket to Mars and back--and beat it by twenty days--to win the interplanetary transport contract. The Mars Corporation does everything it can to sabotage the trip.
Pretty good science and speculation for 1956. The story held my interest.
A wry, maybe a little cynical, story of a man with a talent for stepping sideways through dimensions. He's blackmailed into going to an alternate Earth and stealing their secret to ending war for the evil purposes of a corrupt politician. I found the alternate Earth amusing and attractive.
The story made me wish people with super powers could be guaranteed super morals to go with them.
The story starts out well with liquefied eyeballs, but it becomes a pulp formula story after New York is destroyed by a ray from empty space in the first paragraph.
Case Damon is the hero. He is so buff that, when they are escaping the Orange Men, it is necessary to burn an extra bar off the window opening so Case can get his shoulders through.
There are a number of convenient coincidences in the story--the 12 hour cycle of ray attacks, the tank of atomic fuel that he can rig into an A-bomb, the television screen in the room they hole up in, and so on.
The plotting and characterizations are at about an eight year old's level.
I have never been able to make any sense out of Steiner or his social philosophy. His book on the occult is equally nonsensical. There is however a very significant part of Steiners work which I believe is a must read for anyone and everyone interested in nature, ecology and the functionality of society. I speak of his book and many lectures on bees. The common honeybee very properly fascinated the social reformer in Steiner. Considering what has happened to bee colonies throughout the world in the last decade his writings on bee society and the "protocol of love" which he imagines he finds in that society are truly fascinating. His work in this area is both interesting and informative and I highly recommend it to the reader.
Unfortunately the bee related works are not as yet available on ManyBooks however they may be found in many public and university libraries
This should reference Sir Richard Francis Burton, who it was that brought these stories back from Asia and gave us their English translation.