Customer Reviews

ROCKET JOCKEY

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I read this book when I was about eight years old (1955).

Its the story of a race in rocket ships (one from each habitable planet/moon - Earth, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa). Its a somewhat hokey story 52 years later but a nice trip back along memory lane.

Hate to be a spoiler but when DelRay wrote it in 1952, we were 17 years away from the first Moon Landing. But in the book, the author names the race "the Armstrong Classic" after the first man to land on the Moon.

I remembered that in 1969 and every year since. Truthfully, I just bought the book here on Amazon {ROCKET JOCKEY (Del Rey Books)} , to check my memory. But it was a nice trip back to when I was a kid and dreamt of things to come as well.

I have a friend who once said to me that if it wasn't for sports, he would never have made it out of high school. My response was that I made it out of high school in spite of sports. I will confess at the outset that sports science fiction is not really my cup of tea. According to Peter Nicholls and Brian Stableford (1995), it is a form of writing that didn't flourish until after World War II. Some of the early practitioners of it were Clifford D. Simak, Malcolm Jameson, and Lester del Rey.

_Rocket Jockey_ (1952) was first published by Winston under the pseudonym of Philip St. John and was accompanied by a splendid cover by Alex Schomburg.The cover depicted two rockets taking off at an angle from the Moon. The novel has since been reprinted in paperback form several times over (with much less splendid covers), indicating that it has retained a certain degree of popularity over the years. I don't know why. It strikes me as very dated and simplistic, though I'll admit that it does have a certain degree of action and zip.

It was prophetic in an accidental kind of a way. The race across the solar system is called the Armstrong Classic in honor of the first man to land on the Moon-- a Major Armstrong. Unlike Neil Armstrong, his first words were not about a giant step for mankind. They were, "Who won the Indianapolis Classic?" I sometimes wish that our historical first words had been as spontaneous. Ah, well.

The story involves a young pilot for Earth who is maneuvered into racing in the Armstrong Classic against Martian contestants. The Martians are noted for winning by the use of dirty tricks. And there are dirty tricks aplenty that are dished out. I personally find other del Rey juveniles such as _Marooned on Mars_ (1952), _Battle on Mercury_ (1953), and _Step to the Stars_ (1954) to be much better written and much more imaginative. But I will freely admit that sports buffs may get more enjoyment out of this book than I did.