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Son of the Stars

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_Son of the Stars_ (1952) by Raymond F. Jones was one of 36 juveniles published by Winston in the 1950s. It was common practice for Winston to have their authors write factual forewards or afterwards to their novels. Presumably the notion was that these would help to make them "respectable" to parents and librarians, though I suspect that most librarians didn't need that kind of trickery.

Richard Marsten's _Danger: Dinosaurs!_ (1953) had an essay on an imaginary time-slip and history. Chad Oliver's _Mists of Dawn_ (1952) had a detailed introduction to anthropology. Lester del Rey, in _Marooned on Mars_ (1952), discussed the history of the "Martian canals" in astronomy and speculated about the possibility of life on Mars. Jack Vance's _Vandals of the Void_ (1953) predicted that we would enter a future age of piracy. Philip Latham explained how he used some out-of-date astronomy as a basis for creating fictional life in _Missing Men of Saturn_ (1953).

Raymond F. Jones's essay was a tribute to the "back-yard scientists of America" (v):

A ten-year-old boy in Texas begins the search by producing rotten-egg gas with his Christmas chemistry set. At sixteen, he has a well-equipped basement laboratory. A girl in Oregon is astonished at the wonder of her first glimpse through a microscope in junior high. When she enters college, she takes her laboratory with her-- a box containing her own microscope and a few hundred slides. (v)

This topic is one that seems to run through much of Jones's writing. Like Hal Clement, Jones likes to write about scientists-- both professional and amateur-- who engage in the great game of experimentation and observation. At one point, the alien boy Clonar (who knows how to build a transmitter that can communicate over light-years) touches the hero's short-wave radio and says, "It must be-- fun, anyway" (52). Clonar is being polite, but he is also telling the truth. Science _is_ fun. It's not so much the level of technology that your culture may have that counts. It's how well you play the game. Ultimately, it is decided that Earth must learn to make her own way-- both scientifically and morally.

Why morally? Because Clonar is an alien who crash lands on Earth. He is dependent upon the kindness of strangers. He gets it from some people-- the backyard inventer hero, his girlfriend, a crusty country doctor, and an intelligent collie. But often, he does not. The hero's mother is frightened of him. He is arrested by the military. Some of the military (like Colonel Middleton) are unimaginative and paranoid. Others (like General Gillispie) are more intelligent but overly ambitious. The hero's father is tolerant of Clonar, but he has a tendency to believe what those in authority tell him is the truth. Earth people have potential and basic goodness, but they still have a long way to go.

If it is at all possible, get the first edition with the original cover by Alex Schomberg. It depicts a fleet of flying saucers gracefully sailing from a planet with a reddish sandy desert and a blue ocean toward Earth hanging prominently in the sky. But I have sometimes wondered... What is the planet in the foreground? Not the Moon. Not with an ocean. But a planet such as Venus or Mars wouldn't show the Earth as prominently in the sky. Mars wouldn't be likely to have an ocean. Given the scientific knowledge of the day, Venus might have an ocean. But it would also have been cloud-shrouded, hiding any view of outer space. Clonar's world is in another galaxy. So what is the world in the forground? Well, never mind. It's still a spectacular cover.