Customer Reviews

Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (Tom Swift Jr. Adventures, 16)

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As a budding adolescent boy, I devoured the Tom Swift books and then used them as the foundation for hours of daydreaming. He was my idol as I plotted all of the amazing things that I would invent when I got older. As science fiction, the stories are simplistic, the main characters behave the same from story to story and the dialog is that of a weekly reader. Just right for kids who want to read for joy rather than study.

In this book, Tom is doing battle with an evil Asiatic mad scientist who is trying to steal secrets to sell to a foreign power. That power is quite obviously the People's Republic of China, although it is never stated. The story starts with the enemy stealing one of the Swift Company's boats and their unsuccessful search for it. Tom then goes on to build a spaceship that is powered by the particles of the solar wind. It is not a sail, although he calls it a space kite. The action is dramatic and of course Tom emerges victorious in the end, after several harrowing adventures and is deep into contemplating his next invention. Imaginative adolescent boys were made to consume this stuff, even if they are a couple of decades beyond the numeric end of those years.