Customer Reviews

Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon (Tom Swift, Jr., Adventure Series, 12)

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Well, now. Tom Swift, Jr. constructed a lot of great inventions: his flying lab, his jetmarine, his rocket ship, his giant robot, his diving seacopter, and his ultrasonic cycloplane. And he had been to some unusual places: a golden city under the sea, the caves of nuclear fire, and the phantom satellite Nestoria. But back in the 1950s, we all were panting for the Big Event-- the trip to the Moon.

And then, almost before we quite expected it, along came _Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon_ (1958). And it was everything that such an event ought to be. There was plenty of trouble from those dasterdly Brungarians to keep things lively. And there was a great spaceship-- a giant boxlike affair mounted in a gyroscopic framework with repelatron drives. And there was a reason for the race to the Moon-- to rescue a space ark of alien plants and animals placed in orbit there by Tom's space friends. No question about it. _The Race to the Moon_ was one of the best of the Tom Swift, Jr. books. It is still fun to read today.

Let us look at the third cluster of five books in the series (books eleven through fifteen). They are: _Tom Swift and His Deep-Sea Hydrodome_ (1958), _Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon_ (1958), _Tom Swift and His Space Solartron_ (1958), _Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope_ (1959), and _Tom Swift and His Spectomarine Selector_ (1960). All of them were written by that champion TSJ author, James Duncan Lawrence. And all of them were illustrated by the talented Graham Kaye. As with other books in the series, they are archtypical edisonades (inventer-as-hero adventures) written in a formulaic, homogenized style.

The inventions in these books are, it seems to me, a bit more fantastic, more imaginative, more specialized than those in the previous books. Don't get me wrong. Many of the earlier inventions were great fun to read about. But rockets, submarines, robots, and space stations were being discussed in newspapers and popular magazines. On the other hand, did you see articles in _Life_ or _Popular Science_ on repelatron drives and retroscopes? Not bloody likely.

The repelatrons (first developed in the _Deep-Sea Hydrodome_ and _The Race to the Moon_) are handy for holding up underwater bubbles, powering spacecraft, and deflecting meteors and Brungarian missles. The space solartron is a machine that converts energy into matter. The problem is that early models require a _lot_ of energy to make just a little matter. The retroscope is a device that can photograph an ancient artifact and "reconstruct" the original item on film. Tom uses it for Mayan artifacts. But what if he used it with the Dead Sea scrolls or Bible manuscripts? Think of the hoo-rah that would follow! The inventions in the _Spectomarine Selector_ are a bit more mundane-- a glorified suction pump and a mineral detector. But even here, it's good to see Tom and his friends back in the undersea city of gold once again.

I would like to close with a nod to some of the reference sources connected with this series. Most are on the internet, and you can pull them up if you click "Tom Swift, Jr. Series". At least one site gives a detailed discussion of the inventions. Several have information about authors, illustrators, the Stratemeyer syndicate, and publication dates. There are also some personal essays along the lines of "what-TSJ-meant-to-me-in-my-youth" nature. All of them are worth a look.