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You'll start believing you're immune to gravity and stuff
"And here I rescued myself," beamed Prewytt Brumblydge, rubbing his hands together in anticipation and sending bright, sharp glances in the direction of Mr. Bass, who was watching him with fond amusement. "Rescued myself just as quick and neat as you please and slid along home over Greenland, making the entire journey in about sixteen hours, which is three under par—and all the while with the most tremendous news folded up in my pocket." Now Prewytt slid a hand into the inside of his jacket and whipped out a bundle of papers.
"Here you are, Tyco, my lad. Wait till you see this: the complete equations for my own original space ship fuel: brumblic pentathermonuclearcosmicdiheliumite. I'll wager there's never before been anything like it in the world—nor ever could be, without my B-rays. Now all I have to do is put a space ship together, fill up the tanks—and off we go. Take you to the moon and back, that fuel will. Ah, but, Tyco—this fuel isn't the half of it. It's only a part of the most beautiful ring of reasoning and experimentation you've ever seen. And it all begins with my B-rays. There's no end to what they can show us. But I need more Brumblium, and when I get it, I shall be able to open up whole new vistas of knowledge about light and energy, with the final result, I tell you, being nothing less than the Brumblydge Theory of the Universe!"
Upon this staggering announcement, nobody could get out a word, and Tyco Bass stared at Mr. Brumblydge for a moment with an expression which was absolutely unreadable.
"Well," he said at last, "I have only breath enough left in me, Prewytt, to ask that you explain everything at once."
Which Mr. Brumblydge proceeded to do, the two little men leaning together over a great mass of crumpled papers and apparently going back to the very beginning. For they were talking about curved space and ds2 = dp2 + dq2 and all sorts of terribly complicated things. They wouldn't even stop for lunch and the last Chuck and David heard, when they went out to see how their space ship had stood the journey home, was Prewytt exclaiming in the utmost exasperation:
"Tyco, you're as stubborn as a mule! Of course I'm right, and you're just annoyed because you didn't think of the whole thing first!"
—Eleanor Cameron, Mr. Bass' Planetoid (1958)
Tonight Eric and I are going to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at the Huntington Theatre. Unless you count Shakespeare in Love, which I'm not sure you can, it will be the first Stoppard I've seen rather than read. Reports are it contains both Sappho and Syd Barrett. Something for everyone! Wish us luck.
"Here you are, Tyco, my lad. Wait till you see this: the complete equations for my own original space ship fuel: brumblic pentathermonuclearcosmicdiheliumite. I'll wager there's never before been anything like it in the world—nor ever could be, without my B-rays. Now all I have to do is put a space ship together, fill up the tanks—and off we go. Take you to the moon and back, that fuel will. Ah, but, Tyco—this fuel isn't the half of it. It's only a part of the most beautiful ring of reasoning and experimentation you've ever seen. And it all begins with my B-rays. There's no end to what they can show us. But I need more Brumblium, and when I get it, I shall be able to open up whole new vistas of knowledge about light and energy, with the final result, I tell you, being nothing less than the Brumblydge Theory of the Universe!"
Upon this staggering announcement, nobody could get out a word, and Tyco Bass stared at Mr. Brumblydge for a moment with an expression which was absolutely unreadable.
"Well," he said at last, "I have only breath enough left in me, Prewytt, to ask that you explain everything at once."
Which Mr. Brumblydge proceeded to do, the two little men leaning together over a great mass of crumpled papers and apparently going back to the very beginning. For they were talking about curved space and ds2 = dp2 + dq2 and all sorts of terribly complicated things. They wouldn't even stop for lunch and the last Chuck and David heard, when they went out to see how their space ship had stood the journey home, was Prewytt exclaiming in the utmost exasperation:
"Tyco, you're as stubborn as a mule! Of course I'm right, and you're just annoyed because you didn't think of the whole thing first!"
—Eleanor Cameron, Mr. Bass' Planetoid (1958)
Tonight Eric and I are going to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at the Huntington Theatre. Unless you count Shakespeare in Love, which I'm not sure you can, it will be the first Stoppard I've seen rather than read. Reports are it contains both Sappho and Syd Barrett. Something for everyone! Wish us luck.
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Wait, you mean you can't?
They were one of my early exposures to science, mad and otherwise. Also orders of magnitude stranger than I'd originally believed when I went back and re-read them. I am beginning to believe this is a criterion of all great children's books.
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We built model rockets every summer. That was sort of the same thing. Less atomic.
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I really need to reread those, I don't think I have since I was in elementary school.
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We own only the first and third,
which may explain why I imprinted on Prewytt Brumblydge,but the Cambridge Public Library has all of them except Jewels from the Moon and the Meteor That Couldn't Stay (1965), which I cannot find anywhere for love or money. The last two books shift a little too much toward science fantasy (and a couple of character inconsistencies) for my preference, but I still recommend the whole series. They also contain a far lower incidence of random 1950's flaws and glitches than a lot of children's books from that time.What I need to re-read is Julia Redfern.
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I recommend. Start with the first book, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet—there are five/six sequels in increasing order of strangeness, which is something of a tall order for a series that starts with two best friends taking an overnight trip to a hitherto undiscovered second satellite of Earth in a homebuilt spaceship fitted out by their mysterious neighbor in Pacific Grove, CA, with a chicken. The title is a fair guide. It's 1954, so there are a pair of gee-whiz protagonists and an odd, benevolent local genius and secret planets and atomic this-that-and-the-other-thing; the father is a doctor and the mother fusses and the neighbor cooks up rocket fuel in his basement. But it is also fantastic in all senses, full of wonder for the physical universe and its fictional extensions, the beautiful little green-blue planet of mists and giant mushrooms, its fairylike inhabitants and their lordly ruler and his two constantly bickering wise men, and even adventuresome kids have to be responsible when other people's lives are at stake (and then explain to their parents where they've been all night, which is scarier). And it's the kind of science fiction in which science is amazingly cool, but not off-limits. Hey, kid, if you dream about space travel—you, too. It permanently affected the way I think about mushrooms and hard-boiled eggs.
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Not as different in my head as I expected them to be. I don't know what to make of that. Still, sounds like good times.
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The play contained Sappho and Catullus, the Plastic People of the Universe and Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett as/and the Great God Pan, and theory of consciousness. We were like the target audience.
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I've thought of doing a children's book about mice sailing space in a ship built from an old stove or similar device, although I'm afraid it's mostly because I know the concept's too whimsical to work outside of children's fiction. I'm afraid I've not got sufficient gift for dealing with children to write well for them.
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I have no idea if they're still in print, but they're easily found in libraries.