Friday, July 04, 2008

Forgotten Kids' Books: The Rocket's Shadow - John Blaine

When I was a kid, I read the Hardy Boys books like everybody else, but my favorite series books along those lines, far and away, were the Rick Brant Science-Adventures by John Blaine. One summer many years ago, I picked up the first two of these in a department store in Odessa, Texas, while visiting relatives who lived near there. I read the first one, THE ROCKET’S SHADOW, and met Rick Brant, the sixteen-year-old son of a scientist who lived on an island off the New Jersey coast called Spindrift along with his family and several other scientists. Early on in that book, Rick runs into an ex-Marine who’s several years older named Don Scott (known as Scotty), who gets a job working for the scientists as a pilot. Rick and Scotty become best friends and are soon mixed up in a dangerous situation as some mysterious enemy is trying to sabotage the efforts of the Spindrift group to win a very valuable grant of some sort (I haven’t reread this book in several years and the details are a little fuzzy). What I do remember is that Rick and Scotty go tearing around in an airplane and getting in fights with the bad guys, and I was utterly enthralled. This was my meat.

So I immediately read the second book, THE LOST CITY. It was even better. The whole gang heads for the Himalayas, where they’re going to set up a radar link to bounce signals off the Moon or some such. Naturally, there’s a gang of villains out to stop them. And yep, just as you’d guess from the title, there’s a lost city inhabited by descendants of the Mongols. Yowza. This stuff was crack to my twelve-year-old brain. I couldn’t get enough, and eventually I read the entire series, which ran for twenty-five books. Rick and Scotty got mixed up in all sorts of scientific-themed adventures all over the world, battled spies, saboteurs, and crooks, and generally had themselves a fine old time. So did I, reading them.

A few years ago I came across some of the books in the local library, including THE ROCKET’S SHADOW, so of course I had to reread them. I was a little worried, because sometimes the great loves of our youth aren’t quite so bright and shiny when we encounter them again. The Rick Brant books, though, hold up. Do they ever. While the sense of wonder that gripped me while reading those first two books all those years ago wasn’t there, I think I appreciated even more how well-written they are. Even though they were aimed at the same readership as the Hardy Boys, the Rick Brant books are considerably grittier. Characters actually die occasionally in them. For the most part they take place in more exotic locations, and the plots are more off-beat, too.

At one point I had heard a rumor that Lester Dent, the creator and primary author of the Doc Savage series, also wrote the Rick Brant novels, but that turned out not to be true. The actual author behind the John Blaine pseudonym was Hal Goodwin. But it would be an easy mistake to make, because the Brants are filled with the same sort of scientific gimmicks and two-fisted, globe-trotting adventure as the Doc Savage novels. I don’t know that the Rick Brant series is actually forgotten – there are several websites and at least one Yahoo group devoted to it, and reprints of the books are available – but it’s certainly not very visible in the public consciousness anymore. The books might be a little dated, of course, for young readers today – okay, a lot dated – but I can’t help but think there are still some adventure-craving kids who would enjoy them a great deal.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi james,
read your post regarding your house & books burning last year or so.
i have some old (1970s and earlier) softcovers that are just lying around. if you want i could give them to you. just email me your address & complete name.

email me at jrenroe@gmail.com

Todd Mason said...

A well-written adventure series in the HARDY BOYS mode...wow. I would've dug that...much as I did the better Whitman books (and hated the dull ones).

Charles Gramlich said...

Oh man, I would have no doubt LOVED these books as a kid but I never even heard of them. Our small town library was so small and they had very little selection, although I appreciate it for all the good reading it did give me. STill, I would have enjoyed these books and may to look into picking them up now.

James Reasoner said...

THE ROCKET'S SHADOW and THE LOST CITY are both available pretty inexpensively on ABE. I recall that the first dozen books in the series are the best, but they're all worth reading.

And Jim, thank you, I'll take you up on your generous offer.

r2 said...

I had almost forgotten all about those books. But I remember as a kid liking them even more than the Hardy Boys. However, I lived in a small town and the library only had the first two. We didn't have a bookstore, the nearest one was fifty miles away and I remember getting one or two more in the series for Christmas. The next Christmas, Mom and Dad said they couldn't find them again. I don't know what happened to the copies I had, but I'm going to look up the sites you talked about in your blog. Thanks for bringing back a wonderful memory.

Randy Johnson said...

Never heard of these either. I, of course, devoured The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. These would have been right up my alley also.

Anonymous said...

This series sounds like something I would have liked. I never ran across them when I was growing up, but I'm glad to hear about them now.

Anonymous said...

I read The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift back then, but I remember reading just one Rick Brandt books, although I can't recall ther title. I know I liked it, though.

Bob Randisi

Anonymous said...

It is true that the authorship of these books is hotly contested over at the Rick Brandt site, although even they (Goodwin relatives, if I recall) admit that some were ghosted. But I personally believe that Dent's authorship is more than just a rumor, and I'm basing this on the peerless research of Will Murray, who had access to Dent's papers. In a great, long ago article in the fanzine, DUENDE, Murray wrote of the Rick Brandt series that Dent, "is clearly the author of this series...He seems to have written all of the novels from #1 to #15." Given Will's access to Dent's papers, I'm inclined to give credence to his claim.

--Stephen Mertz

pattinase (abbott) said...

Thanks, James. Looks like you came up with a real good 'un. I guess there is a place on here for forgotten kid's books. I wonder if current kids have a way to share information like this.

James Reasoner said...

Steve,

Yeah, now that you mention it, it was the DUENDE article I was remembering. (That was a great fanzine, by the way.) When I reread some of the books a few years ago I was trying to see if I could tell whether or not Dent had anything to do with them, but I never came to any conclusions. The library has several that I haven't reread yet. Maybe I ought to do that.

Anonymous said...

I don't see any reference to the Rick Brant stories in Will bibliography of Lester Dent as it appears Vintage Library, so I sspect he was unable to verify that idea. Dent was a very distinctive writer. I wqould think that if he had written those stories people would have said, "Oh, yeah that was Dent."

I think I read the first Rick Brant story but mudst not have like it. I was a big Tom Swift/science fiction fan and may have found the Brant story too "mundane." It would be interesting to read one today to see if there were things in it that I didn't notice at the time.

The fifth series of tom Swift books came out a couple years ago. It may still be on-going except that non of the bookstores I go to (Barnes & Noble and Borders) ever carries the titles. I'm not surprised if this series has floppped because the stories were kind of lame. And the titles, like The Robot Olympics or The Space Hotel were remarkably unthrilling. Only the first had a decent title "Into the Abyss" and a fairly thrilling plot. I'm convinced that if the original Tom Swift, Jr stories were reprinted they would sell better and engage the readers better.

Warren Harris said...

James:

I second the recommendation on the Rick Brant series. I picked up "Sea Gold" when it was discarded by local library when I was a sprout and then spent years trying to find more of them.

"Sea Gold" is one of my favorite books from my youth. Lots of adventure, a good science angle and more down to earth than the Tom Swifts.

I've recently picked up a decent stack of them and after reading "Rocket's Shadow" and "Wailing Octopus" I agree that they hold up just fine as an adult reader.

And while we're on the subject of books for you, I've got a box of books here with your name on them and I just need to have a street address, not a P.O. Box, so I can ship them. Drop me a line at argosy_collector@yahoo.com and I'll see about hauling these into work and getting them off to you.

James Reasoner said...

Does anybody know who really wrote the Tom Swift Jr. books? I recall reading most of those and liking them.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

I am a big sci fi fan and it was the rockets shadow that got me going on sci fi . years later it was Robert A. Heinlein who got me going fuul bore

Anonymous said...

It was shadow of the rocket that first got me interested in sci fi . later years it was Robert A. Heinlein who really got me going

Anonymous said...

I discovered Rick Brandt as a kid in Jr. High and dumped the Hardy Boys and others for my new favorite series. I was so excited, i actually wrote to "John Blaine". He (or someone on the staff wrote back) and offered me a free book if I could get some number of other kids to write about how they liked the books. Couldn't ever manage it, but I was so thrilled to get a letter from my writer hero.