Tag Archives: history

213. Borders

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I don’t need to remind you what Europe is like today. Everyone knows her troubles. Refugees, and terrorists disguised as refugees, are flooding in, and once they arrive, they can move more or less freely from country to country. BREXIT came largely as a result of this crisis, with the threat of terrorism and economic dislocation driving the vote.

It was very different in 1989, the year in which the novel Raven’s Run (see Serial) takes place. There were no open borders, even between friendly countries. When my wife and I traveled from Switzerland to Italy during that era, the train crossed the Italian border at 2 AM. It stopped and a cadre of officials came aboard, moving from car to car, waking everyone up and checking passports. Of course, as Americans, it was a formality. Our passports carried us through without strain, but if there had been an irregularity . . .

There was an irregularity later, coming back from Hungary. A young and carefree European, French as I recall, had gotten into Hungary – God knows how –  with a passport, but without a visa. He confessed his lack to everyone in the coach, and laughed about it. Some very surly individuals took him off at the border. I never saw him again, but I had to wonder how funny it seemed a few hours later.

I had my own irregularity, harmless but thought provoking, earlier that same summer. My wife and I were camping at Innsbruck, Austria. When you camped or stayed in a hotel in those days, the owner confiscated your passport when you checked in and returned it when you left. It was the law throughout most of Europe.

We took a day trip from Innbruck to Reuthe, also in Austria. We did not know that the train passed through Germany on the way. As we crossed the German border, some very severe guards, with automatic pistols at their hips, came demanding passports. My wife had hers; I didn’t.

I took German in high school, which is very close to not taking it at all. I tried to ask why, but my one word “Warum?” (Why?) got me nowhere. The border guard repeated his demand for my passport. My weak German “Ins camping.” (It’s at the campground.) must have made sense to him. He had to know that holding passports at campgrounds and hotels was the law. It didn’t melt his icy stare.

Now I have met many people traveling through Germany, both before and after this incident. They were universally friendly and helpful, and they all spoke English, especially after trying to deal with my attempts at German. Not these guys. They just looked pissed. It was probably an act, but they had me convinced at the time.

Those of us with passport irregularities were taken to another car, without explanation, with just gestures and an intense glare, where we were sealed in. We passed through a piece of Germany and back into Austria, and were released.

It wasn’t life threatening, nor the stuff of spy novels, but it was very much a part of the system the Eurozone was designed to overcome. Open borders did away with a lot of annoyance, and allowed a freedom of movement that helped bring prosperity to Europe.

Today, new circumstances are bringing Europeans to reconsider that openness.

210. Close to the Ground

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During 1987 and 1988, we spent 130 days in Europe, traveling by train, backpacking, and living in a dome tent. The tent cost twenty-nine dollars at K-mart. It kept the rain out until it rained; then it kept some of the rain out. All the summer of 1987 the fiberglass tent poles kept eroding at the ends, and the tent got progressively lower to the ground. Finally we started patching it with branches harvested from bushes at the campgrounds. When we got home, we took the ragged remnants back and they gave us a replacement. That one got us through 1988.

It was a vacation, and a cultural and historic tour, but I also had the rough outline of a novel in my head, and I was looking for places to let it happen. I visited the American consulate in Marseilles because I intended to have my protagonist make connections there. At the American embassy in Paris I mentioned that I was planning to write a novel about an American in Europe on the run from gangsters. The information clerk sighed wearily and said, “We wish you wouldn’t.”

We left looking like Americans. We came back looking like very fit Americans. Walking every day and eating very little will do that to you.

During those two summers we went all the way to the northernmost point in the Orkneys and as far north as the Arctic Circle in Norway. Looking out from the train from Myrdal to Flam, I saw a grassy cliff and knew that it would become the scene of the climax of the novel. We went northeast to Finland, southeast to Budapest and Greece, south as far as Pompeii, west as far as Portugal, and ten thousand places in between. We did not go to Berlin, because that was still East Germany and Eurail didn’t go there. Germany was a fairly tense place, those summers.

We took the train everywhere. Without Eurail passes, none of this would have been possible. We also walked, probably more than a thousand miles, around towns, on Alpine trails, and daily to and from the campgrounds which were always far out on the edge of the cities we visited. Those campground trips took us through back alley parts of cities normal tourists never see – seldom scenic, but always interesting. We only ate in restaurants where the exchange rate made them cheap; in Switzerland, we at a lot of bread and apples.

Being poor, or something like poor, can be an advantage to a writer. It’s hard to imagine Steinbeck writing Cannery Row or The Grapes of Wrath while living in a penthouse. Poverty, or something like, can seem exotic to those who have a little money.

Of course, most people want to read about the rich. After all, the James Bond novels wouldn’t work if he wore ragged clothes and drove a ten year old car.

I find life close to the ground interesting, and all those experiences allowed me to build a story in which my protagonist, Ian Gunn, has reason to live like I did, at least for a part of the book, and draw on those experiences for the rest of it. It is called Raven’s Run and it begins in Serial tomorrow.

At one point, he and his girlfriend meet a street musician, and Ian thinks:

On the ladder of affluence, we were near the bottom. Eric was one critical step lower. We knew that we could not eat in a restaurant; Eric did not know where his next meal was coming from.

Ian Gunn is about thirty, as we were, and on the verge of moving into better circumstances, but not quite there yet. He finds himself traveling on the cheap, like a teenager, but his age makes him a misfit in that crowd. I could tell you more, but check out Serial tomorrow and read it for yourself. 

208. The Cost of Research

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I grew up on science fiction, but that wasn’t all I read. I read about the westward movement, pioneer days, cowboys, and Indians (as opposed to cowboys and Indians). When I discovered adult books, I read a lot of Costain. He was about all we had in the closet sized abandoned library in our elementary school.

I found a set of cheaply bound classics in a stationary store in a nearby town. They were two-ups, with Moby Dick and Two Years Before the Mast in one volume. I loved them both, along with Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and a half dozen others. I eventually learned that my Moby Dick was an abridged version. When I tried to tackle the original as an adult, I figured out why they abridged it. Damn, that book is long; maybe I’ll finish it next year, when I’m not so busy.

Everything I read, outside of The Scarlet Letter, was an adventure of some sort. Navel gazing literature never crossed my path until I was an adult. I still like my fiction to be doing something, even while the protagonist reflects on life and its meaning. After all, we mix up action and reflection in real life.

That was the way I approached my writing from the beginning. Plenty of action; plenty of things to consider along the way and, hopefully to consider again after closing the book for the last time.

By the time I was ready to write, I could have written in any of a number of genres. I chose science fiction and fantasy for two reasons. First, they are my favorites. I had been reading both for decades and I knew their possibilities and the readers’ expectations. They weren’t all I wanted to write, but they were a place to start.

The other reason was money. Re$earch co$ts dollar$ – and time, which is a form of money. I could create whole worlds out of my imagination, but if I wanted to write about the area west of Philadelphia in 1789, or West Virginia in 1865, or the Mississippi River in 1845 – to name the settings of three novels on my to-write list – it would have taken years of library research and trips to those places. I couldn’t afford that, so half of the things I was ready to write were out of reach.

I was a pleasure to write what I could afford to write, but still frustrating not to be able to crawl out of that box.

Eventually I started teaching, made a few bucks, and had the chance to travel. That opened things up. I‘ll tell you a bit about that over the next two posts, then acquaint you with one of the novels that came out of those travels. more tomorrow

207. I Have a Dream

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I’ve told my personal story regarding justice for black citizens several times, and I fleshed it out over a month and a half in February and March of this year. Here is a brief reprise for those who weren’t following yet.

I was born and raised in a small Oklahoma town with no blacks in sight. My father was a Baptist deacon and lay minister, and a dominating man. I never disagreed with him – out loud. He did not hate blacks – really, he didn’t. He expected to see many of them in heaven. He did think they had their place, ordained by God, and they would be happy if they only kept to it. He considered Martin Luther King an agitator and an evil man.

I agreed with his views of God and man when I was very young, but by my teen years I was beginning to question both. Silently question, that is. There was no discussion in our house, only my father’s statements ex cathedra and our silent nods. My final conversion away from his thinking on race came when black marchers were washed down the street by fire hoses in Selma and elsewhere.

This Sunday is the anniversary of the March on Washington, and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. When it happened, it passed me by. At the time, I was wrestling with my father’s views on God. My change of view on race was a couple of years in my future.

In our house, it was just another speech by that self-serving agitator King.

When I was doing research for posts earlier this year, I became aware of Philip Randolph, who orchestrated the March on Washington. Shamefully, I had never heard of him. At that time I said that I would find out more about him, and I did. His story is worth telling, but it isn’t mine to tell. I had planned a post detailing the March, but that isn’t my story, either. I’ve decided to leave both to those who fought the battles while I was still coming to realize that there was a war.

The story of the March on Washington isn’t mine to tell, but it changed my life, as it changed all of our lives, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

206. Coxey’s Army

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“Congress takes two years to vote on anything. Twenty-millions of people are hungry and cannot wait two years to eat.”        Joseph Coxey

This weekend marks the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. It wasn’t the first march.

When I was a kid, my father would occasionally say something like, “That kid eats enough to feed Cox’s army!” We’d all laugh. It was just a saying. I was an adult before I realized where the phrase came from, or that “Cox” was actually Joseph Coxey.

Long before our present financial difficulties, even long before the Great Depression, the American economy has had a history of booms and busts. The origins of the Panic of 1893 are complex, but the result was clear. Unemployment rose dramatically – to 25% in Pennsylvania and 43% in Michigan.

There were few resources for the unemployed and hunger spread. Everybody had a theory as to the cause of the problem. Everybody had a different solution. Does this sound familiar?

Among those who spoke out was businessman Joseph Coxey. He called for government expenditures, not for handouts, but for a massive program of public improvements. He was branded as a crank for his position. Thirty years later it became the New Deal.

In order to push his agenda, Coxey organized a march on Washington. Leaving Massillon, Ohio in March of 1894, he and his followers marched approximately fifteen miles a day along the National Road.

The National Road was the first major highway built in the US by the federal government. It represented the kind of public improvement Coxey was calling for. Ironically, construction on the road had been stopped in 1837 by an earlier financial panic.

The press dubbed the group Coxey’s Army, and spread the word. It would be easy to forget, in our cell-phone world, that instantaneous communication is not new. It began in the mid nineteenth century when the telegraph advanced along with the railroads. The railroads had to have the telegraph to coordinate their trains; the newspapers co-opted it to carry local news throughout the nation.

Newspaper reporters followed along, reporting the progress of the march. Local people gave the marchers places to camp and donated food to sustain them. The local unemployed would join the march for a day or so, although few stayed for the whole journey.

A second march, called Kelly’s Army left San Francisco, also heading toward Washington. A few made it all the way by July. Fry’s Army from Los Angeles used a stolen train for part of their attempt to reach Washington.

About 400 of Coxey’s Army reached the Capitol on May first, but were stopped by police. Coxey and a few others climbed a fence and were arrested for trespassing on the Capitol grounds.

Coxey achieved nothing immediate, but began a long tradition of marching on the seat of government. Wikipedia lists well over a hundred marches, calling for everything from jobs, to peace, to abortion rights, to an end to abortion, to labeling on genetically engineered foods.

The most important of these was the 1963 march where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech.

205. Detroit Riots

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This won’t take long.

People thirty to forty years younger than I am may see the Civil Rights movement as history – possibly even ancient history. Unless you are black, or very liberal, chances are you really only know one civil right leader – Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King was an advocate of non-violence and his commitment to that position helped keep the civil rights movement from becoming bloodier than it was. Nevertheless, he was not loved in my home when I was growing up. My father didn’t hate him – as a Christian, he wasn’t allowed to hate anybody – but his eyes narrowed and his face grew grim whenever he read in the Tulsa World about whatever latest thing Martin Luther King had done.

Martin Luther King was the white man’s friend, but my father couldn’t see that.

When the Detroit Riots occurred 1967, I was a thousand mile away from Oklahoma, spending my college sophomore summer working as an archaeologist in Bay City, Michigan. We were about a hundred miles away from Detroit, and saw nothing of the riots except what was on television, but we were scared. I was pro-Black, pro-Civil Rights, pro-Martin Luther King, and I was scared.

Martin Luther King surely hated the violence that summer, but it was a wake-up call to complacent white America. I’m glad I wasn’t home to see my father’s reaction to the event. Both men hated the violence, but from polar opposite perspectives.

And yet . . .

Recently, I saw a bumper sticker or a passing car. I can’t  quote it, but here is what I remember:

Violence never solved anything – except for ending slavery, ending Fascism, saving the remaining Jews, and keeping America safe at home.

Hmmm?

Now blacks are being killed with depressing frequency by police (Or were they always being killed, and we are just now becoming properly aware of it?), and police are being gunned down in turn. Do I approve? Of course not, not in either case. But I am not surprised.

Do I want to see black violence against whites? Good God, no. Violence brings reprisals, which hurts everybody. Besides, to be personal and selfish, I would be a big white target.

Still, I remember Detroit, and I remember my father’s willingness to turn his back on events and let them pass him by, as long as they didn’t disturb his little world.

I hate that this is true, but fear motivates.

197. Alternatives to History

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I am not always a fan of science fiction based on alternative timelines. They can be superb, but they are often pedestrian, and too often deeply dumb.

I’ll give you two examples – best and worst. Pavane by Keith Roberts is a powerfully written novel set in a fully realized alternate world. It’s premise, spelled out in a prolog, is that Queen Elizabeth was assassinated, leading to a conquest of England by Catholic Spain. That shows a lot more imagination than the typical, “What if Lee Harvey Oswald had been hit by a bus on the way to Dallas?” setup, but the story didn’t need the premise. If the prolog had been left out and the story had been marketed as fantasy, it would have been just as good.

My candidate for worst alternative timeline story is Mirror, Mirror from the original Star Trek. While it is fun to see an alternative Spock, the notion that the entire course of human history had gone down a different and dystopian path, yet still the Enterprise was the Enterprise and all its main characters were still there doing the same jobs is too silly to even laugh at.

Actually, scientific accuracy is rarely invoked. Most alternate timeline stories are just an excuse to explore a situation contrary to fact, and there is nothing wrong with that. It has obviously excused Mirror, Mirror to its many fans. There is a sub-genre of historical novels called alternate history which doesn’t claim to be science fiction at all.

All this is a tortuous route to Heinlein and the novel fragment I posted yesterday. Heinlein’s short stories from the thirties and forties build up a future history that I would have loved to be a part of, or at least to write stories in. Time, however, eventually caught up to them. In our world, Leslie LeCroix was not the first man on the moon. As Heinlein continued to mine his old works, he eventually cast what had been his future history as an alternate timeline. He added more timelines, and eventually let them all blend together into a view of multiple universes. This was great fun for me as a reader, but it held nothing for me as a writer. I was interested in writing about a robust exploration of the solar system in the near future, informed by astronomical information Heinlein did not have.

I asked myself how the world Heinlein wrote about was different from the world we live in. The answer was simple; his culture developed nuclear powered spaceships, and ours didn’t. That begged the question, “Why not?”. We developed nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, so why not nuclear spacecraft?

Not denying the technical difficulties involved, the answer seemed to be fear. Somewhere on the road to the cold war, nuclear power became the enemy. Nukes took out Hiroshima; nukes gave us Godzilla. Nukes gave us fear, and fear does not deal with reason; it has a logic of its own.

What if that fear had not developed, or had developed differently. It would be easy to envision a timeline in which they developed nuclear space propulsion technology, so we had to follow suit, and to hell with the consequences.

So when and where could we tweak reality, and how should it be done? Should we simply present the chosen future as fait accompli, or should we create a character from the present who would go back in history and cause the change?

Heinlein came to the rescue again. In one of his late novels, in a throwaway line, he mentioned an attempt to change history by sending an agent back, not to kill a horrid dictator, but to give a condom to his father, an acne-faced teenager, on the night the dictator had been accidentally conceived. Beautiful!

I decided to save Franklin Roosevelt’s life, or at least prolong it for an additional several years, to make things come out differently in a different timeline. opening chapters Wednesday and Thursday

196. Timelines

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Here are a couple of pages out of a novel that never could make up its mind where it was going. There is another opening as well, which actually may become the story. At present I have two main characters vying for lead. This fellow Davos is probably not going to get the part. I’ll show you the other version on Wednesday and Thursday.

But first . . .   As I write this, it is July 26, one day into the Democratic convention. Many things are happening, primarily email leaks, which came out of left field and may or may not cause major changes in the outcome of the election. Everything is in flux, but one storyline will emerge. You know much more about it there-then as you read this than I know here-now as I am writing it. Reality isn’t science fiction – quite.

But what if . . ..

There are a thousand events this week whose occurrence, or non-occurrence, or even timing would allow a science fiction writer to generate a thousand different timelines, from utopian to dystopian and every shade between. This is true every day of every year, (see 173. BREXIT is Science Fiction) but at times like this, when the future seems poised on a knife’s edge, we realize how many ways our lives could come out. It goes a long way toward explaining the popularity of alternative history novels, something we will talk about tomorrow.

For now let’s look at the opening chapter of a novel-that-never-was about a timeline-that-never-was, and see what trouble Davos has gotten himself into.

Chapter 1

The headlines were about the Soviet victory at Königsberg, three days earlier.

Jim Fletcher, who now went by the name Davos, felt a chill. Not panic, not yet, but definitely the beginning of fear. He checked the date on the newspaper, April 12, 1945. That was right, but the headline was wrong. He checked his wristwatch – an intricate mechanism of cams and gears and springs that would have been welcomed in any historical museum in his home time. April 12th was the first of three ticks that would verify his target timeline. It was no small item; not something any newspaper would have missed.

Davos folded the newspaper and sipped coffee, staring out the window of the diner and waiting for his breakfast. No need to panic. No need to hurry. Time was something he had an unlimited supply of. Cultivate patience. 

Sure.

He ate, paid, and left. Two blocks toward downtown, there was a news stand that would have the New York Times.

These headlines revealed sketchy news about the battle near Okinawa. It should have read, “President Roosevelt dies in Warm Springs.”

Davos expressed an obscene opinion and headed back to the hotel. Tim Murray was behind the desk reading Life magazine. He was a friendly guy. Davos had only known him since he first checked in four days ago, but Murray looked up and asked, “Did you forget something?” Davos just waved.

Inside, with locked door, security chain, and a few considerably more potent devices out of place in this time to back them up, he said, “Kerbach,” and his mechanical companion woke up. Davos said, “Translate!”

It did and they faded. “THQ. Take us back, Kerbach, we’re in the wrong timeline.”

“No, shit. You sure?”

“Got to be the wrong line. This is the day Roosevelt died, and two newspapers did not report it. What are you waiting for?”

Kerbach did not reply and the knot in Davos’s stomach tightened.

“Kerbach!”

“Trying.”

They waited in a sphere of luminescent fog. As they were between timelines, only his own impatience gave the duration color and meaning. It smelled of sweat and was beginning to taste like panic.

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t make contact. I’ve run my diagnostics eight times. Nothing. Whatever is wrong, isn’t in me. Maybe at THQ?”

“Maybe. We’ll try again later. Right now, I want you to review what you did when you translated us to Armageddon Four. How did we end up in the wrong timeline?”

There was a long pause, then Kerbach said, “I find no errors.”

“Take us back.”

“Are you sure?”

“We can’t just stay here in this fog for the rest of eternity.”

The fog receded and Davos was standing at the foot of an unmade bed, in a cheap hotel, talking to a battered leather suitcase that was much more than it seemed to be. The wristwatch said eight minutes after ten and the clock on the dresser said the same. He had neither gained nor lost time in the translation. In other words, he had never left. For good or ill, he was tied to this place and time.

         *          *          *

Two days later, FDR was in the news again. He would not confirm or deny rumors of large scale fire-bombing of Tokyo. He should have been two days dead and lying in state. Vice-president Harry Truman was still an unknown. Presumably he still didn’t know that America had atomic bombs – bombs he would order dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in forty-one of the sixty-seven timelines in sheaf alpha.

There was no known timeline in which FDR did not die on April 12, 1945.

195. Boys at Work: Rick Brant

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By at Wk atwIf you didn’t read Tuesday’s post, you might want to do so before you proceed. This week is on the subject apprenticeship literature.

Grosset and Dunlap was the most important publishing house of the twentieth century, in my opinion, because they provided literature for all the kids who didn’t have access to a library and didn’t have much money to spend. For a dollar or so, depending on the decade, you could buy books from any of a dozen or more series. This was before paperbacks made books affordable. If it weren’t for Grosset and Dunlap, I would not be a reader or writer today.

Grosset and Dunlap was almost synonymous with the Stratemeyer syndicate, which provided them with most of their titles. There were exceptions such as the Ken Holt series and the Rick Brant books. Ken Holt never appealed to me, but the Rick Brant books were the jewels of my childhood.

All of the G & D books carried pseudonyms as author. In books from Stratemeyer, this disguised the fact that they were works for hire, written to outlines which were usually provided by Stratemeyer himself. The Ken Holt books however (pseudonym Bruce Campbell) were all written by Sam and Beryl Epstein. The first three Rick Brant books (pseudonym John Blaine) were written by Peter Harkins and Harold Goodwin. The following twenty-one books were by Goodwin alone. (see also 60. Thank You, Harold Goodwin)

In other words, they had real authors, not poorly paid hacks, and it showed.

Relevant aside: Years ago I was attending a teachers’ conference, against my will. If you’ve never been at one, you don’t know what boredom means. I had settled into my normal conference stance of a calm face covering intense irritation at the endless stream of BS. The only bright spot was the keynote speaker, Steve Wozniak. When he came to the podium, he mentioned Rick Brant as a childhood influence.

I whooped. You could have heard me in the street. Then my face turned red. You see, I had never before heard anyone else mention my childhood favorite. This was before I had access to the internet; now I know that there are enough fans of the series to run a fair number of Rick Brant themed websites.

Rick Brant had the perfect life. His father was a noted scientist who lived and worked at home. Rick, his family, and his best friend Scotty all lived on Spindrift Island, which was the headquarters of a group of scientists and engineers. Zircon, Weiss, Briotti and others formed a cadre of the best uncle figures any boy ever had.

He was a junior member of the team. A member -not a mascot. He never outshone the scientists, but he pulled his own weight, mostly building electronic gadgets that the scientists had invented. This was during the electronic middle ages (first tubes, then transistors, then solid state), when a reader could go down to Radio Shack and buy the wherewithal to try his own hand at the trade.

Rick Brant was eighteen years old for 43 years, always working with his avuncular scientists and always learning. That’s good work if you can get it. During that time he went on dozens of expeditions throughout the world. He helped the Spindrift scientists launch a rocket to the moon, find a lost civilization, excavate a sunken temple – the list goes on for twenty-four books.

I so wanted to be Rick Brant.

A week is enough for now, but there are other authors that deserve attention, particularly Howard Pease. Someday soon, we’ll return to this subject.

194. Boys at Work: Lee Correy

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By at Wk atwIf you didn’t read Monday’s post, you might want to do so before you proceed. This week is on the subject apprenticeship literature.

Lee Correy had a considerable effect on my life. L. C. was a pen name of G. Harry Stine, an author with a long bibliography, but I don’t think of it like that. I have read some of G. Harry’s work without enthusiasm, and I haven’t read Lee Correy’s two seminal novels since high school. I still think of Lee Correy as a real person, separate from G. Harry Stine. It’s an artifact of my nostalgia.

I am referring to Rocket Man and Starship Through Space, both of which were in my high school library. They would be in my personal library right now, but they are rare, and copies are now out of my price range.

Of the two, Starship Through Space is clearer in my memory, probably because of its lame ending. Two young men travel back from Mars where they are attending a space academy, to find that they have been chosen to participate in the building of the first interstellar ship. They participate fully in the building of the Vittoria, are on the crew which flies her to Pluto and back, are deeply involved in the upgrade and rebuilding that follows, and continue on the Alpha Centauri. That is where it all fell apart for me, as the natives of New Terra resemble Native Americans and turn out to be displaced humans, part of the scattering that followed the Tower of Babel.

The two young protagonists participate fully in the work of building and flying the starship, but they are not running the show. They don’t invent a stardrive or save the universe. They are junior members of the crew, in training, and under the command of competent adults whom they respect.

This is the key to apprenticeship literature. The young protagonists are intelligent, well trained, diligent, hard working, and extremely competent. They aren’t the boss, but they will be someday. They have ambition and confidence, but typically don’t have a lot of arrogance.

The novel Rocket Man meant more to me, but is harder to portray. I don’t remember much, just the overwhelming feeling of lust and envy at what the protagonist was getting to do. The novel has all but disappeared, even from the internet. Goodreads list it without reviews or ratings. The only thing I found to jog my memory was a 1955 Kirkus review.

             Update, November 2019: As of today, there is a review on Amazon and the Kirkus review has disappeared.

Here is what I do remember. A young man wants to be a rocket man; to this end he enrolls in the international engineering school in New Mexico. The school is a co-op; students attend classes six months, then work on rockets for six months as apprentice engineers, earning money to cover tuition. I don’t remember too much of the story but I will never forget how badly I wanted to be on that campus.

Four years later I was at Michigan State, on a scholarship but short of cash. One option for my sophomore year was to move into Hedrick House, a student owned co-op. I lived that year in a closet sized room, attended meetings to decide house business, and cooked dinner for the fifty guys who shared the place with me. Every night I went to bed with a smile on my face knowing that I was on my way, and paying my own way. And every night I remembered Rocket Man. Thanks, Mr. Stine, known to me as Lee Correy.