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Saturday, April 5, 2008

Enid Blyton and her Rocket Ship?

A little while ago I finally picked up a Tom Swift book. I found it at an antique mall (these places are gargantuan places and there are always collections of secondhand books to be found) and I took the plunge and paid $4.00 for it. It's a million miles from the likes of Enid Blyton. Published by Grosset & Dunlap and part of a very large series that started way back in 1910, to date there are over a hundred novels in the series — or to be more accurate, over a hundred novels over several series. But that's not much of a surprise when you consider that the original Tom Swift was created and penned by the Stratameyer Syndicate, the gang responsible for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.

As usual I've learned the "hard way" that it's downright annoying to read a book written by ghost writers and edited by the Stratameyer Syndicate. Anyone who knows or has read my previous ramblings about this group of literary monsters will immediately understand what I mean. I don't know the full history of the Tom Swift books, but I do know that my copy was written in 1954 and the Syndicate's radical trimming of all their published works started in 1959 — so it's not a great leap of logic to assume that Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship was cut to bits by unfeeling trimbots.

Even without prior knowledge of the wholesale butchering Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books (during which around five chapters were cut from each book in an effort to streamline them and bring them all down to a uniform twenty-five chapters) it's pretty obvious to me that the New Tom Swift Adventures have also been subjected to this treatment and excess fat removed. The thing is, I like excess fat. For me, the best chapters BY FAR were the last two or three, and I believe it's because they were too action packed to be trimmed. That last portion of the book was a very satisfying, evenly paced read — but the rest is erratic, sometimes slowing down for a detailed scene "as-it-happens," but most of the time rushing through as if the author is simply paraphrasing everything. Rather than showing us what was said, the author (or the editor) simply sums up what was said in a short sentence. If this were a Secret Seven book, one of the secret meetings would go like this:

As the last of the Seven whispered the password and entered the small shed, Peter closed the door. "Now, let's discuss what happened last night at the gang's hide-out. Who wants to start?" The Seven talked for fifteen minutes and then broke for lunch. That afternoon they went to the railway station to see if they could question the porter. The porter wasn't very helpful. The next day they met at school...

This is what the Stratameyer Syndicate do to their books. They suck all the life out of them. It's a great shame. It's also annoying when I don't know who characters are. Okay, so maybe it's not fair to complain when I'm picking up a single book midway into a series — serves me right! But you see, most authors go into some detail about characters and situations on the assumption that the reader might be a newbie. So it's not fair on the reader to have that important material removed by some scissor-wielding editor. I know hardly anything about Tom Swift other than the fact that he's eighteen and a genius inventor... and he apparently has endless amounts of money at his disposal with which to invent and build. But I know nothing about him personally. He's completely faceless.

So anyway, Tom Swift has money, and lots of it. Not only that, but he runs an entire organisation called Swift Enterprises, located on Fearing Island, a top secret base with security personnel, scientists, and the like. Heck, in this book, Tom builds a rocket ship, for heaven's sake! This is, as I said earlier, a million miles from Enid Blyton!

Despite being a mere eighteen year old, young Tom Swift (son of the original Tom Swift, who made his debut in the no-doubt-superior series that started in 1910) has a number of flying machines to hand. He's an expert pilot, of course, as is his friend and colleague Bud. Halfway through the book, Tom and Bud manage to crash land not one but two airplanes in succession. Such is Tom's unlimited resources that, at one point, he enlists the help of the Navy in an effort to trick the enemy. Oh, and did I mention he has a rocket ship?

While Fatty and the Find-Outers fork out to get on a bus to Sheepsale, Tom Swift jumps into his Flying Lab. This Flying Lab is a mystery in itself. There's actually an earlier book called Tom Swift and his Flying Lab, and I'm sure the Lab is described in ample detail there; but poor me hasn't read that one, so I have to rely on the descriptions in the book I have. Unfortunately there aren't any descriptions. There might have been at one point, but there aren't now. So I imagined a big square portacabin with rocket boosters — a silly image, but hey, the Lab apparently possesses VTOL (which, if you know your Jump-Jet Harriers, is Vertical Take-Off and Landing). Oddly enough, on one page there's a picture of the Lab, shown as an ordinary but large airplane. I'm not sure what to make of that, since this plane doesn't look like it has any vertical thrusters. Maybe the artist didn't know what the Lab looked like either, and couldn't be bothered to read Tom Swift and his Flying Lab to find out.

Speaking of the artwork, there's also the issue of the windows in the rocket ship. In the book, these are described as small round portholes, so designed for safety reasons. Yet the cover art shows an enormous sheet of glass that couldn't possibly work in real life. So I don't really trust the artist with his depiction of the Flying Lab.

There are drones in this book too. These are automated planes that (somehow) guide enemy planes in. How, I don't rightly know. Frankly the text is so badly edited that its confusing.

Now, I know I sound pretty negative about the Tom Swift series. On the contrary I want to read more. But, as usual, I want to find the originals from 1910-1941, in which Tom Swift Senior is more down to earth. The first is called Tom Swift and his Motorcycle — I'm guessing a souped-up machine that appealed to the motor cycle enthusiasts at the turn of the 20th Century. The next is about a Motor Boat; the next an Airship; then a Submarine Boat; and so on. I like the titles of the "speediest car on the road," Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout; and the next one, Tom Swift and his Wireless Message. Lovely! It all sounds so quaint and I can't wait to get my hands on them... if I ever do.

The original series ran from 1910-1941, with 40 books, but the book I have is actually from a later, newer series that started in 1954 and ran until 1971, with 33 books in all. Many more have been written since, but let's not even go there. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a very nice listing here.

Did I mention Tom Swift has a rocket ship? My mind is still boggling over this. Being a clever inventor is fine; after all, Brains Benton is one, and so is Jupiter Jones, but they're fairly ordinary kids. Tom Swift is far from ordinary. This is Thunderbirds in the Fifties. In fact, that old British TV show Thunderbirds is about the closest comparison I can make. Think clever machines; think unlimited (and inexplicable) funding; think baddies with huge mustaches; think little hover-scooters to travel about on just so the puppeteers don't have to bother plucking strings...

If you can get over the sheer outlandishness of the Tom Swift series — that an eighteen year old apparently has free reign to do as he wants with Big Bucks and Dangerous Equipment — then it's all great fun. The potential is enormous, which no doubt explains the longevity of the series. The next book after Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship is Tom Swift and his Giant Robot. Now that's a kid with too much money on his hands!

But all this inventive stuff pales into insignificance when you realize that there are actually Martians involved. In this book, there's talk of "receiving messages again from the space people." I blinked rapidly when I read that. What? As if outlandish inventions aren't enough, we're now into aliens as well? To be fair the Martians (as they're called here, and as they were always called during the Fifties) are played down; there are messages from them, sure, but they're mathematically coded and the little green bug-eyed men never actually show. At least not in this book. If there's a story arc in this series, I'm sure it's to do with these Martians. Does Tom Swift ever meet them? Maybe he does in Tom Swift and The Cosmic Astronauts. Or in Tom Swift and The Asteroid Pirates. Or in Tom Swift and The Galaxy Ghosts.

Great fun though. Badly edited, but what a concept for a children's series! But I have to say that these books are probably for older readers, as there are a LOT of technical terms — the sort of scientific mumbo-jumbo that I love to read in Stephen Baxter's hard-core sci-fi books, only with a quaint Fifties feel. You have to admire the ghost writers. Writing about space travel — even a quick orbit around the Earth — is quite an achievement when the first manned flight in space wasn't until 1961, seven years after this book was written. Oh, but I couldn't help chuckling. During take-off, Tom and Bud had to lie flat on wheeled trolleys to counter the effects of G-force. These trolleys weren't even fixed to the floor!

All this has got me wanting to try something. As Tom explained, you can see the effects of G-force by standing on a set of scales while riding up in an elevator. As you start to rise, the dial will show you as being heavier, as we've all experienced. If the dial shows you as being twice as heavy, that means you're experiencing 2 g. Humans can handle 20 to 35 g for a brief moment, but only about 9 g for sustained periods of time. A ride in a theme park can reach 4.6 g. A tornado in Texas was recorded as 6.7 g.

Surprisingly, astronauts only deal with about 3 g when taking off in the Space Shuttle, less than a theme park ride! But then, they have to be able to reach for controls. Can you reach for make-believe controls while riding the Super Alien Twister?

All in all, I do yearn for more Tom Swift, but it has to be the originals. As usual.

(My next book is The Indian Mummy Mystery, one of the Troy Nesbit books. Looks great so far, and a huge notable bonus is that it's published by good old Whitman, and NOT Grosset & Dunlap!)

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