Dreams of Space - Books and Ephemera

Friday, January 19, 2024

Skyjets for Fliers of Tomorrow (1954)

So this is one of the stranger books I have found over the years. It is about a future in which people will get individual jet-powered wings to fly. It is set a little like a fantasy and a little like a dream. It has "perfect" 1950s illustrations about how the future might develop. Mostly it is a lot of fun. Back to spaceflight stuff next week.

Donaldson, Lois and Arthur K. Bilder. Illustrated by Bilder, Arthur K. Skyjets for Fliers of Tomorrow. Chicago, IL: Albert Whitman. (28 p.) 1954.

It was all a dream....

Friday, January 12, 2024

Rocket Divers (1962)

So a minor piece of juvenile "space fiction" today. This little juvenile story is about scuba divers adventures and in this book they help out the divers who retrieve re-entry capsules. It has bad guys and secret submarines and space monkeys and plenty of adventure. Unfortunately it is hard to show all that so you get instead a kind of telegraphic adventure with a "chose you own ending."

Coleman, James C. et al. Rocket Divers. San Francisco: Harr Wagner. (98 p.) 1962

SO What Happens? See if you can tell from these final quiz questions....

Friday, January 5, 2024

Lift-off: The Story of Rocket Power (1963)

A very nice 1963 book about rocket propulsion. It was written for the "little engineer" and has some very nice illustrations of the construction of rockets.

Coombs, Charles. Illustrated by Foor, R. H. Lift-off: The Story of Rocket Power. New York: William Morrow and Co. (96 p.) 1963.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Happy Journeys (1961)

Here is wishing you Happy Journeys (1961) in 2024.

Happy Journeys was a 1961 children's book about the future and ways someone might travel. The illustration were double page full color paintings of a exciting and strange future that might be around the corner. I see in this book the optimism we need to accept that the future will be better but we sometime can't imagine what it will really look like. I wish all my readers a great 2024 and many happy surprises.

Some of these "visions" look familiar, like they happened, but not as we thought, others are still to come.