Some of you are familiar with the Ley-Polgreen 4 book "Adventures in Space series (Man-Made Satellites, Space Pilots, Space Stations and Space Travel). If not I will have to do a series about those later.But today it is about a 4 book space series you may never have seen. Michael Chester and William Nephew also did a great series of books about the grand space flight progression. They may be less remembered because while their illustrations are great they used a limited color pallet.
Nephew, William and Chester, Michael. Illustrated by Robinson, Jerry. Moon Trip: True Adventure in Space. New York: Putnam. (63 p.) 23 cm.
This book gives a basic description of rocket theory, astronaut training and how a trip to the Moon could be accomplished.
But this is just the first book in the informal "series" of: "Moon Trip", "Moon Base" (1959), "Planet Trip" (1960) and "Beyond Mars" (1960), all by Chester. In this "quartet" he moves from travel to the Moon to planetary exploration to interstellar travel.
So look for Moon Base later this week.
John, your blog gives me so much joy, I feel like a kid again :)
ReplyDeleteI don't comment very often but wanted to drop in and say thanks.
r/e
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Beyond Mars volume.
ReplyDelete-- Michael S.
Though they're black and white, I like the Jerry Robinson illustrations for "Moon Trip" much better than the Buehr illustrations for the series' other volumes. Robinson's drawing skills were very good, and he had an excellent sense of design that shows in both his imagined hardware and his visual composition. I also like his choice of medium: white gouache and ink washes (a standard technique of commercial artists in the 1950s and '60s). Economical for the publisher, but nonetheless evocative.
ReplyDeleteI remember this book as a kid; somehow their Moon was far more interesting then the real one. I thought the idea of salvaging wrecked space probes (and the drawing of astronauts using a space towtruck to cart away a wreck) brilliant.
ReplyDelete