What do you think?
Rate this book
Tiger Clinton #1
Rex i världsrymden
This book first introduces us to Group Captain Timothy (nicknamed 'Tiger') Clinton R.A.F. (retired) and his son, Rex Clinton, whilst they are spending a deer-stalking holiday in the lonely mountains of Inverness-shire. Lost in the Scottish fog they see red lights in the form of a cross and this leads them to lonely Glensalich Castle, where they meet Professor Lucius Brane and his butler, Judkins. The Professor has heard of Tiger Clinton as he is a well-known aircraft engineer and as a result is willing to show him a vehicle he has been building for space travel, which he has called the Spacemaster. The vehicle is still being tested. The Professor has managed to harness the powers of cosmic rays, which are everywhere, as motive power. Initial tests are by remote control, but then the Professor, with Tiger, Rex and Judkins, goes into orbit for the first time. The next trip is an orbit around the moon and then an actual moon landing is undertaken. Taking with them 'cosmosuits' our heroes find primitive vegetation on parts of the moon and specimens of strange animal life. They next decide to travel to Venus to be the first to see under the mysterious layers of cloud. Here they discover dinosaurs. They also find a lack of cosmic rays penetrating the cloud cover makes taking off hazardous but they manage to get safely back to earth. The next objective is Mars, with a preliminary landing on one of the moons of Mars, Phobos. Here they find graves and the dead body of a human like man, perfectly preserved. Going on to Mars they find the planet dead and vast canels choked with weeds and rushes. The also find a big city, obviously designed and built by an advanced civilisation. Leaving Judkins to empty the rubbish from the Spacemaster, the Professor, Tiger and Rex go and explore. They find a man, alive but apparently seriously ill. Tiger thinks the man is suffering from a form of sleeping sickness. It is then that they see the swarms of mosquitoes begin to rise from the overgrown canels. It appears that the inhabitants of Mars have lost a war against the insects that have now completely overwhelmed the planet. Returning to earth, the Professor plans to use insecticides from Earth to destroy the blight and modern drugs to cure the sick. However, on arrival at their launch pad, a man confronts them with a gun. Another man is also present. They demand the plans of the 'airship' and force the Professor to show the Spacemaster to them. This the Professor does, but he quickly jumps out leaving Judkins to send the two men hurtling into space with the remote control. With the door open, the two men must have been killed. The ship is lost, but the Professor is already planning to build a bigger and better ship for a rescue trip to Mars.
213 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
4 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
W.E. Johns
615 books114 followersInvariably known as Captain W.E. Johns, William Earl Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. He had a younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, who was born on 24 October 1895.
He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school.
In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47.
On 6 October 1914 he married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Reverend John Hunt, the vicar at Little Dunham in Norfolk. The couple had one son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, who was born in March 1916.
With war looming he joined the Territorial Army as a Private in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry), a cavalry regiment. In August 1914 his regiment was mobilised and was in training and on home defence duties until September 1915 when they received embarkation orders for duty overseas.
He fought at Gallipoli and in the Suez Canal area and, after moving to the Machine gun Corps, he took part in the spring offensive in Salonika in April 1917. He contracted malaria and whilst in hospital he put in for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and on 26 September 1917, he was given a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant and posted back to England to learn to fly, which he did at No. 1 School of Aeronautics at Reading, where he was taught by a Captain Ashton.
He was posted to No. 25 Flying Training School at Thetford where he had a charmed existence, once writing off three planes in three days. He moved to Yorkshire and was then posted to France and while on a bombing raid to Mannheim his plane was shot down and he was wounded. Captured by the Germans, he later escaped before being reincarcerated where he remained until the war ended.
He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school.
In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47.
On 6 October 1914 he married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Reverend John Hunt, the vicar at Little Dunham in Norfolk. The couple had one son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, who was born in March 1916.
With war looming he joined the Territorial Army as a Private in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry), a cavalry regiment. In August 1914 his regiment was mobilised and was in training and on home defence duties until September 1915 when they received embarkation orders for duty overseas.
He fought at Gallipoli and in the Suez Canal area and, after moving to the Machine gun Corps, he took part in the spring offensive in Salonika in April 1917. He contracted malaria and whilst in hospital he put in for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and on 26 September 1917, he was given a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant and posted back to England to learn to fly, which he did at No. 1 School of Aeronautics at Reading, where he was taught by a Captain Ashton.
He was posted to No. 25 Flying Training School at Thetford where he had a charmed existence, once writing off three planes in three days. He moved to Yorkshire and was then posted to France and while on a bombing raid to Mannheim his plane was shot down and he was wounded. Captured by the Germans, he later escaped before being reincarcerated where he remained until the war ended.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 6, 2013
This is the first book in the series, really it should be read as it explores the characters
And their relationship, but if you can't get a copy you can still read the rest of the books with no trouble.
Captain W.E.Johns Wrote this series for children, but my dad and I have read them and not found them childish. So a good read for all...
William Earl Johns also wrote the Biggles books witch have taken most of the fame.
Enjoy.
And their relationship, but if you can't get a copy you can still read the rest of the books with no trouble.
Captain W.E.Johns Wrote this series for children, but my dad and I have read them and not found them childish. So a good read for all...
William Earl Johns also wrote the Biggles books witch have taken most of the fame.
Enjoy.
January 22, 2024
Published in 1954, Kings of Space is set in a time when brilliant rogue scientists with unlimited funding were still allowed to build interplanetary vessels in secret state-of-the-art laboratories, before being rounded up and forced to work together in underfunded science mills for the betterment of world governments. Admittedly, the book can be a bit pedantic at times, as said scientist, appropriately named Professor Brane, explains the basics of space travel and alien etiquette to his guests: conveniently lost test pilot Group Captain Timothy “Tiger” Clinton, RAF retired, and his cadet son, Rex. Eventually the crew (including the professor’s resourceful butler, Judkins) blast off for adventures on the Moon, Mars and Venus, interacting with the life found on each.
If Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are your cuppa tea, Captain W.E. Johns’ fanciful travelogue could easily be offered up as a dry canapé.
If Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are your cuppa tea, Captain W.E. Johns’ fanciful travelogue could easily be offered up as a dry canapé.
September 24, 2024
William Earl Johns has probably never been particularly well known in the United States, but there was certainly a time when every schoolboy in the United Kingdom knew his name, albeit as Captain W. E. Johns, prolific author. After Enid Blyton, he's been fairly called "the most prolific and popular children's writer of his time", turning out over a hundred books about his principal character alone, James Bigglesworth, commonly known as Biggles.
'Kings of Space' isn't one of those as it begins an entirely different science fiction series, featuring the interplanetary adventures of a memorable quartet. The ostensible lead is a retired RAF Group Captain called Timothy Clinton, whom everyone calls Tiger, but the true architect of everything we read about is Prof. Lucius Brane, a reclusive scientist who has invented and built a spaceship of his own. Joining them on their many adventures are Tiger's plucky young son Rex and Brane's butler, Judkins, who's as useful and unflappable as you'd expect a British butler to be.
I devoured the first six books as a child, once I'd stumbled on science fiction at the age of ten via the BBC's 1981 mini-series adaptation of John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids'. Given how far they explore in the hundred and fifty pages of this initial volume, I'm eager to dive back into the others, which I probably haven't read in almost forty years. What I was blissfully unaware of back then was that there are four further books, bringing the series to ten, so I'll need to track those down first.
I should highlight what years these books spanned. 'Kings of Space' was published in 1954, so three years ahead of Sputnik 1. In terms of space exploration, that's the dark ages and this has as much in common with Burroughs as it does Heinlein. That allows Johns to spend the first four chapters in an overtly talky science teacher mode, as Prof. Brane explains what's possible. In its way, the science is well-thought-out and admirably multi-disciplinarian, but it's also very much of its time. It's trivial to poke holes in it given what we've learned since then.
However, the final book, 'The Man Who Vanished into Space', saw print in 1963, so not merely after Sputnik 1 took us beyond the atmosphere but after the Russians had sent dogs and, later, humans into space and the Americans followed suit. That was two years after President Kennedy had called on the country to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. While kids went space mad, the reality was that this sort of interplanetary adventure was already in danger of becoming rendered very much obsolete. We were about to learn how ludicrous much of it was.
For a start, the sheer number of people involved in getting a single human being into space was an impressively large one, but here it's all down to one man, Prof. Brane, who's built his Spacemaster in isolation at his remote Scottish hideaway. It doesn't use rockets, because of the fuel problem, so he's figured out a way to harness cosmic rays, so rendering his ship a domestic flying saucer, but its hull is also welded into place and yet can simply shrug off particles moving through space. Outside of a couple of suspicious interlopers who show up late in the book, only four people even know that this ship exists. On Earth, that is.
And they soon find their way off it. The massive progress that the early space race generated may have seemed impressive at the time, but after the Clintons stumble upon Brane's space operation in chapter one, conveniently as he's doing his final unmanned test flight, they progress way faster. They escape the atmosphere in chapter five and fly round the moon only two chapters later. With a growing confidence, they land on the moon in chapter nine, skip over to Venus in chapter ten, then tackle Phobos in chapter twelve before a landing on Mars in chapter thirteen. That's pretty quick work, I think!
As palpably out of date as it already was when I read this for the first time in the early eighties, it's also a heck of a lot of fun. Returning to it many decades later, I see things I didn't back then, such as how Prof. Brane is clearly neurodivergent, a word that wasn't even coined until 1998. I'm sure that I identified with Rex Clinton when I was a kid, maybe imagining myself growing up to be Tiger. Now, I would happily identify with Prof. Brane instead, at least on that neurodivergent front. I adore that he's quintessentially untidy and yet still knows where everything is.
The elder me also can't fail to notice Prof. Brane's anti-war sentiment that's clearly rooted in then relatively new fears about atomic energy and the growing intensity of the Cold War. He's clearly a genius and has a huge amount of optimism in how he operates, which would truly scare anyone who works in risk assessment or workplace safety. However, he's pessimistic about the inevitability that every scientific advancement will be co-opted by the military and turned into a weapon. He has no intention of that happening with the Spacemaster, so he's willing to destroy it rather than let it fall into someone else's hands.
The other detail that's very much of its time is the fact that UFOs seem to be visiting us and there's surely a reason for that. Johns doesn't quite answer that question in this book, but he sets us up to believe what it is and then explores it in future volumes of the series. Suffice it to say that what life exists on the moon isn't human—it's giant worms, dragonflies, spiders and, well, dinosaurs. There's quite the population of glyptodons on the dark side, it seems. Venus is populated too, but it's more likely that the flying saucers are coming from Mars, which is struggling. They find only death when they land on Phobos and the people of Mars aren't far away from that fate.
As you might imagine, while this works well as a series opener, it's not just open for a sequel, there must have been no doubt at the time that there would be a follow up. Nobody would have had any shock when Johns published 'Return to Mars', not at its existence, its title or any other detail. Now I've revisited the series, I need to follow up with that one next month, which gives me five more to track down the final four volumes, perhaps only ever published in hardback. Wish me luck!
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in November 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
'Kings of Space' isn't one of those as it begins an entirely different science fiction series, featuring the interplanetary adventures of a memorable quartet. The ostensible lead is a retired RAF Group Captain called Timothy Clinton, whom everyone calls Tiger, but the true architect of everything we read about is Prof. Lucius Brane, a reclusive scientist who has invented and built a spaceship of his own. Joining them on their many adventures are Tiger's plucky young son Rex and Brane's butler, Judkins, who's as useful and unflappable as you'd expect a British butler to be.
I devoured the first six books as a child, once I'd stumbled on science fiction at the age of ten via the BBC's 1981 mini-series adaptation of John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids'. Given how far they explore in the hundred and fifty pages of this initial volume, I'm eager to dive back into the others, which I probably haven't read in almost forty years. What I was blissfully unaware of back then was that there are four further books, bringing the series to ten, so I'll need to track those down first.
I should highlight what years these books spanned. 'Kings of Space' was published in 1954, so three years ahead of Sputnik 1. In terms of space exploration, that's the dark ages and this has as much in common with Burroughs as it does Heinlein. That allows Johns to spend the first four chapters in an overtly talky science teacher mode, as Prof. Brane explains what's possible. In its way, the science is well-thought-out and admirably multi-disciplinarian, but it's also very much of its time. It's trivial to poke holes in it given what we've learned since then.
However, the final book, 'The Man Who Vanished into Space', saw print in 1963, so not merely after Sputnik 1 took us beyond the atmosphere but after the Russians had sent dogs and, later, humans into space and the Americans followed suit. That was two years after President Kennedy had called on the country to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. While kids went space mad, the reality was that this sort of interplanetary adventure was already in danger of becoming rendered very much obsolete. We were about to learn how ludicrous much of it was.
For a start, the sheer number of people involved in getting a single human being into space was an impressively large one, but here it's all down to one man, Prof. Brane, who's built his Spacemaster in isolation at his remote Scottish hideaway. It doesn't use rockets, because of the fuel problem, so he's figured out a way to harness cosmic rays, so rendering his ship a domestic flying saucer, but its hull is also welded into place and yet can simply shrug off particles moving through space. Outside of a couple of suspicious interlopers who show up late in the book, only four people even know that this ship exists. On Earth, that is.
And they soon find their way off it. The massive progress that the early space race generated may have seemed impressive at the time, but after the Clintons stumble upon Brane's space operation in chapter one, conveniently as he's doing his final unmanned test flight, they progress way faster. They escape the atmosphere in chapter five and fly round the moon only two chapters later. With a growing confidence, they land on the moon in chapter nine, skip over to Venus in chapter ten, then tackle Phobos in chapter twelve before a landing on Mars in chapter thirteen. That's pretty quick work, I think!
As palpably out of date as it already was when I read this for the first time in the early eighties, it's also a heck of a lot of fun. Returning to it many decades later, I see things I didn't back then, such as how Prof. Brane is clearly neurodivergent, a word that wasn't even coined until 1998. I'm sure that I identified with Rex Clinton when I was a kid, maybe imagining myself growing up to be Tiger. Now, I would happily identify with Prof. Brane instead, at least on that neurodivergent front. I adore that he's quintessentially untidy and yet still knows where everything is.
The elder me also can't fail to notice Prof. Brane's anti-war sentiment that's clearly rooted in then relatively new fears about atomic energy and the growing intensity of the Cold War. He's clearly a genius and has a huge amount of optimism in how he operates, which would truly scare anyone who works in risk assessment or workplace safety. However, he's pessimistic about the inevitability that every scientific advancement will be co-opted by the military and turned into a weapon. He has no intention of that happening with the Spacemaster, so he's willing to destroy it rather than let it fall into someone else's hands.
The other detail that's very much of its time is the fact that UFOs seem to be visiting us and there's surely a reason for that. Johns doesn't quite answer that question in this book, but he sets us up to believe what it is and then explores it in future volumes of the series. Suffice it to say that what life exists on the moon isn't human—it's giant worms, dragonflies, spiders and, well, dinosaurs. There's quite the population of glyptodons on the dark side, it seems. Venus is populated too, but it's more likely that the flying saucers are coming from Mars, which is struggling. They find only death when they land on Phobos and the people of Mars aren't far away from that fate.
As you might imagine, while this works well as a series opener, it's not just open for a sequel, there must have been no doubt at the time that there would be a follow up. Nobody would have had any shock when Johns published 'Return to Mars', not at its existence, its title or any other detail. Now I've revisited the series, I need to follow up with that one next month, which gives me five more to track down the final four volumes, perhaps only ever published in hardback. Wish me luck!
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in November 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
July 15, 2015
The weakest We Johns book I've read yet. Johns obviously did his research and it's somewhat cute knowing his thoughts only a few years before space travel occurred however the plot is very weak. The majority of the book is the annoying professor talking too much and the hero's. ... well they do nothing. ... nothing of note at all... apart from move in with said professor immediately after meeting him and then going to the moon the next day. A little odd. They also eat alot of sandwiches in space. Back to Biggles next time.
June 5, 2023
A quintessential but forgotten classic, W.E. Johns's "Kings of Space" tells the story of three Englishmen, a scientist, an ex RAF veteran and his son who go on adventure in the Solar System, encountering all sorts of life forms along the way. While the science behind the book (Like finding canals on Mars) is a bit dated, the novel is nevertheless one of my favorite science fiction books of the 20th century with fun adventure, likeable characters and a fantasied version of space that is full of life.
All in all, a highly recommend this book to any reader who wants to read some science fiction.
All in all, a highly recommend this book to any reader who wants to read some science fiction.
September 19, 2021
I read this as a teenager, and just decided to revisit. It is still as good as I remember it. Captain Johns gets the technical details spot on. The trouble only comes when the heroes actually go to the Moon, Mars and Venus and find life, in some form, on all of them! Obviously reality has caught up with it, but still, a good yarn.
March 27, 2019
This was W.E. Johns first science fiction book in his Stories of Interplanetary Flight series. Written in 1954, before manned space flight, the book is somewhat dated but this only adds to its interest and appeal. Great escapism into the mysteries and wonders of the infinite Universe...
October 24, 2020
I haven't read this in over 40 years. It's not aged particularly well dated in terms of both science and the morality, but I've read worse. If you bear all of that in mind it's an enjoyable enough read.
October 23, 2023
23/10/2023, I don't remember much since I finished reading this more than 6 years ago and never wrote a review but I hope to read it again soon, as well as the rest of the series. I recall enjoying it haha
December 15, 2023
Eccentric scientist develops spacecraft. Takes his crew to the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Life of some sort on all three.
February 12, 2026
Une curiosité sur comment les romanciers des années 50 se projetaient dans l'espace, lune , mars, venus. Plutôt délirant et assez ennuyeux. À noter: pas un seul personnage féminin !
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 6, 2019
With the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, I dug these out of my childhood collection to read aloud to my son. We have really enjoyed going back in time to when it was possible that there may have been life on the moon, Venus and Mars. It was interesting comparing with the current knowledge of the planets as shown on Brian Cox's excellent series, which was screening on television over the few weeks we were reading.
The story has held up fairly well with the passage of time, although my modern 12 year old son was startled by the characters cleaning up the spaceship and leaving their rubbish behind, and quite shocked by the suggestion that the creatures on the moon and Venus might be good targets for big game hunters in the future.
Oh and the price tag on my copy was $2.75...
The story has held up fairly well with the passage of time, although my modern 12 year old son was startled by the characters cleaning up the spaceship and leaving their rubbish behind, and quite shocked by the suggestion that the creatures on the moon and Venus might be good targets for big game hunters in the future.
Oh and the price tag on my copy was $2.75...
March 16, 2021
Interesting to read this all these years later. I bought it second hand because I had already had his Return To Mars from when I wasn’t even a teenager (I’m now 67) but had never read, so I thought I would start reading his science fiction books from the beginning. It was written one year before I was born and obviously before man really did venture in to space, so some information was either reasonably correct or informed supposition/guesswork.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews