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Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons – A Portrait of the JPL Founder: Genius, Rocketry, and the Occult
Now a CBS All Access series created by Mark Heyman with executive producer Ridley Scott.
ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION screamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times . John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plot line into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic.
George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic?
With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.
ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION screamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times . John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plot line into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic.
George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic?
With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.
350 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2005
280 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 195 reviews
December 29, 2011
I grew up near JPL (the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena and heard a few of the stories about John Parsons, about the way he was a “Satanist,” and how his obsession eventually cost him his life.
Of course the realty behind the stories of the scientific prodigy were way more complicated than the salacious versions I heard. But George Pendle’s book makes it clear that the truth of Parsons’ life was just as fascinating.
Pendle is a writer for the London Times, which suggests the international fascination that the subject of his biography managed to capture in his short life. Somehow a scientist from the valley in Southern California had connections with other people in England that decades later, a critically acclaimed writer across the pond felt compelled to write a biography of him.
So why do so few people know who John Parsons is and what he accomplished? Probably because his life ended without him accomplishing close to what his brain and talent initially promised.
That Parsons was a genius is made perfectly clear in Pendle’s wonderfully accessible and well researched book. Pendle also makes it clear that the fine line between genius and madness can be very thin. At first the notion is on the margins of Parsons life, probably in the same place many creative or scientific breakthroughs lurk. But then as Parsons’ personal life and black magic obsessions begin to chase off the stage his solid breakthroughs in science, Pendle’s book shines the spotlight on how the greatest of minds can sometimes become completely unhinged.
While reading this book I kept on wondering why Johnny Depp hadn’t scooped up this story and put it in development. Get the guys who wrote “Ed Wood” and Tim Burton to direct and you have yet another strange character that will be part of Depp’s menagerie of strange characters.
Even though the rise and fall of Parsons pretty much occurred in the 30s through the 50s, the story told in this book deals with issues that are completely relevant, or at least continue to fascinate, many of us today. The founding member of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, is depicted in the book because he was associated with Parson’s dabbling in black magic. The events showcased in the book occur prior to Hubbard’s creation of Scientology but hint at several events that might have had an impact on Hubbard’s huge creation years later. For those skeptics of the religion who need more ammo, this book is a dream come true. The Hubbard that Pendle depicts is nothing more than a common flim-flam man, who tries to sail off into the sunset on a stolen boat and ends up possibly recycling Parson’s obsessions into… a new way to get in touch with one’s self-conscious.
One of the great things about Pendle’s writing is that he does an excellent job of capturing the once thriving economy and culture of Southern California. It was during the 50s that SoCal began to symbolize the embodiment of the American dream. In Parson’s time it was a middle-class community of newly arrived immigrants or transplanted Americans from other parts of the country. And the main life force of the economy revolved around aerospace, not entertainment (meaning the movie/TV industry or tourism for places like Disneyland).
It was a time when someone like Parsons could slip in the back door of a major industry and become an important player in a world otherwise populated by Ivy Leaguers and backed by government contracts or old money. Less than sixty years later that world is gone… probably never to come back ever again.
The way John Parson’s exited this world was with a bang and there’s no doubt he would have wanted to change his fate if he had a… second chance, which was a major part of the Southern California mystique… part of the American Dream. You came to America… to Hollywood/Southern California for a second chance no matter what had gone on before.
At least Parsons had a few years to grasp the dream that was once a real part of Southern California. If only he’d been able to see that the American Dream, especially the one that existed in Southern California, is one very small part reality, another larger part a mirage… enhanced by smoke, mirrors and sunshine. Parsons made the mistake that so many make who strike it rich here -- they believe it will last forever. For those of us now living here in 2011, the smoke has cleared and the mirrors are all cracked. Yes, the sunshine is still here, but the dream is gone and nobody wants to clean up the mess left behind… at least it’s not advisable without first putting on 50 SPF strength sunblock.
Of course the realty behind the stories of the scientific prodigy were way more complicated than the salacious versions I heard. But George Pendle’s book makes it clear that the truth of Parsons’ life was just as fascinating.
Pendle is a writer for the London Times, which suggests the international fascination that the subject of his biography managed to capture in his short life. Somehow a scientist from the valley in Southern California had connections with other people in England that decades later, a critically acclaimed writer across the pond felt compelled to write a biography of him.
So why do so few people know who John Parsons is and what he accomplished? Probably because his life ended without him accomplishing close to what his brain and talent initially promised.
That Parsons was a genius is made perfectly clear in Pendle’s wonderfully accessible and well researched book. Pendle also makes it clear that the fine line between genius and madness can be very thin. At first the notion is on the margins of Parsons life, probably in the same place many creative or scientific breakthroughs lurk. But then as Parsons’ personal life and black magic obsessions begin to chase off the stage his solid breakthroughs in science, Pendle’s book shines the spotlight on how the greatest of minds can sometimes become completely unhinged.
While reading this book I kept on wondering why Johnny Depp hadn’t scooped up this story and put it in development. Get the guys who wrote “Ed Wood” and Tim Burton to direct and you have yet another strange character that will be part of Depp’s menagerie of strange characters.
Even though the rise and fall of Parsons pretty much occurred in the 30s through the 50s, the story told in this book deals with issues that are completely relevant, or at least continue to fascinate, many of us today. The founding member of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, is depicted in the book because he was associated with Parson’s dabbling in black magic. The events showcased in the book occur prior to Hubbard’s creation of Scientology but hint at several events that might have had an impact on Hubbard’s huge creation years later. For those skeptics of the religion who need more ammo, this book is a dream come true. The Hubbard that Pendle depicts is nothing more than a common flim-flam man, who tries to sail off into the sunset on a stolen boat and ends up possibly recycling Parson’s obsessions into… a new way to get in touch with one’s self-conscious.
One of the great things about Pendle’s writing is that he does an excellent job of capturing the once thriving economy and culture of Southern California. It was during the 50s that SoCal began to symbolize the embodiment of the American dream. In Parson’s time it was a middle-class community of newly arrived immigrants or transplanted Americans from other parts of the country. And the main life force of the economy revolved around aerospace, not entertainment (meaning the movie/TV industry or tourism for places like Disneyland).
It was a time when someone like Parsons could slip in the back door of a major industry and become an important player in a world otherwise populated by Ivy Leaguers and backed by government contracts or old money. Less than sixty years later that world is gone… probably never to come back ever again.
The way John Parson’s exited this world was with a bang and there’s no doubt he would have wanted to change his fate if he had a… second chance, which was a major part of the Southern California mystique… part of the American Dream. You came to America… to Hollywood/Southern California for a second chance no matter what had gone on before.
At least Parsons had a few years to grasp the dream that was once a real part of Southern California. If only he’d been able to see that the American Dream, especially the one that existed in Southern California, is one very small part reality, another larger part a mirage… enhanced by smoke, mirrors and sunshine. Parsons made the mistake that so many make who strike it rich here -- they believe it will last forever. For those of us now living here in 2011, the smoke has cleared and the mirrors are all cracked. Yes, the sunshine is still here, but the dream is gone and nobody wants to clean up the mess left behind… at least it’s not advisable without first putting on 50 SPF strength sunblock.
July 3, 2020
This is quite an entertaining biography of a very self-contradictory, witches brew of a life. It’s just one of those Amazing Stories. (If you’re sci-fi lover, you’ll get the reference.)
Jack Parsons was a truly odd man. I really don’t know what to make of this guy. It’s pretty clear that he was a brilliant, intuitive, seat-of-your-pants kind of scientist of the sort that is critical in the pioneering early stages of a world-changing technology when imagination and creativity are the keys.
I guess this is the story of the life lived by the ethic of gee-whiz science and I-want-to-believe dabbling in the occult. I can relate to the gee-whiz science part. Like Parsons, I'm a lifelong lover of science fiction and fantasy writing, though I find the occult stuff to be ugly and kind of repulsive. I get the impression that he like Aleister Crowley, who influenced him so much, got so lost in his search for the mystical that he started to believe in his own nonsense. It just goes to show how self-deluded a person can be, spending years working through elaborate rituals in order to work “magick” while never seeming to notice that it doesn’t actually do anything though, of course, there are plenty of stories of mysterious goings-on.
Parsons deserves credit for his accomplishments in the history of rocketry and the space program. Underneath it all, for all his selfishness and self-delusion, I think he was actually a fairly sincere guy. I feel bad about how big a mess he made of his life before eventually blowing himself up. He never got to see his dreams of a moon landing come true.
There are a lot of fascinating personalities in this book, including some of the leading lights of modern science and science fiction writing. Unfortunately for Parsons, one of the leading villains dropped in in the form of L. Ron Hubbard, along with Parsons and Crowley, the third member of the start-your-own-religion fraternity to show up in this narrative. Parsons never had a chance against a smooth sociopathic grifter like Hubbard and he would soon lose his girl, his life savings, and his leadership roll in his little group of Crowley disciples. I don’t think he ever really recovered from that.
This book is not only the story of the life of Jack Parsons, it’s the story of mid 20th century Los Angeles and Pasadena. It’s the story of the almost religious reverence for science that ran through America at that time. It’s the story of darker forces as well, such as fascism, communist witch-hunts, and the Cold War. It’s quite a mixture.
This was an interesting read.
Jack Parsons was a truly odd man. I really don’t know what to make of this guy. It’s pretty clear that he was a brilliant, intuitive, seat-of-your-pants kind of scientist of the sort that is critical in the pioneering early stages of a world-changing technology when imagination and creativity are the keys.
I guess this is the story of the life lived by the ethic of gee-whiz science and I-want-to-believe dabbling in the occult. I can relate to the gee-whiz science part. Like Parsons, I'm a lifelong lover of science fiction and fantasy writing, though I find the occult stuff to be ugly and kind of repulsive. I get the impression that he like Aleister Crowley, who influenced him so much, got so lost in his search for the mystical that he started to believe in his own nonsense. It just goes to show how self-deluded a person can be, spending years working through elaborate rituals in order to work “magick” while never seeming to notice that it doesn’t actually do anything though, of course, there are plenty of stories of mysterious goings-on.
Parsons deserves credit for his accomplishments in the history of rocketry and the space program. Underneath it all, for all his selfishness and self-delusion, I think he was actually a fairly sincere guy. I feel bad about how big a mess he made of his life before eventually blowing himself up. He never got to see his dreams of a moon landing come true.
There are a lot of fascinating personalities in this book, including some of the leading lights of modern science and science fiction writing. Unfortunately for Parsons, one of the leading villains dropped in in the form of L. Ron Hubbard, along with Parsons and Crowley, the third member of the start-your-own-religion fraternity to show up in this narrative. Parsons never had a chance against a smooth sociopathic grifter like Hubbard and he would soon lose his girl, his life savings, and his leadership roll in his little group of Crowley disciples. I don’t think he ever really recovered from that.
This book is not only the story of the life of Jack Parsons, it’s the story of mid 20th century Los Angeles and Pasadena. It’s the story of the almost religious reverence for science that ran through America at that time. It’s the story of darker forces as well, such as fascism, communist witch-hunts, and the Cold War. It’s quite a mixture.
This was an interesting read.
November 4, 2019
Strange Angel may not be the best biography I've ever read, but the story is incredibly fascinating. I first heard of Parsons three years ago when reading
The Secret History of Twin Peaks
, and the whole thing seemed so deliciously bizarre that I knew I had to find out more.
In short, Parsons was a pioneering rocket engineer, but also a Thelemite occultist. Everybody's gotta have hobbies, right? Well, turns out that Parsons was pretty deep in the philosophy, eventually becoming the leader of the Californian branch (with a little coaxing from Crowley). As a scientist, Parsons relied on intuition and practical experiments instead of theorisation, which made him very different from his colleagues and eventually caused him troubles.
Naturally, Pendle goes through a lot of technical details related to rockets (most of it went over my head; no surprise there), so I was much more interested in the parts where Parsons is chanting Crowley's "Hymn to Pan" at rocket test firings or tries to invoke a goddess, or where the Orange Grove Mansion's hijinks are explored. Good times. L. Ron Hubbard also makes an appearance, acting like the massive asshole he was. Again, no surprise.
I'm not at all knowledgeable about rocket science and therefore not in a position to evaluate whether Parsons was as important a figure as Pendle claims, but he definitely deserves his story to be told, which is part of the weird side of L.A. that I'm always ready to hear about.
In short, Parsons was a pioneering rocket engineer, but also a Thelemite occultist. Everybody's gotta have hobbies, right? Well, turns out that Parsons was pretty deep in the philosophy, eventually becoming the leader of the Californian branch (with a little coaxing from Crowley). As a scientist, Parsons relied on intuition and practical experiments instead of theorisation, which made him very different from his colleagues and eventually caused him troubles.
Naturally, Pendle goes through a lot of technical details related to rockets (most of it went over my head; no surprise there), so I was much more interested in the parts where Parsons is chanting Crowley's "Hymn to Pan" at rocket test firings or tries to invoke a goddess, or where the Orange Grove Mansion's hijinks are explored. Good times. L. Ron Hubbard also makes an appearance, acting like the massive asshole he was. Again, no surprise.
I'm not at all knowledgeable about rocket science and therefore not in a position to evaluate whether Parsons was as important a figure as Pendle claims, but he definitely deserves his story to be told, which is part of the weird side of L.A. that I'm always ready to hear about.
November 18, 2023
09/2011
This is the second bio of Jack Parsons I've read, and by far the better, more thorough book. The details of the rocketry are so thorough I was bored. But the L.Ron Hubbard stuff is amazing ... Unbelievable. If you have any interest in the beginnings of scientology you need to know this.
This is the second bio of Jack Parsons I've read, and by far the better, more thorough book. The details of the rocketry are so thorough I was bored. But the L.Ron Hubbard stuff is amazing ... Unbelievable. If you have any interest in the beginnings of scientology you need to know this.
November 27, 2008
A wide reaching and meandering attempt at an ambitious biography.
George Pendle, the author, came across an obvious choice for a fascinating story, but flounders in trying to pick and choose among the various story lines to pursue in this biography of J.W. Parsons.
The cast of characters reads like a Who's Who of famous, near-famous, and just wannabees set in the turbulent Depression/War Era of greater Los Angeles, California. From the soon to be famous sci-fi writers such as Heinlein and de Camp to the grand bogeyman of the recent past, Aleister Crowley, a half a dozen or more figures populate the story. Even L. Ron Hubbard of Dianetics fame and other later-greater fame, appears in a pivotal role. Then throw in the scientists responsible for the formation of Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Labs and you have a book in your hands that probably should run to a 1000 pages or more. Elronn would have cranked this tale out in one mad weekend in his heyday!
This formative Southern California cultural period shaped and spat out a lot of notables and of course left wreckage. Some of the damage, such as Parsons, was literal. From religious/cultic/free love excesses, to the minds of inventors not understood by 'real' scientist this story is strewn with broken lives and dreams. A few walk across the ashes and rise to the top while others just flee. Great material possibility ranging from the ended of the Gilded Age, through the Depression and right on into darkest Cold War America but not full developed.
Parsons as the inventor of modern solid rocket fuel deserves better representation in the annals of history, however this book only scratches the surface. A lot of scratches, a lot of surface, but not enough deeper work. The authors extensive notes about contacts may indicate that really isn't that much detail available. Too bad as the central role that several otherwise unknown characters played in the life of some important or about to be important people needs as much documentation and historical inclusion as can be mustered.
A rambling read that can bog down. I felt that the story was still incomplete and maybe someone else will find a new or choose a different hook to retell this story.
September 1, 2016
I loved this book. I must confess I skimmed much of the detailed rocket stuff to get to more about the OTO, occultism, SCI-fi, and relationship zaniness.
Cries out to be series - I just find Parsons' story so compelling. But the material cries out for David Cronenberg or David Lynch...someone who can convey otherworldly and heightened states of reality.
Better than expected. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the occult in America. I want to know much more about the women of his life...my goodness, Betty and Candy are as explosive as the rocket chemicals, and his first wife I really feel for.
Another story for anyone who needs to hate L. Ron Hubbard, creator of America's anti-religion.
Poor Crowley was spinning in his grave to see what was achieved on a hollow and crass premise. As much in need of money as Crowley was, I doubt he would have wanted the money L. Ron Hubbard achieved if he had to follow those footsteps into Scientology. At least that is what I like to think.
The great beast gave us my favorite tarot pack for the ages...and his writings are much more poetic,if nothing else, than anything found in Scientology, which is a completely made-up scam by a sci-fi writer who needed bucks. I am fascinated by the intersection of the man who unified east and west in spirit and the man who took bad pulp and mashed it with some magickal idea to hook people.
Jack Parsons was a conduit for the most influential cultists, scientists, and sci-fi writer of the time...and had many living in his house at the same time.
I want a time machine to go back and be there on one of the best party nights where the air rings with "IO, Pan!"
Cries out to be series - I just find Parsons' story so compelling. But the material cries out for David Cronenberg or David Lynch...someone who can convey otherworldly and heightened states of reality.
Better than expected. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the occult in America. I want to know much more about the women of his life...my goodness, Betty and Candy are as explosive as the rocket chemicals, and his first wife I really feel for.
Another story for anyone who needs to hate L. Ron Hubbard, creator of America's anti-religion.
Poor Crowley was spinning in his grave to see what was achieved on a hollow and crass premise. As much in need of money as Crowley was, I doubt he would have wanted the money L. Ron Hubbard achieved if he had to follow those footsteps into Scientology. At least that is what I like to think.
The great beast gave us my favorite tarot pack for the ages...and his writings are much more poetic,if nothing else, than anything found in Scientology, which is a completely made-up scam by a sci-fi writer who needed bucks. I am fascinated by the intersection of the man who unified east and west in spirit and the man who took bad pulp and mashed it with some magickal idea to hook people.
Jack Parsons was a conduit for the most influential cultists, scientists, and sci-fi writer of the time...and had many living in his house at the same time.
I want a time machine to go back and be there on one of the best party nights where the air rings with "IO, Pan!"
June 8, 2016
Just T.M.I in general. I grew up rocketeering firing Estes model rockets. That still was not enough to keep me from wishing this was a short story. Parson's story is admittedly fascinating! You WILL become an expert on: Jack Parsons, Pasadena, the history of rocketry, solid propellants, liquid propellants, chemistry, Caltech between 1936-1946, the first military authorized rocket research, science fiction clubs and societies, explosions, the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that old charlatan Crowley, and the domineering L.Ron Hubbard. And much, much more.... Rated high because the research was so extensive and the glut of information overwhelming.
October 23, 2019
Pretty technical and boring if you ask me but I'll keep going and see if it gets better...10/8/19
November 4, 2012
A mindboggling story of a different world, Los Angeles in the years before World War 2, when rocket science was confined to comic strips - and a tiny few dreamers blowing stuff up in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco. One such was John Parsons, not quite the blueblood he acted, but an intuitive autodidact with a penchant for blowing shit up.
Along the way he invented Jet-Assisted Takeoff, the modern solid fueled rocket, was instrumental in founding JPL and was a founder of Aerojet Corp. And Aleister Crowley's American temple head.
This biography perfectly captures the "frontier" era of innovation, in which a field is open only to those with unusual brilliance and sense of purpose - who are kicked to the curb as their field matures.
Parsons died in an explosion in his home - after his longtime girlfriend (sister to his wife, who'd taken up with the former head of Crowley's temple) ran off with, wait for it, L. Ron Hubbard. Parson's ceremonies and parties drew a strange who's who of wartime sci-fi writers, rocket scientists, Communists and experimenters with sex, drugs and religion - and no few who were all of the above.
An extraordinary time, an extraordinary man, and a damn good biography.
Along the way he invented Jet-Assisted Takeoff, the modern solid fueled rocket, was instrumental in founding JPL and was a founder of Aerojet Corp. And Aleister Crowley's American temple head.
This biography perfectly captures the "frontier" era of innovation, in which a field is open only to those with unusual brilliance and sense of purpose - who are kicked to the curb as their field matures.
Parsons died in an explosion in his home - after his longtime girlfriend (sister to his wife, who'd taken up with the former head of Crowley's temple) ran off with, wait for it, L. Ron Hubbard. Parson's ceremonies and parties drew a strange who's who of wartime sci-fi writers, rocket scientists, Communists and experimenters with sex, drugs and religion - and no few who were all of the above.
An extraordinary time, an extraordinary man, and a damn good biography.
December 13, 2012
This book has to be history, because nobody could make up something so bizarre.
Scion of a wealthy Pasadena family, Parsons was one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry (JATO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, castable fuels), despite a lack of formal training or credentials. At the same time as he was turning rocketry from a pursuit for cranks into a pillar of the Military-Industrial Complex, Parsons was deeply involved in black magic, and was the high priest of the a Crowleyite Satanic lodge, where wife-swapping and sex magic were performed with an every changing crew of Hollywood types, leftist radicals, and science-fiction freaks, including L. Ron Hubbard (yes, that L. Ron Hubbard).
Pendle charts Parsons' rise through the mirrored worlds of rocketry and magic, and then his tragic and sudden decline as his bizarre lifestyle proved incompatible with top secret research in the paranoid political climate of the late 40s, and a series of bad decisions (most involving L. Ron Hubbard) shattered his social circles and finances. Parsons' death in a mysterious explosive accident seems the only fitting end for this forgotten figure of spaceflight, and the 'occult Che Guevara'.
Scion of a wealthy Pasadena family, Parsons was one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry (JATO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, castable fuels), despite a lack of formal training or credentials. At the same time as he was turning rocketry from a pursuit for cranks into a pillar of the Military-Industrial Complex, Parsons was deeply involved in black magic, and was the high priest of the a Crowleyite Satanic lodge, where wife-swapping and sex magic were performed with an every changing crew of Hollywood types, leftist radicals, and science-fiction freaks, including L. Ron Hubbard (yes, that L. Ron Hubbard).
Pendle charts Parsons' rise through the mirrored worlds of rocketry and magic, and then his tragic and sudden decline as his bizarre lifestyle proved incompatible with top secret research in the paranoid political climate of the late 40s, and a series of bad decisions (most involving L. Ron Hubbard) shattered his social circles and finances. Parsons' death in a mysterious explosive accident seems the only fitting end for this forgotten figure of spaceflight, and the 'occult Che Guevara'.
February 7, 2016
Who knew rocketry was thought of as a pseudoscience by the academics as recently as a century ago? Not me. I don’t think much about rocket science, though I do appreciate a nice phallic symbol in my pulp sci-fi. There’s rocket science and pulp sci-fi in George Pendle’s STRANGE ANGEL, a biography of John Whiteside Parsons, an inventor of a rocket fuel still in use today for space travel. This unaccredited weirdo intersected with others oddballs of the time and place, that being the first half of the last century and Southern California. There’s some pleasant historic sketches of Pasadena and a parade of scientists, sci-fi writers occultists, such as L. Ron Hubbard all knotted into the birth of the aerospace industry. Sex, black magic and dangerous explosions are a volatile mixture and a nice lens with which to view the historic times from the Depression to WW II and into the red scare. It makes me want to learn more about nuts like Hubbard and Aleister Crowley.
April 26, 2022
Decidedly stranger than fiction.
April 30, 2012
I kind of love this book but can't seem to finish it. It's been on my bedside table for over a year. I think maybe I love the story of Parsons' life, but am not thrilled with the way it was written. The beginning drags on with too much background about his parents and the area where they lived. It was cool to learn that he was neighbors with the Busch family and could see the original Busch gardens. But the really interesting part comes when John grows up. He a) becomes a pioneer in the field of rocket science and b) becomes best buds with Aleister Crowley and joins his crazy occult religion, Thelema. I was particularly amused by the scene in which Parsons and a group of Thelemites move into an old mansion in his parents' old hood... Much like my college housemate experience, there's always one woman who gets stuck doing most of the chores while someone else thinks they can get away with just doing the astrological chart readings for the household.
UPDATE: Finally finished it this morning, just in time to discuss with my book club. The best parts are at the end so if you pick this up, make sure you finish! For those who want the quick and dirty summary of Parsons' life, it goes like this:
Jack grows up a rich boy in California. He gets really into explosives and becomes a pioneer in rocket science, despite not having a college education. He and his best friend Ed Forman and some guys from Caltech form the Suicide Squad (an early rocket study group), and go on to found Aerojet and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. He gets married to a chick named Helen, then hooks up with her teenage sister Betty. Pawns Helen off on another guy he met through the OTO (the Thelemite lodge practicing the teachings of Aleister Crowley, a.k.a. the Great Beast, a.k.a. the Wickedest Man in the World). Parsons becomes secretary of the OTO and buys a house for them. Wild parties ensue. Everyone has lots of sex. Then the house becomes open to some non-Thelemites but they still have to be eccentric to get a room... One of them was Nilsen Himmel, the reporter who covered the Black Dahlia murders. Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard also moves into the house, and steals Jack's girlfriend Betty. Jack gets jealous but also really likes Hubbard. He starts performing lots of black magic and Aleister Crowley is like, "Cool it on the black magic. You're making me look bad." And Jack's like, "OK, but first let my masturbate constantly for 40 days on pieces of paper to summon my elemental mate... Oh good, there she is. Hi Candy, would you like to get married?" Then he loses his top secret government clearance, not for performing black magic or for being a terrible risk taker, but because he's been known to associate with Communists. And Candy leaves him for a stint in Mexico, but comes back. He gets his clearance back, too, and goes to work for an explosives company owned by Howard Hughes, but the company and the FBI frown on it when he copies some documents to share pricing info with Israel. After L. Ron Hubbard marries Betty and founds Scientology, Jack founds his own religion he calls "the Witchcraft." Then he gets a rush order for some special effects explosives that he mixes up in his house just before he's supposed to go on a Mexican vacation with Candy, but he never goes because he dies in an explosion. He only lives to be 30-something, and never lives to see the part of the moon named after him.
UPDATE: Finally finished it this morning, just in time to discuss with my book club. The best parts are at the end so if you pick this up, make sure you finish! For those who want the quick and dirty summary of Parsons' life, it goes like this:
Jack grows up a rich boy in California. He gets really into explosives and becomes a pioneer in rocket science, despite not having a college education. He and his best friend Ed Forman and some guys from Caltech form the Suicide Squad (an early rocket study group), and go on to found Aerojet and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. He gets married to a chick named Helen, then hooks up with her teenage sister Betty. Pawns Helen off on another guy he met through the OTO (the Thelemite lodge practicing the teachings of Aleister Crowley, a.k.a. the Great Beast, a.k.a. the Wickedest Man in the World). Parsons becomes secretary of the OTO and buys a house for them. Wild parties ensue. Everyone has lots of sex. Then the house becomes open to some non-Thelemites but they still have to be eccentric to get a room... One of them was Nilsen Himmel, the reporter who covered the Black Dahlia murders. Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard also moves into the house, and steals Jack's girlfriend Betty. Jack gets jealous but also really likes Hubbard. He starts performing lots of black magic and Aleister Crowley is like, "Cool it on the black magic. You're making me look bad." And Jack's like, "OK, but first let my masturbate constantly for 40 days on pieces of paper to summon my elemental mate... Oh good, there she is. Hi Candy, would you like to get married?" Then he loses his top secret government clearance, not for performing black magic or for being a terrible risk taker, but because he's been known to associate with Communists. And Candy leaves him for a stint in Mexico, but comes back. He gets his clearance back, too, and goes to work for an explosives company owned by Howard Hughes, but the company and the FBI frown on it when he copies some documents to share pricing info with Israel. After L. Ron Hubbard marries Betty and founds Scientology, Jack founds his own religion he calls "the Witchcraft." Then he gets a rush order for some special effects explosives that he mixes up in his house just before he's supposed to go on a Mexican vacation with Candy, but he never goes because he dies in an explosion. He only lives to be 30-something, and never lives to see the part of the moon named after him.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 8, 2009
Most over the top biography I have ever read. It would make for an excellent film except no one would ever believe that the events described in this book could have actually happened.
April 30, 2019
A fascinating biography of a "mad scientist" who helped usher in the Rocket Age in America and whose life and work inspire admiration, disgust, and mystery. The book reveals not only the man but also a time and place in America that changed the world for better or ill. It is a well-rounded and important book.
Parsons' life was devoted to both rocketry and "magick" in roughly equal proportions. A chemist and science fiction devotee who dreamed of sending people to the moon, Parsons and his friends' amateur experiments would lead to the creation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Parsons virtually single-handedly invented the solid fuel used in most rockets today, both military and scientific. He and his friends convinced not only skeptical Cal Tech faculty of the feasibility of rockets and the science of propulsion, but the entire scientific world and U.S. government.
Parsons was also an occultist and hedonist and participant in a "Thelema" lodge in Pasadena. Inspired by "the most wicked man in the world," Aleister Crowley, "Thelema" was a cult that engaged in libidinous worship and heavy drug use. It prefigured L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics cult and, in some ways, both the Beat Generation of the 50s and the hippies of the 60s.
Once the U.S. military grasped the significance of rocketry for America's security, Parsons' past came back to haunt him. He and many of his friends and associates were caught up in the "Red Scare" after World War II and denied security clearances, denials that effectively ended their careers in a science that they, themselves, had done so much to create in the first place but that was now controlled by government and military authorities. The great irony here is that those who did so much to assist the U.S. military during World War II were later presumed to be enemies of the United States, while their work was mostly reassigned to Germans like Wernher von Braun, actual enemies of the United States during the war and arguably war criminals. America eats its own.
Parsons' life was devoted to both rocketry and "magick" in roughly equal proportions. A chemist and science fiction devotee who dreamed of sending people to the moon, Parsons and his friends' amateur experiments would lead to the creation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Parsons virtually single-handedly invented the solid fuel used in most rockets today, both military and scientific. He and his friends convinced not only skeptical Cal Tech faculty of the feasibility of rockets and the science of propulsion, but the entire scientific world and U.S. government.
Parsons was also an occultist and hedonist and participant in a "Thelema" lodge in Pasadena. Inspired by "the most wicked man in the world," Aleister Crowley, "Thelema" was a cult that engaged in libidinous worship and heavy drug use. It prefigured L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics cult and, in some ways, both the Beat Generation of the 50s and the hippies of the 60s.
Once the U.S. military grasped the significance of rocketry for America's security, Parsons' past came back to haunt him. He and many of his friends and associates were caught up in the "Red Scare" after World War II and denied security clearances, denials that effectively ended their careers in a science that they, themselves, had done so much to create in the first place but that was now controlled by government and military authorities. The great irony here is that those who did so much to assist the U.S. military during World War II were later presumed to be enemies of the United States, while their work was mostly reassigned to Germans like Wernher von Braun, actual enemies of the United States during the war and arguably war criminals. America eats its own.
May 17, 2021
Wow! If I told you that one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a proto sci-fi enthusiast, was involved in an occult sex cult and his lover - actually his wife’s sister - ran off with L. Ron Hubbard along with his money and died in a lab accident in his own home lab with all of this mixed in with a communist cell and the spectre of McCarthyism, would you be interested in reading this book? If so, highly recommended.
This story is set in the pre WWII transitional period where science could still be done in a lab in the basement, in a similar way to the almost amateur way that drugs were developed at the time, by trial and error. Only in this story, it is not drugs but explosive mixtures of untried rocket-fuels.
A really interesting book and it answered one question I had always had, why were rockets developed at the *Jet* Propulsion Laboratory. In short, rocket science in it’s infancy was treated as a kind of dangerous field of study only performed by crackpots. And they were right! The initial rocket “jets” were designed to augment propellors on takeoffs on short runways. The race was on to develop “safe” rockets that didn’t destroy the plane during takeoff.
It is ironic that in the age of McCarthyism, the rocket-engineers who had felt it was their patriotic duty as communist Americans to help to join the war effort to defeat the nazis, were driven out as security risks and were replaced by real nazis from the German rocket-program with whom they had communicated with pre war until the letters from the German rocket-clubs had ceased.
If this was fiction, I would have complained at the cast of unbelievable characters who make an appearance. I definitely want to read this again sometime.
This story is set in the pre WWII transitional period where science could still be done in a lab in the basement, in a similar way to the almost amateur way that drugs were developed at the time, by trial and error. Only in this story, it is not drugs but explosive mixtures of untried rocket-fuels.
A really interesting book and it answered one question I had always had, why were rockets developed at the *Jet* Propulsion Laboratory. In short, rocket science in it’s infancy was treated as a kind of dangerous field of study only performed by crackpots. And they were right! The initial rocket “jets” were designed to augment propellors on takeoffs on short runways. The race was on to develop “safe” rockets that didn’t destroy the plane during takeoff.
It is ironic that in the age of McCarthyism, the rocket-engineers who had felt it was their patriotic duty as communist Americans to help to join the war effort to defeat the nazis, were driven out as security risks and were replaced by real nazis from the German rocket-program with whom they had communicated with pre war until the letters from the German rocket-clubs had ceased.
If this was fiction, I would have complained at the cast of unbelievable characters who make an appearance. I definitely want to read this again sometime.
April 6, 2021
When you think about an antiquated technology like a JATO rocket ,most of us never give two seconds of thought to the effort required to create such a thing. I started reading the book because I like to read about weird ideas and oddball people. In the end the best part ,for me, was the effort to create a stable rocket fuel
February 24, 2013
I would like to write a review that does justice to the all-American weirdness of Parson's life but I am not sure how to go about it. So this is going to be very straightforward stuff.
In 1913, Parson's parents were among the thousands who moved to Southern California from the chilly Eastern seaboard in search of the good life. His father abandoned the family, but his mother's wealthy parents made the journey west to take care of their daughter and grandchild. Parsons grew up lonely and affluent in Pasadena until the crash of 1929 wiped out his grandfather's fortune. He was the brilliant kid who loved pulp fiction, literature, science, and magic. As he matured, he became a Hollywood-handsome, tall young man, although he looked more like the star of B Pictures than an A-lister. He was the classic autodidact who could never stick with school but became such an expert in rocket science that Cal Tech allowed him to use their facilities. No one was taking rocketry seriously at the time, but the experiments he conducted in solid rocket fuel eventually won him government contracts as America geared up for WW II. His eccentric band of misfits called themselves The Suicide Club and founded what became The Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons saw little in the way of financial rewards. When he was more or less finagled out of his stock, he used the money to support his ardent devotion to the cause of the OTO, the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known at various times as the Agape Lodge and the Church of Thelema. ("Thelema" is Greek for "will.") This was the official organization established to promote the religion of the English occultist Aleister Crowley, to whose ideas Parson's was devoted. Since the Depression had destroyed Pasadena real estate values, Parsons was able to rent a spectacular 25 acre estate for $100 per month and establish a communal living situation for other Crowley-ites. They conducted the rituals, drank like fish, took drugs, and screwed around in accordance with their distant, aged, ailing and drug-addicted founder's injunction: Do what thou wilt be the whole of the law. Parson's had already separated from his wife of several years and taken up with her seventeen-year-old stepsister by the time he took charge of the OTO commune. His wife left him first for the OTO high priest Jack had supplanted but then ran off to Florida with L. Ron Hubbard. They talked Jack out of $30,000 they would use to buy cheap yachts that they would then sail back to California and sell for a nifty profit. Jack never saw that money again. As drugs, alcohol, and his practice of Enochian magic rituals made his behavior increasingly erratic, his isolation from the group and the world of rocketry intensified. His final love interest was a young, red-headed wild child artist who deserted him for a time but with whom he was at the end planning to take off with to Mexico for a new variation on the good life. His only income by this time was creating explosive special effects for the film industry. The day he was to leave for Mexico he was rushing through a final order for a film company. He never cared much for commonsense safety precautions and he blew himself up in his makeshift laboratory. It was 1952 and Jack was 38 years old. One final bizarre footnote. Upon learning of his death, his mother overdosed on nembutal.
Pendle's book is an enjoyable tour of the buccaneer aspect of American science and the weirder side of the American dream. Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein are just some of the figures who put in the occasional appearance along with the fading silent movie stars practicing sex magick rituals in the crumbling pergola on the grounds of OTO estate.
Was John Whiteside Parsons, christened, by the way with his father's first name Marvel, an American innocent, caught up with the excitement of a new science but flawed by his gullibility when it came to such a bullshit artist as Crowley and his American minions. I feel like that sentence should be followed by another option, but I don't know what it would be..
In 1913, Parson's parents were among the thousands who moved to Southern California from the chilly Eastern seaboard in search of the good life. His father abandoned the family, but his mother's wealthy parents made the journey west to take care of their daughter and grandchild. Parsons grew up lonely and affluent in Pasadena until the crash of 1929 wiped out his grandfather's fortune. He was the brilliant kid who loved pulp fiction, literature, science, and magic. As he matured, he became a Hollywood-handsome, tall young man, although he looked more like the star of B Pictures than an A-lister. He was the classic autodidact who could never stick with school but became such an expert in rocket science that Cal Tech allowed him to use their facilities. No one was taking rocketry seriously at the time, but the experiments he conducted in solid rocket fuel eventually won him government contracts as America geared up for WW II. His eccentric band of misfits called themselves The Suicide Club and founded what became The Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons saw little in the way of financial rewards. When he was more or less finagled out of his stock, he used the money to support his ardent devotion to the cause of the OTO, the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known at various times as the Agape Lodge and the Church of Thelema. ("Thelema" is Greek for "will.") This was the official organization established to promote the religion of the English occultist Aleister Crowley, to whose ideas Parson's was devoted. Since the Depression had destroyed Pasadena real estate values, Parsons was able to rent a spectacular 25 acre estate for $100 per month and establish a communal living situation for other Crowley-ites. They conducted the rituals, drank like fish, took drugs, and screwed around in accordance with their distant, aged, ailing and drug-addicted founder's injunction: Do what thou wilt be the whole of the law. Parson's had already separated from his wife of several years and taken up with her seventeen-year-old stepsister by the time he took charge of the OTO commune. His wife left him first for the OTO high priest Jack had supplanted but then ran off to Florida with L. Ron Hubbard. They talked Jack out of $30,000 they would use to buy cheap yachts that they would then sail back to California and sell for a nifty profit. Jack never saw that money again. As drugs, alcohol, and his practice of Enochian magic rituals made his behavior increasingly erratic, his isolation from the group and the world of rocketry intensified. His final love interest was a young, red-headed wild child artist who deserted him for a time but with whom he was at the end planning to take off with to Mexico for a new variation on the good life. His only income by this time was creating explosive special effects for the film industry. The day he was to leave for Mexico he was rushing through a final order for a film company. He never cared much for commonsense safety precautions and he blew himself up in his makeshift laboratory. It was 1952 and Jack was 38 years old. One final bizarre footnote. Upon learning of his death, his mother overdosed on nembutal.
Pendle's book is an enjoyable tour of the buccaneer aspect of American science and the weirder side of the American dream. Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein are just some of the figures who put in the occasional appearance along with the fading silent movie stars practicing sex magick rituals in the crumbling pergola on the grounds of OTO estate.
Was John Whiteside Parsons, christened, by the way with his father's first name Marvel, an American innocent, caught up with the excitement of a new science but flawed by his gullibility when it came to such a bullshit artist as Crowley and his American minions. I feel like that sentence should be followed by another option, but I don't know what it would be..
August 12, 2007
Another quick vacation read--have been curious about the topic for a long time; Loren Cameron told me years ago his "Uncle Jack," the subject of this biography, so it was an unexpected pleasure to stumble across this book at City Lights. It's a great California Studies sort of book, about the social and intellectual connections between occultism, sexual libertinism, bohemian lifestyles, left wing politics and science fiction among the the people at Caltech who pretty much invented American rocketry. There were so many interesting threads to follow, many of them queer, several of them intersecting at Clinton's Cafeteria in Los Angeles, which got me all hot and bothered about some of the spatial studies stuff I've been reading for the past year or so. I'll say no more, read it for yourself, it's a trippy treat.
August 4, 2014
Dang. They don't make 'em like this anymore.
Self-taught polymath. Chemist, Rockateer, Founding member of JPL, Poet, Magician, total babe. And a snappy dresser to boot!
He may be an excellent example of "It's better to burn out than to fade away." His death was horrific. However, I just don't see him as having much of a future with the avalanche of troubles that kept on coming. The 1950's would have not have been kind to him. Where there is life there is hope, I suppose. But his life seemed to be totally falling apart. We'll never know.
Self-taught polymath. Chemist, Rockateer, Founding member of JPL, Poet, Magician, total babe. And a snappy dresser to boot!
He may be an excellent example of "It's better to burn out than to fade away." His death was horrific. However, I just don't see him as having much of a future with the avalanche of troubles that kept on coming. The 1950's would have not have been kind to him. Where there is life there is hope, I suppose. But his life seemed to be totally falling apart. We'll never know.
May 23, 2019
If I were going to rate the writing and organization of the book alone, I'd give it three stars. The fascinating subject material bumps it up to four.
Parsons is a fascinating figure - charismatic and commanding, but also easily led; a leader in rocketry and jet propulsion, and also an adept of magic, dark and otherwise. He is unapologetic when he begins a love affair with his wife's young half-sister Betty, and maintains cordial relations with his wife for years while sleeping with Betty. But he's pained and adrift when Betty leaves him for none other than L Ron Hubbard. Although he provided the innovation that led to solid-fuel rockets being practical for military (jet-assisted take off for planes) and space applications, he considered his greatest work to be a series of sex-magic incantations.
The book pulls together a good variety of background to help make sense of it all, mostly through a chronological narrative. It starts off really slow, it's just this nerdy only child, how his family came to be in Pasedena etc. I found the start a bit annoying, as the author doesn't have any direct source material (not his fault, just there are no surviving relatives and not much documentation); and so he's either making conjectures (these are probably the SF magazines that Parsons was reading) or just giving background (we don't know much about Parsons' early life, so here's a more general history of Pasedena). Once the story takes off, there's plenty of detail to pull from, and so that annoyance went away.
As a science fiction nerd, seeing people like Heinlein, Bradbury, and L Sprague de Camp pop up as minor characters is pretty fun. And I didn't think of him as a nice guy, but I didn't realize that L Ron Hubbard was such a complete shyster and total jerk.
I wish more history and sociology were taught via biographies. In this book, you get a compelling narrative, but you also get to see the effects on a life of some of the big events of the early 20th century. The great depression, the birth of science fiction and its fandom, the House Un-American Activities Committee, corruption in LA government, etc etc. You also wonder what Jack Parsons' life might have been like if he had been able to afford to go to college
Parsons is a fascinating figure - charismatic and commanding, but also easily led; a leader in rocketry and jet propulsion, and also an adept of magic, dark and otherwise. He is unapologetic when he begins a love affair with his wife's young half-sister Betty, and maintains cordial relations with his wife for years while sleeping with Betty. But he's pained and adrift when Betty leaves him for none other than L Ron Hubbard. Although he provided the innovation that led to solid-fuel rockets being practical for military (jet-assisted take off for planes) and space applications, he considered his greatest work to be a series of sex-magic incantations.
The book pulls together a good variety of background to help make sense of it all, mostly through a chronological narrative. It starts off really slow, it's just this nerdy only child, how his family came to be in Pasedena etc. I found the start a bit annoying, as the author doesn't have any direct source material (not his fault, just there are no surviving relatives and not much documentation); and so he's either making conjectures (these are probably the SF magazines that Parsons was reading) or just giving background (we don't know much about Parsons' early life, so here's a more general history of Pasedena). Once the story takes off, there's plenty of detail to pull from, and so that annoyance went away.
As a science fiction nerd, seeing people like Heinlein, Bradbury, and L Sprague de Camp pop up as minor characters is pretty fun. And I didn't think of him as a nice guy, but I didn't realize that L Ron Hubbard was such a complete shyster and total jerk.
I wish more history and sociology were taught via biographies. In this book, you get a compelling narrative, but you also get to see the effects on a life of some of the big events of the early 20th century. The great depression, the birth of science fiction and its fandom, the House Un-American Activities Committee, corruption in LA government, etc etc. You also wonder what Jack Parsons' life might have been like if he had been able to afford to go to college
October 30, 2019
A Stranger Angel than Fiction
Review of the Audible Audio edition (2019) of the original Harcourt hardcover Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (2005)
I normally give things related to the occult a miss, but when Strange Angel came up as an Audible Daily Deal on Oct. 7, 2019, I couldn't resist giving it a tryout and was not disappointed. This life story not only covers the beginnings of the American rocketry program (with a group of sometimes hapless amateurs who called themselves the Suicide Squad) and the American branch of Aleister Crowley's magick worshippers but has some fascinating cameos by later famous science fiction writers. Everyone from Ray Bradbury to Robert A. Heinlein to L. Sprague de Camp put in an appearance. The notorious science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard plays an especially prominent role in these early years before he founded Scientology, but he was already scamming people even then, especially his supposed friend John Parsons. You can well understand how they could turn this into an ongoing television series which is also the reason for this new tie-in edition release.
Review of the Audible Audio edition (2019) of the original Harcourt hardcover Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (2005)
I normally give things related to the occult a miss, but when Strange Angel came up as an Audible Daily Deal on Oct. 7, 2019, I couldn't resist giving it a tryout and was not disappointed. This life story not only covers the beginnings of the American rocketry program (with a group of sometimes hapless amateurs who called themselves the Suicide Squad) and the American branch of Aleister Crowley's magick worshippers but has some fascinating cameos by later famous science fiction writers. Everyone from Ray Bradbury to Robert A. Heinlein to L. Sprague de Camp put in an appearance. The notorious science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard plays an especially prominent role in these early years before he founded Scientology, but he was already scamming people even then, especially his supposed friend John Parsons. You can well understand how they could turn this into an ongoing television series which is also the reason for this new tie-in edition release.
June 22, 2021
This book dives into the unique life of one of the earliest rocketeers who left a silent mark on the development of spacecrafts. The reader gets to see the unusual growth of the space industry that was largely discredited by society. Seen as outcasts, the early rocketeers were often grouped together with early science fiction authors and John Parsons found himself in the middle of these two worlds. The author paints pre-industrial Los Angeles and sets the scene for the life of the outlandish group of aspiring scientists. This book offers a complex look at the United States during a time filled with two world wars, the cold war, and the great depression that also saw the transformation of Los Angeles into the cultural center it is today. This is an incredibly interesting story that I would recommend to anyone that is interested in the surprisingly unusual development of the space industry that lead to the foundation of every defense or space exploration company that exists today.
July 23, 2018
I've been fascinated by Jack Parsons since first reading about him in Mark Frost's THE SECRET HISTORY OF TWIN PEAKS. George Pendle's SECRET ANGEL delivers a full payload of the true history of Parsons the pagan rocket man in this well-written and engaging book that fills in all the blanks and connects most of the dots. The basis for the CBS All Access series of the same name, Pendle's book can be read as a companion book to the show or as the excellent stand-alone biography it is.
November 21, 2023
Discounted | Interesting but such awful people | This was recommended nearly a decade ago, I think by Zoe, but possibly Beth, and I agree that the facts of Parsons' life are fascinating. This is, however, the story of unchecked mental illness in multiple people who made each other worse, and who hurt each other and other people in their selfishness (and, in the case of L Ron Hubbard, hurt millions in the long-term). Hard to read such unending bad decisions.
June 19, 2021
I found this book--or, at least, the subject of the book--endlessly fascinating. What a strange mix of worlds Jack Parsons immersed himself in. The writing was terrific, too, and all in all I just ate this up.
June 26, 2021
My roommate bought this recently, recommending it. As usual, he was spot on so far as my interests go. I'd encountered Jack Parsons previously in several books about Scientology, enough to become intrigued by L. Ron Hubbard's one-time colleague and opponent. Here, finally, was something like the full story.
Author Pendle writes well and sympathetically, attempting with some success to account for how a modern scientist could be attracted to occultism. In Parson's case, he being a relatively young man, it had a lot to do with sex, but also with father issues, Jack having not grown up with his. On a deeper level, not much explicated in the text, there's the science fiction angle, Parson's being a fan, close to some of the 'golden age' giants, and sf having its affinities to fantasy. (Strangely, given that Parsons lived into the early fifties, UFOs don't figure in this account.) Further, there's the matter of self-esteem. Although he taken a few college courses, Parson's was, while long associated with Caltech, not degreed and, so, often discriminated against by the establishment, academic and scientific. On the spirit side, however, he could be a master.
Author Pendle writes well and sympathetically, attempting with some success to account for how a modern scientist could be attracted to occultism. In Parson's case, he being a relatively young man, it had a lot to do with sex, but also with father issues, Jack having not grown up with his. On a deeper level, not much explicated in the text, there's the science fiction angle, Parson's being a fan, close to some of the 'golden age' giants, and sf having its affinities to fantasy. (Strangely, given that Parsons lived into the early fifties, UFOs don't figure in this account.) Further, there's the matter of self-esteem. Although he taken a few college courses, Parson's was, while long associated with Caltech, not degreed and, so, often discriminated against by the establishment, academic and scientific. On the spirit side, however, he could be a master.
May 27, 2021
Satanism, goddess worship, science fiction as a literary genre, and the history of jet propulsion and rocketry in the U.S. Aleister Crowley's adoring acolyte John Parsons. Truth is often a lot stranger than fiction.
May 22, 2024
This is a satisfactory biography of Jack Parsons, rocket experimenter and magician. I was thrown at first, expecting the biography to contain more lurid details of a seemingly exaggerated character. However, well before the book's end, I was drawn into its depiction of its hero. Parsons emerges from this biography as somewhat simple, child-like, and not greatly in control of his own story. He is also a sympathetic figure.
August 7, 2024
A very interesting biography of one of the men who helped launch JPL.
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