ADRIFT IN THE STRATOSPHERE...?

Adrift in pointlessness more like...

I've recommended a few books on the blog before now that are usually regarded as 'children's classics', the main reason for them inhabiting such a youthful category being that they contain no sex scenes, swearing, or gory descriptions of gratuitously-detailed violence.  However, they're gripping, exciting, imaginative, as well as extremely well-written, and no adult need ever hang their head in shame for admitting to enjoying them as grown-ups.  I'm talking about novels like Treasure Island, Moonfleet, The Ghosts, Tom's Midnight Garden, Kidnapped, The Hobbit, The Wind In The Willows, etc.

Then there are the others - books that are both juvenile in their scope and execution and that no one over 12 or 14 would surely ever admit to reading.

Such a book is Adrift In The Stratosphere by 'Professor' A.M. Low.  He wasn't entitled to call himself a professor as he didn't occupy any academic chair, but he was an inventor and ideas man, who would've been much more highly regarded in the scientific community had he followed his ideas through to the end, instead of others developing them due to his lack of commitment and resulting inability to bring them to fruition.

If you want to know more about him, click here, but it's the above-mentioned book I want to talk about today.  I remember sometime back in the late '60s my brother enthusing about Low's book, and I mentally made a note to read it someday.  That 'someday' didn't happen 'til many years later when I rediscovered the book in a box in the attic.  Oddly, although I can recall starting the book, I no longer remember finishing it, but that may be down to the fact that it just didn't live up to my brother's enthusiastic estimation of it.

Anyway, still got the book (still up in the loft I think), but because its dust-jacket disappeared many years back (in our previous house), not long ago I bought a dust-jacketed replacement from eBay.  My plan was to make a replica of the dust-jacket to adorn the original copy, but before that, I decided to re-read it.

Dearie me.  Bit of an ordeal.  It was first published in 1937 so perhaps I'm being uncharitable, but it's the kind of story written for kids as text episodes in the story papers (comics) of the '30s and '40s.  (Rover, Wizard, Hornet, Hotspur, etc.)  Just as with his inventions, he doesn't seem to follow through with aspects of the plot, either because he doesn't know where to take it or because he's too eager to get onto the next chapter and explore something else.

Or perhaps, despite being far from positive about the book, I'm giving him too much credit.  The story reads as if he's simply making it up as he goes along and hasn't really thought things through.  He has Martians subjecting the three main protagonists to various tribulations in their spaceship via long-range rays, with the intention of destroying them, when it would be much simpler to blast them out of existence with some Martian missiles.

At the end of it I was left wondering what the point of it all was.  It was unfulfilling and unsatisfying, and a bit of a waste of time to be honest.  Had I been a kid perhaps I would've thought much more of it, but I'm not totally convinced by the possibility.  My brother is obviously much more easily impressed than I am, but I'd say that, should you ever feel inclined to test its SF qualifications, you'd be better devoting your time to a Bleep And Booster Annual.

Verdict: One you can avoid, with no feelings of guilt or loss.

Anyone ever read it?  What did you think?