Product Description

Brilliant Rocket Scientist Killed in Explosion screamed the front-page headline of the Los Angeles Times on June 18, 1952. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer whose work had helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plotline into a reality, was at first mourned as a tragically young victim of mishandled chemicals. But as reporters dug deeper a shocking story emerged-Parsons had been performing occult rites and summoning spirits as a follower of Aleister Crowley-and he was promptly written off as an embarrassment to science. George Pendle tells Parsons's extraordinary life story for the first time. Fueled from childhood by dreams of space flight, Parsons was a crucial innovator during rocketry's birth. But his visionary imagination also led him into the occult community thriving in 1930s Los Angeles, and when fantasy's pull became stronger than reality, he lost both his work and his wife. Parsons was just emerging from his personal underworld when he died at age thirty-seven. In Strange Angel, Pendle recovers a fascinating life and explores the unruly consequences of genius.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #480310 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Pendle vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time. Throughout the 1930s, John Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952) was a pioneer of rocket science, a fixture at Caltech with an uncanny ability to understand and control the dynamics of explosions, though he'd never completed an undergraduate degree. At the same time, Parsons was a key figure in the Los Angeles occult scene, presiding over a world of incantations, black magic and orgiastic excess. Science journalist Pendle (Times of London, Financial Times) follows Parsons on his journey through both science and the occult as he explored the connections between the two at a time when science fiction crashed into science fact (and when the practitioners of one often dabbled in the other. The book tells the story of the research that formed the basis for both missile defense and space flight, but Parsons himself was a tragic figure, left behind by both the science he helped to found and the women he loved. Marshaling a cast of characters ranging from Robert Millikan to L. Ron Hubbard, Pendle offers a fascinating glimpse into a world long past, a story that would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren't so astonishingly true. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In a riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles, science writer Pendle presents the first in-depth portrait of John Whiteside Parsons, a pioneer in rocket propulsion and an eccentric right out of an Ed Woods movie. Pendle shrewdly places handsome and charismatic Parsons--a man of dramatic contradictions and an insouciance that led to his horrific death at age 37 in 1952--on the cusp between the era in which rockets were dismissed as pulp science fiction fantasy (of which Parsons eagerly partook) and the milieu in which rockets and space travel became realities. A self-taught chemist with an affinity for explosives, Parsons teamed up with Frank Malina and the rest of the so-called Suicide Squad in the dangerous quest for dependable rocket technology. Parsons became cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an aerospace company, but he was also a member of the licentious Church of Thelema, a ludicrous invention of the English mystic Aleister Crowley. Equally cogent in interpreting the scientific and personal facets of Parsons' alluringly scandalous and confounding life, Pendle greatly enlivens the story of rocketry. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Globe and Mail
"Stranger than any fiction, Strange Angel could be a hybrid sired by Gravity's Rainbow out of Foucault's Pendulum ... explosively fascinating."

Customer Reviews

Explosive Tales from the Early Days of Solid Fuel Rockets
As someone who has long been interested in rocketry, I had been aware of the pioneering work of Robert Goddard and how that work was eventually superseded by a variety of pioneers in the West. Having grown up near Pasadena, I was very aware of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory there and its pivotal role in space exploration. I have also read a number of biographies that mention unexpected explosions at Cal Tech. Having long been a science fiction fan, I know the writings of many of the classic authors . . . but not much about them.

What a nice surprise it was when I stumbled onto Strange Angel, which provides much helpful perspective about all those interests of mine in the context of the short and explosive life of John Whiteside Parsons. George Pendle is quite successful at capturing the times -- distrust of rocketry as a research area, paranoia about Communism, fascination among the wealthy with the occult and the undeniable appeal for some of unrestrained sexual activity.

Beyond that slice of time, the book also appealed to my sense of how many new sciences develop . . . by lots of painful trial and error. I was especially intrigued by the problems of creating stable solid rocket fuels that wouldn't fail in painful ways. Mr. Pendle also does a fine job of explaining how the early trial-and-error pioneers are eventually superseded by those who can develop the theory and practice in more advanced ways.

John Whiteside Parsons lived a life that screamed for a strong hand to take him in the right direction . . . but which wasn't available. There's a classic element of human tragedy to the story that will intrigue almost any reader . . . and leave the reader with a vastly enlarged sense of what the human mind can contain.

For those who are interested in the occult, they will probably be disappointed in the book for its taking a neutral tone in regard to this subject. For those who prefer a strong religious perspective on every spiritual issue, they will be disappointed that the author isn't overtly disapproving of Mr. Parsons' involvement with the occult.

Ultimately, biographies rise or fall on the intrigue that the life of the subject presents to the reader. It's hard to imagine a more intriguing (but not exemplary) life than the one described in Strange Angel.

Don't miss this story!

Revealing portrait of a man and his time
An interesting book this. I came upon it quite by accident in my local bookstore and after lookingthrough it I naturally went to Amazon to get a better price. Parsons was a rocket scientist, but not your typical white coated lab rat. For a start Parsons was interested in rockets long before the establishment gave a damn. He and his colleagues, known as the 'Suicide Squad' because of their dangerous experiments, were building rockets in Los Angeles before the Second World War and long before Wernher von Braun and the other German scientists made it over here. Secondly he was self-taught, gaining his inspiration from sci-fi comics and writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs. Thirdly he was the leader of a religious cult. Yup, John Whiteside Parsons was a pretty unusual guy.
Strange Angel tells his story from gilded youth through scientific glory to his mysterious death. The book is very good at portraying the times in which he lived as well as the city of Los Angeles, a weird place to live if ever there was one. I'm not an occultist or anything but even those parts about religious cults and the like were pretty interesting. It must have been the Californian sun but everyone was dreaming big dreams at that time! It seems Parsons had two dreams - one to fly to the moon (something which most scientists thought was an impossibility), the other to become a great practicioner of black magic and travel to other dimensions (something which most people thought, and still think, was crazy). The author is good at drawing together these two parallel stories and by the end of the book you can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy. In effect he was the ultimate LA dreamer, but his dreams weren't always appreciated in the real world. Check this book out if you want to know a little bit more about an unexpected character from an exotic time.

Fact stranger than fiction! Scientist worships devil!
Enjoyed this tremendously. I didn't know what was stranger - Parsons' life or the fact that he's been forgotten. Parsons has one of those stories that you truly could not make up. Rocket scientist, science fiction geek, occultist, possible spy...the list goes on and on. If you're interested in any of these worlds (and particularly that of Los Angeles in the 1930s), you'll enjoy this book, and discover the strange links between science and science fiction. Not too sure who wrote the review posted below but he appears to be a bit doo-lally if you know what i mean...Pick up this book for a good fun weird read.