Gulliver In Orbit
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EXPEDITION VENUS
by Hugh Walters.-Faber, London. 17s.
[..part of article omitted..]
"EXPEDITION Venus"
is also a sort of joke, this time on the reviewer. There is nothing on the cover, or in the publisher's blurb, to indicate that this is SF, for children, or a tot's guide to rocketry.
Curiosity makes one read
on, to discover what sort of ideas about outer space are being served up to the young.
How comforting, then, to
find that the ideals of "Boys' Own Annual" still find a place in a reeling universe.
Here are still the same
young chaps with healthy minds, healthy bodies and stiff upper lips, solving the problems of Earth in re- lation to its planetary neigh- bours. The heroes they look up to are ancient survivors |
of the Battle of Britain, with
their bristling moustaches now, alas, turned white.
The young chaps, with
traditional gallantry, set off at half a million miles an hour for Venus, to find an antidote for a nasty sort of fungus brought back from the planet on a space probe, and now causing devastation on Earth. Needless to say, they succeed. Their only handicap appears to be a rather frail member of the party called Tony, whose upper lip at times (in spite of being British) tends to quiver.
His character is perhaps
best summed up in a few lines which deserve to be- come immortal: "The tears were gushing from Tony's eyes, and floating roung the cabin like little balls of silver, so great was the mechanic's relief at the news. No young man wants to die if he can help it."
-MARGARET JONES
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