Tags
Reading this book was like getting reacquainted with an old friend absent for many years. Remembering forgotten things, laughing about the good old days.
Charles Gramlich covered this one a couple of Fridays ago and I remembered it. I must have been all of twelve or thirteen at the time, about forty-six years ago. It hadn’t been that long since I had first discovered science fiction.
Heinlein was the beginning with TUNNEL IN THE SKY. Back then, science fiction books in the library had little rocket ships on their spines. I was all over the school library and the public library looking for those rocket books. I went through all the Heinlein juveniles, those of Andre Norton, J.(Joan) Hunter Holly, Edmond Hamilton, others long forgotten now, and this one.
Over the years, the title had faded away, as well as parts of the plot. the one thing that always stuck with me was THAT secret of the Martian moons . As soon as I saw Charles’ post, I knew it was that long ago read.
Those juveniles I devoured as fast as I could get them. I can remember one Saturday morning walking a mile to the public library and checking six of them out. That should hold me for the weekend.
(snort)
Before I went to bed that night, I finished all six. They weren’t long. But they were endlessly fascinating for a young boy on the verge of puberty.
Understand the times. This was the early sixties. No cable TV(three channels only), no video games, little money for movies(dear old dad hit the road when I was three and Mom raised my two sisters and myself alone). The human race had barely begun to probe space.
These books were filled with kids my own age doing all sorts of wonderful stuff in space. I couldn’t get enough. It set my reading habits for many years, reading mostly science fiction.
I don’t read as much SF these days, having expanded my intake to include most any type of book but romance novels. But those long ago days were an important part of my life.
It gave an awkward kid with no male in his life a place he could go where everything was exciting, fun, and one could pretend to be that kid sailing the space lanes, living amazing adventures. It even beat the comic books that I occasionally read because the human mind can conjure up more fantastic things than even the most detailed video game today.
I owe Charles a debt for making me fully remember this book and it’s inspired me for a few to do for Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Friday books.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
Great fun. Okay to use this Friday?
Ah yes. The Melikarji Vegans with their box ships and their lightening bolt weapons. The Phobosian and Demosian Vegans and their moonships. The misty form of a 3 fingered with fringes hand. I read that book when I was 7 years old in 71 at the San Diego Public library and it was one of the ones that got me into science fiction, along with Between Planets and Red Planet by Robert Heinlein. The Marauders, man’s ancient cousins taken to Mars thousands of years ago by some unknown inteligence. I wonder if S.M Stirling was thinking about this book when he did The Sky People and In The Courts of The Crimson Kings because the same premise was taken and aged in a different direction.
Still, this book along with Secret of The Nineth Planet,also by Wolheim are two I remember perusing the swapmeets to buy once I’d checked them out of the library back when I was a kid.
I still had them up til going into MCRD bootcamp in 84 and they made a serious impression on me that I still feel now
I, too, discovered SF in the early 60s. Martian Moons was the first one I ever read, and the vast reach of a race of star-travelers grabbed me and never let go. Nowadays, there is a bookstore called Altair IV (Forbidden Planet, remember?) that I haunt. I always get 2 or 3 books there when I go camping in the Sierras.