Journey to Jupiter - the Third Dig Allen Space Explorer Adventure

First, author Joseph Greene took readers to the moon and the asteroid belt.  Then he sent his characters to Mars and on to Mercury.  Now, in this third book of the Dig Allen Space Explorer Adventure series, Greene reaches even further, sending Dig Allen, along with his fellow Space Explorers Jim and Ken Barry, to the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter.  Looking ahead at the rest of the books in this series, it seems that with this book, Greene began his romp across the planets in this galaxy, as Dig goes from Jupiter to Venus to Saturn, and finally, in the last book, to Uranus.  Poor Neptune and Pluto never get visited (making one wonder if they would have been the point of interest, had the series had a seventh and eighth book - which leads one to further question, where would Greene have gone after he used up all the planets in our solar system?!).

 

Journey to Jupiter sends our three young Space Explorers on a mission to investigate the numerous "accidents" that seem to be occurring on one of the moons of Jupiter, where a new colony is being formed.  Engineers and scientists have been working to create a viable, breathable atmosphere on the moon, but it seems one incident after another has delayed the project.  Before Dig and his friends are able to head out, a mysterious spaceship rams into their own, creating a major breach in the hull that nearly costs the boys their lives!  From that moment on, it seems like there is one catastrophe after another.  On their way to Jupiter's moon, they have to rescue a transport ship that was sabotaged and left stranded in the dangerous asteroid belt.  Once they arrive at their destination, there are multiple acts of sabotage, fights among the workers, destruction of food supplies, and despite Dig, Jim, and Ken's best efforts, they mission seems to be a complete failure.

 

Greene writes a tale of intrigue and betrayal, with characters who are not always what they appear to be.  The boys end up with some unlikely allies and are surprised when one particular man they thought they could trust turns out to be the one behind all of the sabotage - all so he can get his hands on the plethora of diamonds that are buried beneath one of the mountains near the human settlement.  Greene raises the stakes, as the traitor and his men are set to leave the moon behind with their treasure in hand, willing to strand the scientists, workers, and colonists behind to die!  A last ditch attempt by Dig and his friends is the only thing that stands between the people and certain doom.  It is quite a suspense-filled ending to the story, but, as can be expected (especially since there are three more books after this one!), Dig, Jim, and Ken manage to save the day.

 

The moon Greene chooses for his Earthlings to try and terraform and colonize is Ganymede, which, in the real world, is the largest of Jupiter's moons.   It is said that Ganymede was discovered back in 1610 by two astronomers - one German, the other Italian.  It was first approached by Pioneer 10 in 1973, and again by Pioneer 11 in 1974.  These fly-bys would have been more than decade after this book was published, which would explain why Greene described the planet as having mountains and an "earthy" ground.  Later exploration has revealed the moon, which is larger in size than the planet Mercury, has a surface composed primarily of water/ice; while it does appear to have mountains, valleys, and craters, the mixture of rock and ice on the surface acts as a frozen crust overlaying what astronomers believe to be a deep internal ocean.  Thus, Greene's descriptions of the moon, and the colonists attempt to terraform it are pure science fiction.

 

I did find Greene's machine to create an atmosphere for Ganymede to be fairly ingenious - the nuclatomizer (p. 37).  As the twins' father explains, "It takes any matter - any material like stone, earth, sand - and breaks it apart.  First into molecules, then into atoms, then into electrons and protons and neutrons.  And finally it breaks up even the electrons into bits of free energy" (p. 37).  He goes on to say that "Tremendous heat and energy is released as the particles of free energy boil in a sort of thick, unclear soup ... " (p. 38).  The machine, using magnetic currents, alters the tiny bits of energy to "form into the element we want" (p. 38).  Yes, it is certainly imaginary in nature (at least so far - who knows what the future holds?!), but at the time the book was published, it would not have been any more outlandish than a lot of those science fiction movies and televisions shows that flooded the movie screens and television sets in the '50s and '60s.

 

There was a glaring error in the book, which I'm surprised the editors never caught before publication.  On the top of each right hand page of the book is the title of each chapter (seen only on the pages of that particular chapter).  Chapter 9 is titled "Valley of Hope," while Chapter 10 is titled "The Fire."  All of the right hands pages of Chapter 9 rightfully show "Valley of Hope" - however, of the three right-hand page of Chapter 10, the first two still show "Valley of Hope," while it is only the third and final right hand page of Chapter 10 that shows the correct chapter title, "The Fire."  A minor snafu that certainly does not affect the reading of the story in any way, but it was just something I could not help but notice. 

 

With this third book, we get a third artist for the series - Walter Dey. He provides a gorgeously painted cover for this third book - the image above comes from the John Hunz Art Collection (Walter Day - Dig Allen 3), and as you can see, the original is much more vibrant in color than what was actually reproduced for the published book cover.  Dey also provided the interior illustrations, which are considerably fewer than the first two books.  There are no small illustrations at the top of the first page of each chapter, as there were in books one and two, and the six internals had four printed in blue, while two of them are printed in black.  I can only guess that Golden Press dropped the small illustrations at the start of each chapter as a cost-saving measure.  I could not find any real information about the artist, Dey - to be honest, the only things I could find about the man is that he provided the cover art for Trappers of Venus, another book in this series, as well as the art for a Brains Benton mystery, The Case of the Stolen Dummy.  All three books are copyright 1961, which gives rise to the supposition that Dey was either an in-house artist for Dey that particular year, or he was hired through an agency or as an independent contractor for simply the one year to provide art for several books published by Golden Press.

 

The back cover to this book offers yet a third variation, completely different than the backs of the first two books.  While the first book featured merely a listing of various series, and the second book featured the covers of the first books in a number of Golden Press series, this third book offers up a brief synopsis of the story on the top half, while the bottom half, in different colored blocks, provides books in three different series (Kathy Martin, Brains Benton, and Dig Allen), while the fourth block simply mentions other titles (such as Trixie Belden, Wells Fargo, Rin Tin Tin, Fury, and Lassie).  Since the Dig Allen block only lists to this particular book - Journey to Jupiter - one can speculate that this is a first, or at the very least an early, printing of the book.   (I love seeing the price referenced on here:  "Each Volume, $1.00" - hard to imagine today that these hardcover books, at nearly 200 pages, only cost $1.00!)

 

The story was fairly thrilling, with the intrigue and the danger increasing with each chapter.  Greene's stories seem to get better with each book, and it definitely gives me high hopes for the remaining three books in the series!

 

RATING:  8 squirting plastubes of chocomilk out of 10 for an exciting tale of space exploration, adventure, and danger to keep the reader turning page after page to reach the thrilling conclusion of the story!