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!

The Forgotten Star - the First Dig Allen Space Explorer Adventure

This is another one of those series that I normally would not have picked up. I had seen the first couple of books in the series on a number of occasions in antique malls or in used book stories, and I regularly passed them up, as they were not mystery stories - they were stories about space exploration and adventure.  However, as time passed, I found myself curious about them - after all, the main character was a red-headed boy with freckles like me (well, like I used to be a ... ah-hem ... few years ago!).  Plus, the concept seemed somewhat similar to the '80s Tom Swift series, which was also about a young boy and his friends having adventures in space.  So, I picked up one, then another, and soon enough I had the first five of the six-book series.  It was not until recently that, thanks to a good friend, I was able to get that sixth and final book to complete the series, and thus, I was able to start reading them.

 

The Forgotten Star is the first book in the series, which introduces readers not only to Digby ("Dig") Allen, but also to his supporting cast. In fact, we meet the supporting cast before we meet the main character himself!  Our story opens at the turn of the 22nd Century, as a spaceship is shuttling people to the moon, where they will either be vacationing or taking up residence.  Two of those passengers happen to be Jim Barry and his younger brother, Ken, who are heading to join their mother and scientist father who already live there.  Before they reach the moon (and before the first chapter ends), the adventure begins when they are boarded by the Space Guard, who are looking for a stowaway.  As it turns out, the stowaway is none other than Dig Allen, who, coincidentally enough, happens to be hiding in the Barry boys' room.  Dig must get to the moon to begin the search for his missing father, the only relative he has left, and the Barry brothers are only to happy to help him elude capture.

 

What is odd about the entire story is that it is pretty much told from Jim and Ken's point-of-view. While Dig is in the story, the reader actually follows the Barry brothers as they land on the moon, reunite with their parents, meet the young alien Woody who lives with them, are questioned and then trained on space piloting by Sergeant Brool with the Space Guard, and ultimately happen upon Captain Ahab in the spaceship junk yard, where they finally meet up again with Dig Allen.  He and Ahab have been putting together a space-worthy ship that will take Dig out to search for his missing father.  Before they even take off, however, Sergeant Brool contacts the Barrys to inform them that Captain Allen's ship has been found - abandoned and drifting in space!  The mystery then begins: what happened to Boyd Allen, and what does the telegram Allen sent his son on January 15, 2161 (just before he disappeared) really mean?  What exactly is "No. 433," and what are the legends, myths, rumors, and tall stories surrounding it?  Dig, along with the help of his new friends, Jim and Ken, are determined to find out the answers to these questions, and in so doing, find the missing Captain Boyd Allen.

 

The series is written by Joseph Greene (a/k/a Joseph Lawrence Greene, 1914-1990), who created Tom Corbett, Space Cadet prior to his creation of the Dig Allen series.  Greene also did a lot of writing in the comic book field, including a number of titles for DC Comics' All-American books (of which Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, and Superman were just a few).  He also worked on the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet comic series published by Dell Publications, which, of course, were based on his own creation.  He later edited, and possibly was the ghostwriter of, the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series for Grosset & Dunlap. It wasn't until 1959 that this first book in the Dig Allen, "A Science Fiction Adventure" series was first published by Golden Press (who also published the Kathy Martin nurse stories, the Brains Benton mysteries, as well as the Ellery Queen Jr. mysteries and the Vicky Loring stories).  It is evident that Greene was a science fiction fan himself, since most of his books for young adults were sci-fi tales set in outer space.  The story in this first book goes beyond the mystery of Dig Allen's father and also explores an alien race and their advanced technology (the discovery of which ultimately gets Dig and his new friends from being forever grounded from space travel due to their antics, which violated any number of Space Guard protocols!).

 

The interior illustrations (and possibly the cover art as well, although I cannot confirm that) were provided by Myron Strauss. From what I can gather in researching Strauss, it appears Greene was not the only one with a connection to comic books.  Strauss provided cover and interior art for several comic book series published by Centaur Publications back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  He later became a teacher at Art & Design in New York, and from what I was able to gather based upon quite a large number of posts online, he was a very popular and well-liked teacher. The illustrations in this book are line drawings, but not your typical black and white; rather, there is a 1/3 page illustration, in addition to the occasional full page illustration.  The illustrations in the first third of the book are a bluish line color, while the second third of the book is done with an orange line color, and the final third of the book has green-line illustrations.  I found this an interesting choice, but I liked it - it gave the book a different feel, setting it apart from the typical series books of the time.

 

The back cover of this first book features an ad for "Fiction for Boys and Girls," listing six different series published by Golden Press at the time.  I'm assuming this must be a later printing of the first book, as it lists the entire six-book series for Dig Allen, and it lists more books in the other series that does the back of other books I have in the Dig Allen series. One thing that caught my eye was the listing of three books for the Vicky Loring Stories.  I know for a fact there are only two books ever published in that series (as I have them both); and while the third book, Double Deception, was advertised, it was never actually published, making it another "phantom title" in the series book realm.

 

It should also be mentioned that while you can find all six of the books in this same hardcover, picture cover format, the first two books (at least) were published in paperback as "A Golden Griffon Space Mystery" by Western Publishing Company.  These two paperbacks have completely different cover art, and as I don't own either, I can't say whether they have any interior illustrations.  The first book was also published in a hardcover format with a dust jacket, which dust jacket sported the same cover art as this picture cover edition.  The dust jacket format is not impossible to find, but it is definitely not cheap!

 

On a final note, the author does dedicate the book to "Ellen, Robert, Paul and Stormy" and goes on to say "without whose constant help this book would have been written sooner."  I thought this was a rather humorous dedication, as it seems to indicate that these four (who I am assuming are his children?) kept him busy and did not allow him to write as much, nor as fast, as he would have liked to have written.  However, I have no doubt it was done in loving jest.

 

The book was admittedly not my cup of tea.  I am not a fan of general science fiction such as this, and it took me a bit to get into the story.  However, even I can concede that by the time I made it past the half-way point, and Dig and his friends had managed to find out what "No. 433" meant and made their way, the story picked up its pace and interest a bit, and I found it a bit more palatable.  By the end of the story, I found I did somewhat enjoy it, and while I had doubts as to whether I would continue reading the series, I am now willing to give book two a try.

 

RATING:   6 hollowed-out asteroids with alien civilizations out of 10 for some clearly 1950s' style sci-fi action and adventure with some pretty likable lead characters.