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Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons Paperback – Illustrated, February 6, 2006

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 528 ratings

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Now a CBS All Access series created by Mark Heyman with executive producer Ridley Scott.

ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION
screamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plot line into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic.

George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic?

With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein,
Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

 
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Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR STRANGE ANGEL “Pendle weaves a fascinating yarn . . . he deftly and seemingly effortlessly leads his readers through the technical aspects of Parsons' work. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to enjoy it.” —The Seattle Times “Pasadena's famous Craftsman mansions disgorge their ghosts in this rambunctiously funny, deliriously weird, and incredibly true story of a space-science pioneer turned lustful witch.” —Mike Davis, author of City of Quatrz “As a history of space travel, Strange Angel is a cornerstone. This is your book if you want to start reading up on the space age. Highly recommended.” —Ray Bradbury —

From the Back Cover

"Forget geek stereotypes. Parsons's life seems straight out of a Hollywood thriller. . . . Pendle's book leaves us with a taste of genius's energy and fragility." -- Los Angeles Magazine

ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION screamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plotline into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic.

In this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility, George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons, leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

"[Pendle] depicts Parsons' short, spectacular life as akin to one of his early rocket tests — a brilliant flash, a quick soar, and an inevitable, erratic fizzle back to Earth. Pendle weaves a fascinating yarn, reaching from the earliest sci-fi dreams of manned spaceflight to the real-life trial-and-error process that would eventually make it possible." --Seattle Times

GEORGE PENDLE writes about science, art, and culture for the Times (London), the Sunday Times, and the Financial Times, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; First Edition (February 6, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 350 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0156031795
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0156031790
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 5.32 x 0.86 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 528 ratings

About the author

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George Pendle
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George Pendle is an author and journalist.

He writes about contemporary art, historical fiction, imaginary countries, real monsters, mad scientists, sane occultists, and the color blue.

He has written for the Economist, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Times (London), the Guardian, the Observer, frieze, Cabinet, Bidoun, Modern Painters, and Icon.

He has also written signs for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
528 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and well-researched. They describe it as an easy, readable account of the life of Jack Parsons. The writing style is appropriate for the subject matter and the tone is appropriate. Overall, customers find the story compelling and interesting.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

35 customers mention "Readability"35 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They describe it as a fascinating read about the history of rocketry. The story is compelling and well-written, with amazing facts. Readers consider it one of the best nonfiction books of recent years.

"...This is a magnificent account of a singular life which changed our world, and is commemorated on the rock next door...." Read more

"...Very interesting read about the history of Rocketry and all the greatest scientist of that era...." Read more

"..."Strange Angel" by George Pendel is a great book to obtain if you are open to reading fascinating biographies of scientists that courageously..." Read more

"I found the connections between Jack Parsons and the occult quite fascinating...." Read more

29 customers mention "Research quality"25 positive4 negative

Customers appreciate the book's well-researched and informative content. They find it a great read for history enthusiasts, covering Scientology's beginnings in depth.

"...While the major points of his life and work were interesting, the extensive coverage of the cult sapped a great deal of energy from the narrative...." Read more

"...interesting read about the history of Rocketry and all the greatest scientist of that era. I am within pages of the epilogue of this book...." Read more

"...that I loved Pendle's writing style and found it to be a fast moving, in-depth, and very comprehensive...." Read more

"...It also sheds a LOT of light on Scientology's beginnings. Decently written. Bottom line is Parsons was just a fascinating character." Read more

18 customers mention "Writing quality"14 positive4 negative

Customers find the writing quality engaging and easy to read. They appreciate the appropriate tone and evocative descriptions of the Golden Age of Los Angeles.

"...As such I found that I loved Pendle's writing style and found it to be a fast moving, in-depth, and very comprehensive...." Read more

"...It also sheds a LOT of light on Scientology's beginnings. Decently written. Bottom line is Parsons was just a fascinating character." Read more

"...The writing was good, the research sound as far as I cared to check up on it, and the tone was appropriate for the subject matter...." Read more

"...Narration was rite and this book was a chore to get through at times. I hope the show is better...." Read more

16 customers mention "Interest"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the book interesting. They say it's a good biography that captures the varied stages of Jack Parsons' life. The book does him justice and is an excellent read about the father of JPL.

"...This book captures the varying stages of his life, from his wealthy grandparents, to dreamer, who wanted to build a rocket that made it to the moon...." Read more

"...This is the most interesting man I've never met!..." Read more

"...Decently written. Bottom line is Parsons was just a fascinating character." Read more

"The subject of this biography, Jack Parsons, is a fascinating character...." Read more

Fascinating person
5 out of 5 stars
Fascinating person
Both funny and sad, this is a fascinating look into the life of an extremely eccentric person. I enjoyed reading and learning about Parsons life. The book is well written and definitely will hold your attention if you are at all interested in people with unique personalities or the occult.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2019
    For those who grew up after World War II “rocket science” meant something extremely difficult, on the very edge of the possible, pursued by the brightest of the bright, often at risk of death or dire injury. In the first half of the century, however, “rocket” was a pejorative, summoning images of pulp magazines full of “that Buck Rogers stuff”, fireworks that went fwoosh—flash—bang if all went well, and often in the other order when it didn't, with aspiring rocketeers borderline lunatics who dreamed of crazy things like travelling to the Moon but usually ended blowing things up, including, but not limited to, themselves.

    This was the era in which John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons came of age. Parsons was born and spent most of his life in Pasadena, California, a community close enough to Los Angeles to participate in its frontier, “anything goes” culture, but also steeped in well-heeled old wealth, largely made in the East and seeking the perpetually clement climate of southern California. Parsons was attracted to things that went fwoosh and bang from the very start. While still a high school senior, he was hired by the Hercules Powder Company, and continued to support himself as an explosives chemist for the rest of his life. He never graduated from college, no less pursued an advanced degree, but his associates and mentors, including legends such as Theodore von Kármán were deeply impressed by his knowledge and meticulously careful work with dangerous substances and gave him their highest recommendations. On several occasions he was called as an expert witness to testify in high-profile trials involving bombings.

    And yet, at the time, to speak seriously about rockets was as outré as to admit one was a fan of “scientifiction” (later science fiction), or a believer in magic. Parsons was all-in on all of them. An avid reader of science fiction and member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, Parsons rubbed shoulders with Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Forrest J. Ackerman. On the darker side, Parsons became increasingly involved in the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), followers of Aleister Crowley, and practitioners of his “magick”. One gets the sense that Parsons saw no conflict whatsoever among these pursuits—all were ways to transcend the prosaic everyday life and explore a universe enormously larger and stranger than even that of Los Angeles and its suburbs.

    Parsons and his small band of rocket enthusiasts, “the suicide squad”, formed an uneasy alliance with the aeronautical laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, and with access to their resources and cloak of respectability, pursued their dangerous experiments first on campus, and then after a few embarrassing misadventures, in Arroyo Seco behind Pasadena. With the entry of the United States into World War II, the armed services had difficult problems to solve which overcame the giggle factor of anything involving the word “rocket”. In particular, the U.S. Navy had an urgent need to launch heavily-laden strike aircraft from short aircraft carrier decks (steam catapults were far in the future), and were willing to consider even Buck Rogers rockets to get them off the deck. Well, at least as long as you didn't call them “rockets”! So, the Navy sought to procure “Jet Assisted Take-Off” units, and Caltech created the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” with Parsons as a founder to develop them, and then its members founded the Aerojet Engineering Corporation to build them in quantity. Nope, no rockets around here, nowhere—just jets.

    Even as Parsons' rocket dreams came true and began to make him wealthy, he never forsook his other interests: they were all integral to him. He advanced in Crowley's OTO, became a regular correspondent of the Great Beast, and proprietor of the OTO lodge in Pasadena, home to a motley crew of bohemians who prefigured the beatniks and hippies of the 1950s and '60s. And he never relinquished his interest in science fiction, taking author L. Ron Hubbard into his community. Hubbard, a world class grifter even in his early days, took off with Parsons' girlfriend and most of his savings on the promise of buying yachts in Florida and selling them at a profit in California. Uh-huh! I'd put it down to destructive engrams.

    Amidst all of this turmoil, Parsons made one of the most important inventions in practical rocketry of the 20th century. Apart from the work of Robert Goddard, which occurred largely disconnected from others due to Goddard's obsessive secrecy due to his earlier humiliation by learned ignoramuses, and the work by the German rocket team, conducted in secrecy in Nazi Germany, rockets mostly meant solid rockets, and solid rockets were little changed from mediaeval China: tubes packed with this or that variant of black powder which went fwoosh all at once when ignited. Nobody before Parsons saw an alternative to this. When faced by the need for a reliable, storable, long-duration burn propellant for Navy JATO boosters, he came up with the idea of castable solid propellant (initially based upon asphalt and potassium perchlorate), which could be poured as a liquid into a booster casing with a grain shape which permitted tailoring the duration and thrust profile of the motor to the mission requirements. Every single solid rocket motor used today employs this technology, and Jack Parsons, high school graduate and self-taught propulsion chemist, invented it all by himself.

    On June 17th, 1952, an explosion destroyed a structure on Pasadena's Orange Grove Avenue where Jack Parsons had set up his home laboratory prior to his planned departure with his wife to Mexico. He said he had just one more job to do for his client, a company producing explosives for Hollywood special effects. Parsons was gravely injured and pronounced dead at the hospital.

    The life of Jack Parsons was one which could only have occurred in the time and place he lived it. It was a time when a small band of outcasts could have seriously imagined building a rocket and travelling to the Moon; a time when the community they lived in was aboil with new religions, esoteric cults, and alternative lifestyles; and an entirely new genre of fiction was exploring the ultimate limits of the destiny of humanity and its descendants. Jack swam in this sea and relished it. His short life (just 37 years) was lived in a time and place which has never existed before and likely will never exist again. The work he did, the people he influenced, and the consequences cast a long shadow still visible today (every time you see a solid rocket booster heave a launcher off the pad, its coruscant light, casting that shadow, is Jack Parsons' legacy). This is a magnificent account of a singular life which changed our world, and is commemorated on the rock next door. On the lunar far side the 40 kilometre diameter crater Parsons is named for the man who dreamt of setting foot, by rocketry or magick, upon that orb and, in his legacy, finally did with a big footprint indeed—more than eight times larger than the one named for that Armstrong fellow.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2020
    This was an exhaustive biography of pioneering rocket scientist, Jack Parsons. Truth is stranger than fiction and Person's life was strange and unusual indeed. One of the founders of JPL, Parsons was an chemical engineer and rocket scientist who didn't have a college degree, yet alone finish high school. He had a brilliant mind, but became entangled in the occult activities of Alistair Crowley, a figure who practiced a variety of beliefs. Ironically, Parsons would meet L. Ron Hubbard, who successfully began his own religion, where Crowley had failed. This book captures the varying stages of his life, from his wealthy grandparents, to dreamer, who wanted to build a rocket that made it to the moon. His unorthodox lifestyle (sex, drugs, black magic) eventually cost him his security clearance and forced him out of the work he so loved. This is all described in extensive detail, which bogs down the narrative at several points. This book is definitely not what I thought it would be. It is sad that speculation (some of it true) diminished he contribution to the study of rocketry. While the major points of his life and work were interesting, the extensive coverage of the cult sapped a great deal of energy from the narrative. I read this book using immersion reading while listening to the audiobook. Narration was rite and this book was a chore to get through at times. I hope the show is better. This book does capture the era well and the hunt for communists had a sad and devastating effect on many of the "Suicide Squad" rocketeers as they called themselves.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2021
    This book arrived quickly. It is in excellent condition.

    I was inspired to buy this after seeing something about this scientist on TV. It concentrated on his involvement with the occult and his death. The emphasis was on his occult interests but that is just part of John Whiteside Parson. This book, so far, deals in fascinating true facts and history about John Parsons. His interest in the occult is mentioned and put into context, it plays a part but is not central to the theme. Very interesting read about the history of Rocketry and all the greatest scientist of that era.

    I am within pages of the epilogue of this book. This is one of the most FANTASTIC reads ever! I knew about Oppenheimer but never heard of this black sheep of science before now. In his life time this one man encompasses the first dreams of space travel, is an acolyte if the infamous Alister Crowley, forms a Bohemian commune of scientists, sci-fi writers, artists, opera singers, Caltech professors, occultists and even L. Ron Hubbard. A lover of the arts, magic & mythology as well as history, he pulled all these together into a "eureka" moment to create rocket fuel that made everything from NASA
    to the Manhattan project possible. He was blacklisted during the McCarthy years, swindled by Hubbard, and went mad from time to time. This is the most interesting man I've never met! I can see how his black arts and Intuitive innovations caused him to be dropped from the history & science books. But what a shame. If you're not put off by his beliefs, this is a man everyone should know about.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Hardcore bookworm
    5.0 out of 5 stars Origin of JPL and NASA
    Reviewed in Canada on November 9, 2022
    Strange man from a strange place and time on a strange planet under strange circumstances.
    Life on this planet isn’t what it appears to be, this is a clue to put under your hat to run through the grinder. Make of it what you will. Appropriate for conspiranauts and detectives mostly. If you’re a stranger in a strange land, you’ll enjoy it.
  • G. Wilson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Science & Sorcery
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2023
    This is a biography of Jack Parsons, one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was a rocket scientist & chemist who specialised in explosives. He didn't have any official qualifications & seemed to be largely self-taught. He was also a practising magician & a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, an organisation dedicated to Aleister Crowley's system of spiritual attainment Thelema. Jack also was a fan of science fiction & it was this that was one of his inspirations for his rocket research.
    This was an engaging & fascinating book. It presents us with Jack's life & his friends, family & acquaintances. The science is very much simplified (thankfully), as is the occult ritual material, but still gives us enough information for everything to make sense. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys popular science & reading about the lives of unusual people.
    This book was the basis for a tv show, also called 'Strange Angel' (2018-19), which is a highly fictionalised version of Jack's life. I would also recommend this tv show, but with the proviso that the book is far more interesting - Jack's true life was stranger than fiction. So if you have watched the show, please try the book, you will see a different perspective on his life & also find out much more than eventually made it into the show.
  • Cliente Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars I got this book after CBS Strange Angel
    Reviewed in Brazil on April 6, 2020
    Nice book but lack details on Mr. Parsons death. He's alive in one paragraph and after that he isn't anymore without any further information.
  • bookworm64
    4.0 out of 5 stars good read but felt something missing
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2013
    Enjoyed this book and was hooked throughout however felt as if big portions of this mans life where either not mentioned and there was at times no real depth. I left the book knowing about this man but not knowing him. Too short and too superficial to be amazing but well written and would recommend.
  • SNT
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very good
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 4, 2020
    If you like science and the occult, you'll love this.