Author | Donald A. Wollheim |
---|---|
Cover artist | Alex Schomburg |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | science-fiction novel |
Published | 1954 (John C. Winston Co.) |
Pages | 207 |
OCLC | 1279359 |
The Secret of Saturn's Rings is a science-fiction novel by Donald A. Wollheim and was first published in the United States by the John C. Winston Company in 1954. This is the first of three novels that Wollheim wrote for the Winston Company, the other two being The Secret of the Martian Moons (1955) and The Secret of the Ninth Planet (1959).
This is also one of the thirty-five juvenile novels that comprise the Winston Science Fiction set, which novels were published in the 1950s for a readership of teen-aged boys. The typical protagonist in these books was a boy in his late teens who was proficient in the art of electronics, a hobby that was easily available to the readers. It was his proficiency in that art that enabled Bruce Rhodes to detect an act of sabotage on his father's rocket ship.
On the day of his graduation from high school Bruce Rhodes finds his classmates shunning him. He discovers that his father, Dr. Emanuel Rhodes, who has worked for the Terraluna Corporation for thirty years, most of that time as head of research, has been fired and the corporation is now smearing him. With a borrowed United Nations exploration ship, Dr. Rhodes intends to lead an expedition to Saturn, farther from Earth than anyone has ever gone.
Dr. Rhodes explains that he has discovered that a nuclear-explosion-driven mining machine that he invented for Terraluna will actually blast the moon apart, sending debris raining down onto Earth and destroying civilization. Terraluna's executives had dismissed him (in both senses of the term) as a crackpot, so he went to the United Nations. Requiring additional proof of his hypothesis, the United Nations has loaned him a ship so that he can go to Saturn to determine whether the planet's rings are the remains of an exploded moon.
With the other three members of the crew – able spaceman Arpad Benz (who will work with Bruce), astrogator Frank Garcia, and pilot Kurt Jennings – Bruce and his father board the ship and prepare for liftoff. The ship is launched up the side of a mountain, much of the initial boost being provided by a series of magnetic rings (similar to the ringroad that Robert Heinlein described in Starman Jones). Soon they're on their way to the moon to top off their fuel tanks, knowing that Terraluna intends to use every filthy, vile trick in the corporate playbook to stop them. In spite of those tricks, they land on Mimas, Saturn's innermost moon, and set up camp. Immediately Dr. Rhodes takes one of the rocketship's two lifeboats and flies it into the rings. Radio contact is lost as the signal is lost in intense static. While waiting for radio contact to resume, Bruce and the others find artefacts, signs that an alien city once occupied the ground on which they stand and has since crumbled into the gravel on which their ship and camp sit.
When radio contact still has not been reestablished and only one day remains before the expedition must leave Saturn to return to Earth, Bruce takes the other lifeboat and flies into the rings. With some effort and luck he finds his father, whose rocketboat had broken down, and the two men return to Mimas just in time to see Garcia and Benz take off in their rocketship and head for Hidalgo. So intent are Garcia and Benz on running the ship that they don't notice the lifeboat landing behind them.
Marooned, the Rhodeses decide to write down descriptions of their discoveries for future explorers to find. While the Rhodeses are exploring, two of the villains arrive, but an old Saturnian cannon destroys their ship and kills them. In the wreckage of the ship Bruce and his father find three fuel tanks, intact and full. With nothing to lose, they fuel up an old Saturnian rocket and blast off. Shedding parts as it goes, the rickety craft barely gets the men to the asteroid Hidalgo, where Garcia and Benz run to greet them and the four men settle down for a long and successful journey to Earth.
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“Another father and son team of scientific superiority, sally to Saturn – to prove their innocence and even an old score with a greedy gang who want to blow up the moon for the minerals therein. The secret of Saturn's rings, finds Dr. Rhodes, ousted head of the Terraluna mining operations, is that they were once moons which, blown apart, formed rings just as our own moon would do under the pressure if atomic bombing were used to extract the uranium at its center. The concurrent excitement is commensurate with the plot.”
Donald Allen Wollheim was an American science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and fan. As an author, he published under his own name as well as under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell, Martin Pearson, and Darrell G. Raynor. A founding member of the Futurians, he was a leading influence on science fiction development and fandom in the 20th-century United States. Ursula K. Le Guin called Wollheim "the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and '67", which is when he published her first two novels in Ace Double editions.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel". By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide. An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in the 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001.
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn is the final novel in the Lucky Starr series, six juvenile science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov that originally appeared under the pseudonym Paul French. The novel was first published by Doubleday & Company in 1958. It was the last novel to be published by Asimov until his 1966 novelization of Fantastic Voyage, and his last original novel until 1973's The Gods Themselves. Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn is the only novel by Asimov set in the Saturnian system.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In the earliest depictions, it was portrayed as having a solid surface rather than its actual gaseous composition. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. In modern science fiction, the Saturnian atmosphere sometimes hosts floating settlements. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources.
Attack from Atlantis (1953) is a science fiction novel written by Lester del Rey. The story follows the new U.S.S. Triton submarine on her maiden voyage, but trouble happens when the crew comes face to face with the inhabitants of the underwater city Atlantis.
This Island Earth is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writer Raymond F. Jones. It was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine as a serialized set of three novelettes by Jones: "The Alien Machine" in the June 1949 issue, "The Shroud of Secrecy" in the December 1949 issue, and "The Greater Conflict" in the February 1950 issue. These three stories were later combined and expanded into the 1952 novel This Island Earth. It became the basis for the 1955 Universal-International science fiction film also titled This Island Earth.
Saturn was an American magazine published from 1957 to 1965. It was launched as a science fiction magazine, but sales were weak, and after five issues the publisher, Robert C. Sproul, switched the magazine to hardboiled detective fiction that emphasized sex and sadism. Sproul retitled the magazine Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine to support the change, and shortened the title to Web Detective Stories the following year. In 1962, the title was changed yet again, this time to Web Terror Stories, and the contents became mostly weird menace tales—a genre in which apparently supernatural powers are revealed to have a logical explanation at the end of the story.
Winston Science Fiction was a series of 37 American juvenile science fiction books published by the John C. Winston Company of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1960 and by its successor Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1960 and 1961. It included 35 novels by various writers, including many who became famous in the SF field, such as Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Ben Bova, and Lester del Rey. There was also one anthology, The Year After Tomorrow, edited by del Rey and others. There was one non-fiction book Rockets Through Space: The Story of Man's Preparations to Explore the Universe by del Rey which details the factual science and technology of rocket flight. Many of the dust jackets became science fiction classics; the artists included Hugo Award winners Ed Emshwiller and Virgil Finlay along with Hugo nominees such as Mel Hunter and Alex Schomburg.
Missing Men of Saturn is a juvenile science fiction novel, published first in 1953, by astronomer and author Robert S. Richardson with cover illustration by Alex Schomburg. The story concerns Dale Sutton's mission to the dreaded planet Saturn from which no one has ever returned. Missing Men of Saturn is a part of the Winston Science Fiction set, a series of juvenile novels which have become famous for their influence on young science fiction readers and their exceptional cover illustrations by award-winning artists.
Rocket to Luna is a juvenile science fiction novel by prolific author and screenwriter Evan Hunter published in 1953 by The John C. Winston Company with cover illustration by Alex Schomburg. The story follows the adventures of the main character Ted Baker after he mistakenly replaces a member of the first lunar expedition at the last moment before the rocket leaves for the Moon. Rocket to Luna is a part of the Winston Science Fiction set, a series of juvenile novels which have become famous for their influence on young science fiction readers and their exceptional cover illustrations by award-winning artists.
Space Tug is a young adult science fiction novel by author Murray Leinster. It was published in 1953 by Shasta Publishers in an edition of 5,000 copies. It is the second novel in the author's Joe Kenmore series. Groff Conklin gave it a mixed review in Galaxy, noting that it held "plenty of excitement though not much maturity." Boucher and McComas preferred it to the series's initial volume, but still found it "quite a notch below ... Leinster's adult work." P. Schuyler Miller reported the novel was marked by "the fastest kind of action" and "the feeling of technical authenticity."
The Human Angle is the second collection of science fiction stories by American writer William Tenn, published simultaneously in hardback and paperback by Ballantine Books in 1956. Ballantine reprinted the collection in 1964 and 1968.
The Star Conquerors is a science fiction novel by American writer Ben Bova. It was published in 1959 by the John C. Winston Company.
Five Against Venus, written by Philip Latham, is a science-fiction novel first published in the United States in 1952 by the John C. Winston Company. Philip Latham was the nom de plume of Robert S. Richardson, a professional astronomer who also provided technical assistance on movies such as Destination Moon and wrote scripts for the Captain Video television series.
Son of the Stars is a science fiction novel by American writer by Raymond F. Jones, first published in the United States in 1952 by The John C. Winston Company.
The Secret of the Martian Moons is a science-fiction novel by Donald A. Wollheim. It was first published in 1955 by the John C. Winston Company. Playing world-class hide-and-seek with the Martians, Nelson Parr believes that he has found them... until the real Martians show up. This is the second novel that Wollheim wrote for Winston, the other two being The Secret of Saturn's Rings (1954) and The Secret of the Ninth Planet (1959).
The Secret of the Ninth Planet is a science-fiction novel written by Donald A. Wollheim and first published in the United States in 1959 by the John C. Winston Co. Wollheim takes his heroes on a grand tour of the Solar System as that team struggles to prevent an alien force from blowing up the Sun. This is the last of three juvenile novels that Wollheim wrote for Winston, the other two being The Secret of Saturn's Rings and The Secret of the Martian Moons.
Star Gate is a science fantasy novel by American writer Andre Norton, published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1958. The story is science fiction with a blend of sword and sorcery, mingling technologically advanced humans from Earth with the human natives of the far-off world of Gorth and a native culture that has achieved the development level of medieval Europe.
Starship Through Space is a science-fiction novel written by G. Harry Stine under the pseudonym Lee Correy. It was published in 1954 by Henry Holt and Company. The book tells the story of the building of the first starship and of its flight to Alpha Centauri.
Storm Over Warlock is a science fiction novel written by Andre Norton and published in 1960 by the World Publishing Company. The story combines science fiction with fantasy, technology with witchcraft, in a way typical of Norton's works. The sequels are Ordeal in Otherwhere and Forerunner Foray.
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