Strange Angel (43 page)

On Halloween in 1968, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to commemorate the thirty-second anniversary of the first rocket experiment in the Arroyo. The Laboratory had grown almost exactly on the same spot, though a sprawling complex of car parks and ten-story buildings had long since replaced the corrugated-iron sheds. As part of the celebration, the JPL reconstructed the original rocket testing apparatus on the lawn. Next to the modern towers it looked primordial, like an amoebic monster that had dragged itself out of the baked riverbed of the Arroyo. By this point anti-Communist paranoia had abated. Frank Malina had been reissued a passport and had been allowed back into the country in order to give a speech to the assembled dignitaries and surviving rocketeers. He talked of the group's struggles, of the hostility that had first greeted them, and of the hours spent groping in ignorance trying to establish the basics of a new science. For many in the audience, it must have been difficult to imagine a time when rocketeers had to fight for recognition. “In conclusion, I would like to pay homage to Jack Parsons,” declared Malina at the speech's end, “who made key contributions to the development of storable propellants and of long duration solid propellant engines that play such an important role in American and European space technology. He has not received as yet his due for his pioneering work.” With the help of the International Astronomical Union, Malina was to make sure that Parsons' work would be commemorated in some small way.

 

The moon is a crowded place. Of the craters that mark its surface, hundreds have been labeled by the International Astronomical Union. They bear the names of biologists, astronauts, astronomers, and of course, rocket scientists from Russia, the United States, France, and Germany. Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer have craters named after them, as do Theodore von Kármán, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth. On the far side of the moon, the dark side of the moon, between fissures dedicated to Aleksej Krylov, the Soviet mathematician, Paul Ehrlich, the German Nobel laureate for medicine, and Sir John Cockcroft, a physics Nobel laureate, lies a crater forty kilometers wide, named simply “Parsons.” It is remarkably fitting that the moon, in many ways the guiding light of Jack Parsons' life, should be the one place where he would finally find acceptance among his peers.

A great many people have helped me in the preparation of this book. I would particularly like to thank the following, without whom it could not have come into being: Forrest Ackerman; Jon Ausbrooks; Jim Bantin at the University of Nevada, Reno; Ray Bradbury; Gene Bundy at Eastern New Mexico University; Russell Castonguay and Charles Miller at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Archives; Harold Chambers; Dr. Francis Clauser; Robert Clifton; Jesse Cohen; Walter Daugherty; Simon Elliot at UCLA; Shelley Erwin at the Caltech Institute Archives; Cliff Farrington at the University of Texas, Austin; George Frey; Greg Ganci; Ed Green; Alice Greenberg; Hugh Griffin; Christoph Hargreaves-Allen; Carson Hawk; Bill Heidrick; Tony Iannotti; Zach Isaacs; Bo Ketner; Professor Hans Liepmann; Charles Parsons; Delphine Haley; Andrew Haley Jr.; Lynn Maginnis; Marjorie Malina; Dr. Roger Malina; Bob Null at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society; Jeanne Ottinger; Lian Partlow at the Pasadena Museum of History; Bill Patterson; Pepe Rockefeller; Professor William Ryan and Dr. Jill Kraye at the Warburg Institute; Edmund V. Sawyer; Phyllis Seckler; Lloyd Shier; Margaret Sollito at John Muir High School; Tom Sprague; Homer J. Stewart; Dace Taube at the University of Southern California; Karen Thomas at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Guy Walters; Thomas Whitehead at Temple University; Jack Williamson; Lisa Willingham at Texas A&M University; Frank Winter at the National Air and Space Museum; Jan Wunderman; Dr. Benjamin Zibit; Marjorie Zisch.

Special thanks are due to my agent, Jill Grinberg, for her tireless encouragement; my editor at Harcourt, Andrea Schulz, for her much-needed guidance; Dan Fox, who first pointed me in the direction of Parsons; the late Dr. John Bluth, who acted as a guide and proofreader and who was the preeminent authority on the GALCIT Rocket Research Group; the OTO and Thelema Media LLC for allowing me to quote freely from the writings of both Aleister Crowley and John Whiteside Parsons; Scott Hobbs, who selflessly allowed me access to his Marjorie Cameron archive; Martin Starr, who was generous with both his time and scholarly knowledge; Hymenaeus Beta for his constant advice and support; and the late Helen Parsons Smith for sharing her company. Susan Pile was not only a friend and guide, but her painstaking work (in collaboration with Brad Branson) in the creation of her documentary on Parsons and her generosity in sharing it with me, was of untold value.

My greatest thanks are, however, reserved for Charlotte.

 

Because of Jack Parson's significant writing disability, all quotations taken from his papers have had their spelling and punctuation corrected.

 

ADASTRA Adastra LLC, private collection
CALTECH California Institute of Technology archives, Pasadena
DE CAMP De Camp Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory archives, Pasadena
MALINA Marjorie Malina, private collection
OTO Ordo Templi Orientis archives, New York
STARR Martin Starr, private collection
THELEMA Thelema Media LLC, private collection
YORKE Gerald Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, London

 

PROLOGUE

“look at the devastation that surrounds them.” Ganci, author interview, 4 August 2003; Greg Ganci and Martin Foshaug, interview by Brad Branson and Susan Pile, 2 September 1995. JPL.

“Let me know the misery.”
Pasadena Star-News,
18 June 1952.

“charges of strange cultism.”
Los Angeles Mirror,
19 June 1952.

“John W. Parsons, handsome 37-year-old.”
The Pasadena Independent,
19 June 1952.

“
SLAIN SCIENTIST PRIEST.
“
The Mirror,
20 June 1952;
Los Angeles Examiner,
20 June 1952.

“He worked carefully.”
Los Angeles Times,
21 June 1952.

“summoned a fire demon.” Forrest J. Ackerman, author interview, 22 October 2002.

“liked to wander.”
Los Angeles Times,
19 June 1952.

“coined as a word yet.”
The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition,
1989, states that the word
rocketry
was first used by G. E. Pendray in the
Bulletin of the American Interplanetary Society
(November 1930).

“pass beyond the realms of fancy.” Forest Ray Moulton,
Astronomy
(New York: MacMillan, 1933) 296.

“fomenting ideas about spaceflight.” Frank H. Winter,
Prelude to the Space Age
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983) 15. “drove men to the moon.” Ibid., 113.

“rather less than 10,000 years ago.” Maynard Keynes, “Newton the Man,” in
Royal Society, Newton Tercentenary Celebrations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947) 27–34.

“genius in the magical field.” Parsons, letter to Karl Germer, c. 1949, OTO.

 

1: PARADISE

For a detailed study of Californian life from 1850 to 1950, see Kevin Starr's multivolume
Americans and the California Dream
series.

“the hardest country in the world.” Tamar Frankiel,
California's Spiritual Frontiers
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 8.

Information on the Parsons family, Charles Parsons, author interview, 23 January 2004.

“bandits and desperadoes.” Kevin Starr,
Inventing the Dream
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) 13.

“the city of Demons.” Rev. James Woods, “Los Angeles in 1854–55: The Diary of Rev. James Woods,”
Southern California Quarterly
(June 1941), 65–66. “the serpent also.” Frankiel,
California's Spiritual Frontiers,
59.

“fake healers, Chinese doctors.” Steward Edward White, “The Rules of the Game,” in
Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology,
ed. David L. Ulin (New York: Library of America, 2002) 29.

“hatred of authority.” John Whiteside Parsons,
Analysis by a Master of the Temple of the Critical Modes in the Experiences of His Material Vehicle
(unpublished, c. 1948), YORKE.

“growing urban center of Los Angeles.” Ann Scheid,
Pasadena: Crown of the Valley
(Northridge, Calif.: Windsor Publications, 1986) 29.

“inherent love of flowers.” Kevin Starr,
Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) 100. “the most beautiful residence street in the world.”
Los Angeles Times,
20 February 1916.

“Valley Hunt Club.”
Pasadena Star-News,
12 March 1927.

“Jack sitting on her ample knee.” Marjorie Cameron, interview by Scott Hobbs and Carol Caldwell, c. 1995, THELEMA.

 

2: MOON CHILD

“literature and scholarship.” Parsons,
Analysis.

“wanted to go to the moon.” Paul Mathison interview by Brad Branson, n.d., ADASTRA.

“that most enticing ingredient—plausibility.” Many of Verne's predictions succinctly anticipated the reality of space flight. He named Florida as an ideal launch site, suggested the idea of weightlessness in space, the use of rockets to alter orbit, and an eventual splashdown at sea. Admittedly some of Verne's calculations were awry. It was estimated that the g-force exerted on Verne's gentlemen explorers during blast-off from their cannon would squash them flat within their spacecraft.

“that we are being taught.”
Amazing Stories
(April 1926).

“science had always been magic made real.” Jack Williamson,
Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction
(New York: Bluejay Books, 1984) 48.

“science fiction fatherhood.” Frank H. Winter,
Prelude to the Space Age
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983) 25. Description of the history of rocketry from the following: Andrew G. Haley,
Rocketry and Space Exploration
(Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1958);

Willy Ley,
Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space
(New York: Signet, 1969);

William S. Bainbridge,
The Spaceflight Revolution: A Sociological Study
(Florida: Robert E. Krieger, 1983); Frank H. Winter,
Rockets into Space
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Ron Miller,
The History of Rockets
(Danbury, Conn.: Franklin Watts, 1999).

“one of the more popular games.” Lloyd Shier, e-mail to author, 15 December 2002.

“Rabelais's unsqueamish stomach.” Aldous Huxley,
Los Angeles: A Rhapsody from Jesting Pilate
(New York: George H. Doran, 1926) 302.

“crowd of some 40,000.” Kevin Starr,
Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 166.

“mummy's boy.” Liljan Wunderman, author interview, 24 January 2003; 24 April 2003.

“Unfortunate experiences with other children.” Parsons,
Analysis.

“closest friendship of Jack Parsons' life.” Jeanne Forman, interview by Brad Branson, 15 July 1995, JPL.

“saw the help that he needed.” Helen Parsons Smith, author interview, 19–24 March 2003.

“scared himself witless.” While Parsons'
The Book of Babalon
(unpublished, c. 1946) dates this incident to his thirteenth year, in
Analysis by a Master of the Temple
he claims it took place at the age of sixteen.

“kind of adventurous person.” Jeanne Ottinger, author interview, 5 April 2004.

“all sorts of explosive stuff.” Marjorie Zisch, author interview, 10 December 2002.

“they got a donkey.” Helen Parsons Smith, author interview, 19–24 March 2003.

“glowing, piercing eyes.” Robert Rypinski, oral history interview by R. Cargill Hall, 11 February 1969, JPL.

“high altitude research.” Milton Lehman,
This High Man: The Life of Robert H. Goddard
(New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963) 31–33.

“rockets in an appropriate manner.” Ibid., 73–74.

“destructed a house of police.” Winter,
Prelude to the Space Age,
43.

“horsing around with the same stuff.” Jeanne Forman, interview by Brad Branson, 15 July 1995, JPL.

“single most glittering event.” Starr,
Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s,
118–19.

“catch himself a showgirl.” Helen Parsons Smith, author interview.

“plunged to their death.” Kevin Starr,
The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 165.

“too complete an identification.” Parsons,
Analysis.

“These young people have an immense energy.”
Los Angeles Times,
8 December 1929.

“the personality of the teacher.” Russell Richardson,
Education in 1933,
Pasadena Museum of History.

“the contact with reality.” Parsons,
Analysis.

“a warm gem-like flame.” Robert Rypinski, oral history interview.

“the iron must come out.” John Whiteside Parsons, letters to Helen Northrup, 31 July 1934–3 September 1934. STARR.

“grandmother to think about.” Parsons would eventually be admitted to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to take two night courses in chemistry, but he would not be a great success. His attendance was sporadic and he gained only a C after his first year, by which time his rocket studies at Caltech had come to the fore.

“what went on in a chemical reaction.” Rypinski, oral history interview.

“a ‘global' grasp.” Frank Malina, oral history interview by James H. Wilson, 8 June 1973, JPL.