Vintage children's outer space books

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Wow, that triggered a few long-neglected neurons! I had several of those books as a kid, probably last looked at them in the mid 1980s, what an interesting mental sensation this re-discovery creates. Thanks!

Thanks for that. As a child I loved all things space related. My favorite book was, “The wonderful flight to the mushroom planet.

It was written in the 1950’s but it talked about two boys creating a spaceship to go to a small planet between the moon and the earth. They were helped by a kindly old scientist Tyco Bass who lives in Pacific Grove, CA.

I sent copies of this book to a relative who is a teacher and read the first chapter to them every year. The story still enchants the kids of 2013 as it did me in 1963.

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I have the complete BOOL collection, both YES and NO.

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My favorite was The Best New Thing by Issac Asimov. We had a dogeared copy that had been discarded from the St. Louis Public Library.

But do you have TRUE and FALSE? No collection is complete without those.

Unbelievable. I’ve never met another person who read this book as a child, aside from a child with whom I shared my copy. Every few years I pull it out and read it, along with Stowaway To The Mushroom Planet, again. Mr. Bass and his wonderful polarizing stroboscopic filter always make me feel like a kid again.

I’ve now created 90 children who will all have been kids when they first heard this book.

My goal is to encourage their sense of what is possible via science fiction. One boy two years ago said it was his favorite book ever. I Think there are several reasons that it clicked for me. One was that the protagonists were kids just like me and if they could do it, maybe I could too! And this was during the run up to the moon shot. Everyone wanted to be an astronaut, these kids went and did it and didn’t wait for NASA.

As a child I was very fond of ‘Spaceship Under the Apple Tree.’

Now I want to recreate that vehicle in Kerbal Space Program.

All BOOL expressions require 1 and 0. If those are not present your collection is incomplete and therefore your comparison is false or 0.

Totally read that as "Peter Moon and the Trip"

What got me fascinated in space as a kid was Carey Rockwell’s Tom Corbett Space Cadet series, still gracing my bookshelves.

And for Science and Technology were the Tom Swift Jr. books by Victor Appleton II. I had a few of Tom Swift Sr. books from my dad, but identified more with the sons.

Then came Starman Jones (to my attention) and the rest of the Heinlein Juvies and I was hooked for life, planning at the time to definitely go to the Space Academy when I grew up. And my parents even let me join the SFBC in 1956 broadening my horizons. I’ve been a continuous member ever since.

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