From Publishers Weekly
Pendle vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time. Throughout the 1930s, John Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952) was a pioneer of rocket science, a fixture at Caltech with an uncanny ability to understand and control the dynamics of explosions, though he'd never completed an undergraduate degree. At the same time, Parsons was a key figure in the Los Angeles occult scene, presiding over a world of incantations, black magic and orgiastic excess. Science journalist Pendle (Times of London, Financial Times) follows Parsons on his journey through both science and the occult as he explored the connections between the two at a time when science fiction crashed into science fact (and when the practitioners of one often dabbled in the other. The book tells the story of the research that formed the basis for both missile defense and space flight, but Parsons himself was a tragic figure, left behind by both the science he helped to found and the women he loved. Marshaling a cast of characters ranging from Robert Millikan to L. Ron Hubbard, Pendle offers a fascinating glimpse into a world long past, a story that would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren't so astonishingly true. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In a riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles, science writer Pendle presents the first in-depth portrait of John Whiteside Parsons, a pioneer in rocket propulsion and an eccentric right out of an Ed Woods movie. Pendle shrewdly places handsome and charismatic Parsons--a man of dramatic contradictions and an insouciance that led to his horrific death at age 37 in 1952--on the cusp between the era in which rockets were dismissed as pulp science fiction fantasy (of which Parsons eagerly partook) and the milieu in which rockets and space travel became realities. A self-taught chemist with an affinity for explosives, Parsons teamed up with Frank Malina and the rest of the so-called Suicide Squad in the dangerous quest for dependable rocket technology. Parsons became cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an aerospace company, but he was also a member of the licentious Church of Thelema, a ludicrous invention of the English mystic Aleister Crowley. Equally cogent in interpreting the scientific and personal facets of Parsons' alluringly scandalous and confounding life, Pendle greatly enlivens the story of rocketry. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Book News, Inc.
He read the classics but he adored pulp science fiction. He had no academic credentials but he was a co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Company. He was a man of science, and rocket science at that, but he was consumed by black magic. He was born to temporary wealth and had the honor of being swindled out of tens of thousands by L. Ron Hubbard, but in later life had to make ends meet pumping gas. He was an expert in explosives but blew himself up. Journalist Pendel peels the layers of Parsons and his obsessions, allowing the reader to determine whether Parson's many demons included his own genius or if he was merely a very sick man who had a talent for public and private detonation.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Book Description
Brilliant Rocket Scientist Killed in Explosion screamed the front-page headline of the Los Angeles Times on June 18, 1952. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer whose work had helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plotline into a reality, was at first mourned as a tragically young victim of mishandled chemicals. But as reporters dug deeper a shocking story emerged-Parsons had been performing occult rites and summoning spirits as a follower of Aleister Crowley-and he was promptly written off as an embarrassment to science.

George Pendle tells Parsons's extraordinary life story for the first time. Fueled from childhood by dreams of space flight, Parsons was a crucial innovator during rocketry's birth. But his visionary imagination also led him into the occult community thriving in 1930s Los Angeles, and when fantasy's pull became stronger than reality, he lost both his work and his wife. Parsons was just emerging from his personal underworld when he died at age thirty-seven. In Strange Angel, Pendle recovers a fascinating life and explores the unruly consequences of genius.


About the Author
George Pendle writes about science for the Times (London) and the Financial Times, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who had helped transform space flight from a derided sci-fi fantasy into a reality, was at first mourned as a 37-year-old genius lost to a tragic accident. But as reporters dug deeper, a shocking story emerged: Parsons had been a practitioner of black magic." "George Pendle re-creates the world of John Whiteside Parsons in this portrait of pre-war superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. A lonely misfit born into a wealthy family, Parsons spent his childhood dreaming of space flight. He launched rockets in his backyard, his imagination fueled by "pulps" like Amazing Stories. By his early twenties, he was a leader of Caltech's "Suicide Squad" - a motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the institution that took America to the moon and beyond." "Yet the wild imagination that fueled his science was also leading Parsons into the occult - for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic? As his dabblings became devotion, fantasy's pull became stronger than reality's, and he lost both his work and his wife (not to mention his girlfriend, who ran off with L. Ron Hubbard)." With a cast of characters that includes Aleister Crowley, Howard Hughes, Robert Heinlein, Theodore von Karman, and Albert Einstein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Pendle vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time. Throughout the 1930s, John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952) was a pioneer of rocket science, a fixture at Caltech with an uncanny ability to understand and control the dynamics of explosions, though he'd never completed an undergraduate degree. At the same time, Parsons was a key figure in the Los Angeles occult scene, presiding over a world of incantations, black magic and orgiastic excess. Science journalist Pendle (Times of London, Financial Times) follows Parsons on his journey through both science and the occult as he explored the connections between the two at a time when science fiction crashed into science fact (and when the practitioners of one often dabbled in the other. The book tells the story of the research that formed the basis for both missile defense and space flight, but Parsons himself was a tragic figure, left behind by both the science he helped to found and the women he loved. Marshaling a cast of characters ranging from Robert Millikan to L. Ron Hubbard, Pendle offers a fascinating glimpse into a world long past, a story that would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren't so astonishingly true. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Agent, Jill Grinberg. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal