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Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

by George Pendle

Rocketry, the occult, and John Parsons

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Rocketry, the occult, and John Parsons

George Pendle’s biography traces John Whiteside Parsons across two worlds: the experimental rocketry that helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his devotion to occult practice. Parsons’s career links early spaceflight ambitions with the institutions and anxieties of prewar and Cold War America. The account also places him among figures including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, making his life a point of contact between science, popular culture, and esoteric belief. The book’s central tension lies in how Parsons pursued both technological possibility and magic, without reducing one side of his life to a footnote to the other.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in the history of rocketry and the early Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
  • Readers drawn to biographies that connect science and technology with occult interests.
  • Readers curious about the cultural figures surrounding John Parsons, including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein.

Themes

Early rocketry and spaceflightOccult beliefScience and technologyPrewar and Cold War America

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Book overview

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

ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSIONscreamed 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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