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. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.