Strange Angel (Hardcover)

Maverick rocket scientist, science-fiction devotee and occult worshipper John Parsons - 'the James Dean of Caltech' - was responsible for creating solid rocket fuel, the innovation that finally freed space travel from the pages of genre fiction and made it a reality. At the age of 22 he was at the top of his field, and by 38 he was dead, killed by explosives (rumours persist that Howard Hughes had him assassinated.) Because the bizarre details of his life and death have made him a source of acute embarrassment for his scientist successors he has to date been granted no more than a historical footnote. STRANGE ANGEL recreates for the first time Parsons' incredible coming-of-age in the scientific and religious hotbed of 1930s and 40s Los Angeles, while offering an unprecendented look at the birth of rocketry - then a taboo science populated by dreamers and eccentrics. The seismic shifts that would result transormed the idea of space travel from no more than 'a flight of fancy' as late as 1933 to its acceptance as a viable pursuit by the end of the Second World War.