THE SECRET HISTORY OF POP CESSPOOL, VOL. 7

Deep in the caverns of my dorkitude resides Tom Swift Jr. I had no love for the Hardy Boys or any other serialized adventurers. If it didn't have spacecraft, airlocks, deadly rays or giant gadgets, it didn't exist to me. (I did occasionally make room for bowdlerized biographies of professional athletes.) I clung desperately to the Swift shelf at the local public library: a long stretch of volumes, generally with pale orange or yellowish spines, published between the mid-1950s and early 1970s, and bearing the name of author Victor Appleton II. Most of these titles ring a bell:

Tom Swift and His Flying Lab
Tom Swift and His Jetmarine
Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship
Tom Swift and His Giant Robot
Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster
Tom Swift and His Outpost In Space
Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter
Tom Swift In The Caves Of Nuclear Fire
Tom Swift On The Phantom Satellite
Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane
Tom Swift and His Deep-Sea Hydrodome
Tom Swift In The Race To the Moon
Tom Swift and His Space Solartron
Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope
Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector
Tom Swift and The Cosmic Astronauts
Tom Swift and The Visitor From Planet X
Tom Swift and The Electronic Hydrolung
Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar
Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober
Tom Swift and The Asteroid Pirates
Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway
Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker
Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector
Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere
Tom Swift and His Sonic Boom Trap
Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron
Tom Swift and The Mystery Comet
Tom Swift and The Captive Planetoid
Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter
Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule

And I was a TOTAL SNOB about it: Yeah, Star Wars is awesome, but I like to read books that are based on actual science. I bet I was particularly insufferable to the girls who got good grades in science class. They didn't see what all the Swiftian hype was about. To me, they were dense, ignorant. They didn't *love* science. It was just another class to them. They were girls. *I* was going to be a nuclear physicist.

The boys weren't so supportive, either. I vaguely remember wanting to re-enact one of the space-oriented books, on my basement couch, with some literate pals. I'd even drawn up an instrument panel on a piece of paper. I was going to be the pilot. They would be the staff. They politely refused. It was a moment of clarity.

(read the complete and ongoing Secret History here)

Comments

[Matt]

I checked out the wikipedia entry after reading this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Appleton - Victor Appleton was a 'house pseudonym'!

[Pop Cesspool]

So was Victor Appleton II.

Dude, you don't even know how hooked I was on this thing.