Strange Angel

The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

By: George Pendle

Narrated by: James Langton

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Now a CBS All Access series: “A riveting tale of rocketry, the occult, and boom-and-bust 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles” (Booklist).

The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of the city’s occult scene.

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 a world of incantations and orgiastic rituals - if he could make rocketry a reality, why not black magic?

George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Peopled with such formidable real-life figures as Howard Hughes, Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

The basis for a new miniseries created by Mark Heyman and produced by Ridley Scott, this biography “vividly tells the story of a mysterious and forgotten man who embodied the contradictions of his time . . . when science fiction crashed into science fact. . . . [It] would make a compelling work of fiction if it weren’t so astonishingly true” (Publishers Weekly).

©2005 by George Pendle. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

If Parsons had only lived to the age of 53.

He would have witnessed our first manned Lunar Landing. He died far too young, dang it.

One of the most captivating stories ever

Jack Parsons is one of the most interesting historical figures to grace this earth and also the moon. He's the Forrest Gump of the early 20th century. He was present at so much of the big historical moments. His story is a modern day Gilgamesh or Odyssey. His life story drew me in more than any other biography I have ever encountered. The narrator is great. He has a pleasant voice. I cannot recommend this enough. I went back and re-started it immediately after I finished because I know I missed some stuff.

Loved it!!!

An amazing book. So great to listen to my favorite book! I will definitely be relistening many many times!!!

Excellent biography of John Parsons

This was a very interesting history of the 1920-1940’s LA/Pasadena scene, rocketry in the U.S., and John (Jack) Parsons, as well as some of his contemporaries such as L. Ron Hubbard. I very much enjoyed learning about this period and the rather fascinating role that John Parson’s played.

The Original Suicide Squad

Such a great read. The history of Pasadena, the history of Rockets, and the life of Jack Parsons. I loved how so many great names of the 20th century cross paths and influence one another. How far we have come from early the 1900s till now...on to read some read some Crowley now...

An Amazing Tale of Man and his Magic

Jack Parson’s life was an incredible blending of passion, science, and magic. This is a well-written biography of a man much misunderstood. Read it.

Science, sex, and SoCal

Incredibly fascinating and engaging. the narrator's accent bothers the more pedantic and persnickety but is affable and engrossing. a portrait of a person who dared to reconcile scien and the supernatural, Parson's life is made both beautiful and bittersweet in Pendle's narrative. Beginning with the end of his life creates a throbbing fascination of the events and setting of 20s,30s,40's SoCal. I listened to this twice consecutively.

Biography of rocketry and the occult

This seemed to be equal parts biography, local Pasadena history lesson, and a glimpse of the occult in the 1930s, with rocketry as the underlying theme tying all together. I thoroughly enjoyed it since Im a rocket enthusiast, but I gave it 4 rather than 5 stars because I felt the story often diverged into too many unecessary details, such as sometimes feeling more like a biography of Allister Crowley towards the end, for instance. Anyone interested in rockets or the occult, and particularly both, will definitely enjoy this.

truth is stranger than fiction

what a ride. this is the dirty laundry of the space race. werner von braun almost looks saintly in comparison.

Genius and Madness

John Whiteside Parsons was better known as Jack Parsons, but “better known” is probably a relative term. If you’ve never heard of him before, neither had I, but George Pendle has given us his biography. He died in 1952 at the age of 37 in a mysterious accident caused by some explosives he was mixing in a garage workshop. There were many rumors, wondering if it was truly an accident, or possibly suicide, or maybe even a well-concealed murder and after his death, more details of his involvement with the occult and mysterious rituals sullied his reputation even further.
And yet his life was truly extraordinary in so many ways and his influence on the modern world was so great that his biography is certainly worth reading. He was born in 1914 and grew up in Pasadena, California, an only child in a very wealthy family. He was spoiled and chauffeured to school in a limousine, but his family lost most of its wealth in the depression and he was not even able to afford to finish college. He also had trouble completing all the course work, being easily distracted, but was clearly very smart. He developed a fascination with the idea of travel into space through reading Jules Verne and he became convinced that it could be done. And he began experimenting even in his youth, getting expelled from several schools for accidental explosions. His first real job was at an explosives manufacturer, but he used the time and experience to experiment with the different burn rates of various explosives and searched for alternatives to the slower burning types that are used in munitions and that would be useful in rockets. And this at a time when “rockets” meant the fireworks that the Chinese were famous for inventing and a fantasy of science fiction writers, not something true scientists would take any stock in.
He soon became well known for his expertise in explosives, even called on to help with crime investigations or to testify at trials. And he soon gathered a following of other dreamers and what we would now call “geeks” around him who continued to experiment and try new ideas for rocket designs and various fuels. He eventually became a one of three men invited to join the California Institute of Technology's rocket research group, which they later named the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” because rockets were still looked on by most as just toys. He later received a grant from a wealthy donor to fund more serious experiments. As news came of Germany’s experiments with rocketry surfaced, and then America’s war preparations, he formed a company and was able to convince the military that rockets could even assist aircraft in short takeoffs. They had demonstrated their effectiveness with several types of planes by 1939. Soon after that, his group launched the first airplane flight that was powered only by rockets and by 1944 were supplying the military with 20,000 per month. With the end of the war, the military began to lose interest and planes were becoming more powerful. Eventually General Tire and Rubber took a controlling interest in his company and later Parsons was convinced to sell his stock for a pittance, partly because it was feared that his religious interests would become a problem for the company.
During all of this, Parsons, like many other early scientists, had become very interested in magic and in the occult. He joined a religious group, the Thelemas, that promoted free love, alcohol and drugs, and midnight magic rituals. One of those who became involved in his group was L. Ron Hubbard. His relationship with Hubbard ends with Hubbard leaving the country with Parson’s “wife” Sara and most of his life savings. Hubbard later went on to mix some of the rituals, the ideas, and the “science” into a new “religion” which he called Scientology. After leaving his company, he did various other work in rocketry and missiles but was accused of being a subversive because of his involvement in occultic practices and was stripped of his security clearance. He eventually got it back and got a job with Hughes Aircraft and then was offered a job by the new nation of Israel which was trying to develop a rocket program. When he was working on some technical reports for Israel, he was accused of espionage and his security clearance was removed again. He never worked in rocketry again.
When he died, the police report stated that it was an accident. He was know to have sweaty hands and he was mixing some explosives in a coffee can and it was likely that it slipped from his hand. Some said that it was an execution by someone in the government or maybe from Hughes for possibly taking company secrets to give to Israel Others said, however, that he was depressed and that it was suicide, though Pendle thinks that is very unlikely since he and his wife were leaving that day for a vacation and he was rushing to finish up a batch of explosives for a client before they could leave. When you think of space and rockets, there are a lot of names that pop up but his is not one of them, at least not in popular culture. He was mostly forgotten. But his hand is behind so much of today’s aerospace industry. He believed in rocket and jeg propulsion when those ideas were considered wild fiction suitable for only those who didn’t understand science. He invented the solid fuel that is still used in many rockets and missiles today. He was self-taught, never having even graduated from college, much less having any advanced degree. And he kept at it even when no one else believed. And he had good company. Interestingly, among Wernher von Braun’s papers, it was discovered that he long had a subscription to the American magazine Astounding Science Fiction and even when the US and Germany went to war, he kept that subscription using a mail drop in neutral Sweden. Both of them got many of their ideas and inspiration from the stories and the drawings from that magazine.
Pendle describes Parsons with care and without judgment. He paints the portrait as he saw it, realistic, with flaws amidst beauty. His portrayal shows the oft seen fine line between genius and madness. He takes little effort to explain how it all fit together other than what seems obvious from what you can see.
The story is disturbing in many ways. You see a man who was not evil in the sense that we normally think. He was generous with others and seemed as comfortable with relative poverty as with wealth. He had a hard time saying no. He had a goal and he pursued it with vigor. His fascination with the occult is hard to fathom and raises many unanswerable questions. It is a story both interesting and sad. This isn’t a book for everyone. Almost anyone would be disturbed, to put it mildly, by his personal life. It is hard not to be reminded of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. But his work as a rocket scientist deserves to be known. Pendle has done a good job. Whether the book is for you is another issue.