Strange Angel, The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons, by George Pendle, 2005, hardback and paperback editions.

There are nexus points in history, crossroads where unlikely paths come together and then diverge again. At these junctions one can find exotic travelers, people who are not truly famous (or, more likely, who are famous for a time and then forgotten) but who make their marks on the map.

Jack Parsons was a quintessential example of this phenomenon in the middle of the 20^th Century. One of the fathers of solid rocket fuel, his experiments with controlled explosions were vital in the development of jet aircraft that helped win World War II. He was a founding member of the core of scientists working at CalTech in the late 30s whose work took man to the moon 30 years later.

But Jack Parsons had another life too. He was at the center of a group of California magicians who practiced the sex magick taught by Aleister Crowley and he performed epic rituals of ceremonial summoning to bring otherworldly beings into this world. He was also at the fringes of the group of writers, filmmakers, and futurists who helped establish science fiction as a literary genre.  

At the peak of his financial and occult success, he owned a mansion on Orange Street -- a neighborhood of decaying palaces -- where he rented or gave rooms to a whole colony of writers and occultists including L. Ron Hubbard, who seems to have repaid Parsons' hospitality by running off with his girlfriend and a sizable chunk of his spare change. 

Strange Angel is the Parsons' story. It’s the second book written about him, but far superior to Sex and Rockets, by John Carter, which was published in 2000. Pendle's writing is crisp and vivid and makes the diverse topics that filled Parsons' world interesting and understandable, no easy task with rocket science or the esoteric maze of Crowleyite occultism.

I think anyone who has ever been part of a group of science fiction fans will recognize Parsons -- a true seeker after knowledge who perhaps was not equipped with the best judgment skills. Pendle makes the case that Parsons was a modern alchemist, not seeing the distinction between the esoteric knowledge of explosive chemicals and the potential of trans-dimensional entities that hold the keys to hidden knowledge, a true believer that the world is more than it seems if only we push hard enough against the husk of reality.

 A delightful book in every respect about a most fascinating traveler on the roads of 20^th Century culture.