I did some investigating on the Internet and found this page, which will tell you all you need to know about Rip Foster. Here's the short version: This is the only Rip Foster book, and the character was created for this novel, not adapted from some other medium. I don't know why the series never continued. In 1958 this book was reprinted as RIP FOSTER: ASSIGNMENT IN SPACE, and I believe there was another reprint during the Sixties.
Most importantly, though, I discovered that the author, "Blake Savage", was really Hal Goodwin, who wrote the Rick Brant series as John Blaine from the late Forties to the mid-Sixties. When I was a kid, I loved the Rick Brant books, and when I reread some of them a few years ago, they held up just fine and were still pretty darned good books. So I may have to go ahead and read this one pretty soon.
I've never read a Rick Brant novel but I am a big Lester Dent fan, and the following is from Will Murray's superb article, "The Secret Kenneth Robesons," which is the definitive Dent bio thus far. It appeared some 25 or more years ago in Murray's DUENDE fanzine.
ReplyDeleteBy 1948, Dent's pulp markets, including Doc Savage, were starting to dry up. Murray writes, "Dent reverted to juvenile writing with a series of boy's books he wrote for Grosset & Dunlap under the name John Blaine between 1947 to 1958. The Rick Brant series has never before been linked with Dent but he is clearly the author. He seems to have written all of the novels from #1 to #15, whereupon a Hal Goodwin reportedly took over the series."
That looks like a really fun book. Love the cover art.
ReplyDeleteI never got too far with my copy of ASSIGNMENT IN SPACE; I recall it as being abysmally-written. Though that edition did have a pretty damned odd wraparound cover painting that was interesting to look at, as you know, I assume, from the site.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I can't enjoy Sedaris at all, so there you go.
I remeber reading (and re-reading) "Assignment in Space" when I was about 11 years old. Images and bits of dialogue from that book are still stuck in my head, over 45 years later.
ReplyDeleteWill Murray has stated more than once in recent years that the Lester Dent attribution of the Rick Brant stories was dead wrong.
ReplyDeleteSome Brant stories, especially "The Whispering Box Mystery" do read a lot like Dent. I sure was ready to be believe it back in the day.
Peter Harkins partnered with Hal Goodwin for the first three books, then Goodwin continued alone.
There is an excellent and free audio version of this Rip Foster novel at www.uvulaaudio.com. Awesome site if you have not seen it with some very good pulp novels in audio form.
ReplyDeleteI think it was one of the first non-picture books I read and loved it.
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