Books with author Philip Latham

When Bruce Robinson’s father decided to take the job offered him on the Moon, his space-loving son saw an end to his drab life as an earthbound high-school student. What neither Bruce nor the other three members of the Robinson family could foresee was that within two weeks they’d be the world’s leading experts on life upon the planet Venus.To more experienced interplanetary travelers than the Robinsons, the actions of the crew of the gleaming Moon-bound space ship, Aurora, would have seemed suspicious. But the crew’s interest in the mysterious government cargo, stowed in the ship’s hold, did not cause the unsuspecting family any serious concern. Not until the captain and his mate abandoned the crippled Aurora, as she lurched through the Venusian mists to a certain crash landing, did the Robinsons awake to their peril.Philip Latham has written a vivid and detailed novel charged with mystery and suspense about an average American family stranded on the weird and unexplored planet of Venus. Unsure of the planet’s oxygen supply, tortured by ultra-sonic waves emitted by man-size bat-like creatures, faced by carnivorous plants, the Robinsons are the focal point of a novel unsurpassed in the science fiction field for its frightening and powerful reality.In an electrifying climax, solutions to strange and forbidding paradoxes top a tale of courage and unassuming bravery.Philip Latham was a pen name used by Dr. Robert S. Richardson (1902 – 1981). He could support the suppositions that are the basis of his science fiction novels with accepted scientific theories. For he was an author who was in the business of “watching the stars.” An astronomer at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories beginning in 1931, he started writing for magazines in the early forties. His work won such wide respect that he also had a college textbook on astronomy to his credit. Movie producers as well as publishers found Dr. Richardson’s experience too good to pass up. He gave technical assistance to a number of studios on pictures such as Destination Moon, and he wrote an article describing his work on the science fiction thriller When Worlds Collide.

"We Go Anywhere" was the legend scrawled on the battered hull of the ALBATROSS, one of the worst old tubs in space. To Dale Sutton, the biggest man on campus at the Space Academy, it was a slap in the face to be ordered to such a crate. But his biggest shock came when orders set the ALBATROSS and its two companion ships on a course that let straight to the dreaded planet Saturn. No one had ever come back from Saturn, yet everyone knew the story of Captain Dearborn who had led the first and only expedition to the ringed planet a century earlier. His diary was the record of a steadily losing battle against the unknown as one by one, the little party had vanished.Now, a hundred years later, the superstitious crew of the ALBATROSS found it impossible to rid themselves of the feeling that the same catastrophe that had wiped out the previous expedition would strike again. They had hardly been settled a day in Dearborn's old underground quarters on Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, when their gnawing fears began to materialize. First, the loss of all their guns when the lights suddenly and inexplicably faded, then the disappearance of the first man! But greater and more deadly horrors were yet to come: panicky moments of groping though ghastly underground caves, the appearance of a face bearing the same twisted features of the illustrious Captain Dearborn, a collision that sends Titan up in a blaze of destruction, and the final landing on Saturn, a planet heaving with volcanos and covered with streams of molten lava.Philip Latham's portrayal of life on a planet about whose conditions few have ventured a guess is a tale guaranteed to make the reader as numb with terror as the men the author writes about. Philip Latham was a pen name used by Dr. Robert S. Richardson (1902 – 1981). He could support the suppositions that are the basis of his science fiction novels with accepted scientific theories. For he was an author who was in the business of “watching the stars.” An astronomer at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories beginning in 1931, he started writing for magazines in the early forties. His work won such wide respect that he also had a college textbook on astronomy to his credit. Movie producers as well as publishers found Dr. Richardson’s experience too good to pass up. He gave technical assistance to a number of studios on pictures such as Destination Moon, and he wrote an article describing his work on the science fiction thriller When Worlds Collide.

From Wilson Science Fiction blog: When Bruce Robinson's father decided to take the job offered him on the Moon, his space-loving son saw an end to his drab life as an earthbound high-school student. What neither Bruce nor the other three members of the Robinson family could foresee was that within two weeks they'd be the world's leading experts on life upon the planet Venus. To more experienced interplanetary travelers than the Robinsons, the actions of the crew of the gleaming Moon-bound space ship, AURORA, would have seemed suspicious. But the crew's interest in the mysterious government cargo, stowed in the ship's hold, did not cause the unsuspecting family any serious concern. Not until the captain and his mate abandoned the crippled AURORA, as she lurched through the Venusian mists to a certain crash landing, did the Robinsons awake to their peril. Philip Latham has written a vivid and detailed novel charged with mystery and suspense about an average American family stranded on the weird and unexplored planet of Venus. Unsure of the planet's oxygen supply, tortured by ultra-sonic waves emitted by man-size batlike creatures, faced by carnivorous plants, the Robinsons are the focal point of a novel unsurpassed in the science fiction field for its frightening and powerful reality. In an electrifying climax, solutions to strange and forbidding paradoxes top a tale of courage and unassuming bravery.