A Rick Brant Reminiscence

by John Blaine (aka Hal Goodwin)

This article was written by Hal Goodwin himself and printed in The Mystery & Adventure Series Review in 1980. This is the article where Hal revealed the existence of an unpublished Rick Brant book called The Magic Talisman. Due to this article, fans begged Hal to publish the book. The book was finally published in 1990 shortly after Hal Goodwin's death

Letters from readers, some of whom still write now and then, ask questions. How did Rick Brant come to be? Where do the stories come from? Why have series like Rick, Ken Holt, et al ceased to be? Is there really a Spindrift Island? Committed series readers, and especially subscribers to Fred Woodworth's little magazine, may be interested in some answers.

The beginning was 1946, I, otherwise Harold L. Goodwin, aka Hal Goodwin, aka Blake Savage, aka Hal Gordon, etc. was freelancing in New York, churning out yarns for assorted magazines, mostly the pulps but others as well. The war was recently over and I was fresh out of the Marines, just getting settled. A close friend since age 12, Peter harkins, was also freelancing in New York, mostly in radio. As we were about to move to a lakeside cottage in Connecticut for the summer, my agent asked if I'd be interested in doing a boy's book series.

I'd been a series reader. Tom Swift, of course. The Rover Boys (Tom, Dick, and the fun-loving Sam), the great Civil War and French and Indian War series by Altsheler (which I classify as true literature), and others long forgotten. A visit ti the senior editor at Grosset and Dunlap painted a glowing picture of rewards to be reaped. I decided a series would be fun and profitable, and even more fun to collaborate with Pete Harkins, a fine write with highly creative imagination. Pete, his wife Virginia, and I moved to Cedar Lake in Chester, Connecticut, where we were frequently joined by my future wife, Libby.

First step was to pick a pen name. The collaboration was part of the reason. Another was that Grosset & Dunlap was about to make a commitment to the series, and if we decided not to carry it on, G & D could do so with other authorship without changing the pseudonym. I'd written a book about old Hawaii, "The Feather Cape", and the hero was Jonathon Blaine. We shortened it to John Blaine and got busy, outlining the first two books to be released simultaneously, which was G & D's practice.

When we got down to writing, the collaboration was smooth. Pete's fiction style and mine were both in the formative stages and very much alike, so we took turns drafting. Now and then we'd launch the rowboat and spend a couple of hours fishing, then go back to the typewriters again. The basic locale, Spindrift Island, and the principal characters and their relationships were set in those first two books. Of course the island doesn't exist. The only place it would be, given the geography as described, is among the New Jersey headlands at Raritan Bay, but that would be contrary to actuality. I'm not sure why we picked New Jersey. Both of us were New Englanders and we knew the Connecticut and Massachusetts shores best. If we had it to do over again, I'd probably hold out for Cape Ann.

Pete and I collaborated on the first three books, "The Rocket's Shadow", "The Lost City", and "Sea Gold". Then the Harkinses decided for family reasons to move to Virginia's old homestead in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It wasn't practical to collaborate at a distance, and reluctantly, we broke it up. Later, Pete did a couple for G & D in a multi-author series. Memory fails. Was it "Buff Adams"?* Anyway, from the end of book three I had to carry on alone, although our long friendship continues still.

Authors necessarily write out of their own backgrounds, and mine is very evident in the Rick Brant series. Let's sum it up for purposes of clarity. I was a Marine Corps Combat Correspondent, and saw a lot of geography as well as a lot of war. My assignments took me to such exotic places as India, Ceylon, New Caledonia, and the Southern Philippines plus a host of Pacific islands. I had three overseas tours all together, one with the mud Marines during which I took paratrooper training, one aboard ship (the old USS Saratoga, which I caught up with in Ceylon after chasing her by way of Australia and India) and one with Marine Air, mostly carrier duty, but one trip with land-based dive bombers in Zamboanga. All of this colored the early Ricks.

Once the series was well launched, my wife and I joined the Foreign Service and were assigned to Manila. The background shows in "Golden Skull" and "Pirates of Shan". We also got to Hong Kong ("Caves of Fear") and Japan, which we didn't use in the series.

Back in the U.S. I got loaned by the service to an emergency preparedness agency in the White House and began a stateside Federal career that covered eight years with nuclear test operations in Nevada and Eniwetok, three years as scientific advisor to the U.S. Information Agency, which took me to India again, Iran, Turkey, France, England, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia; six years with NASA, which took me to Switzerland, Nigeria, India, Egypt and Italy. Not all background was used, of course, but it all helped. Then another six years with the National Sea Grant Program, first in the National Science Foundation, then in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. My Federal career was as a manager of scientific and engineering research programs, which along with some intensive post-war study, added immeasurably to background-- and resulted in serious embarrassment over some technical goofs in the early books, especially the rocket flight in "Rocket's Shadow". We just took escape velocity and assumed in our vast ignorance that the rocket would continue to the moon at the same velocity. Oops!

Hobbies and interests played a part, too. I've been a scuba diver since 1950, and since then have used research subs and managed saturation diving programs among others. Got involved in field archery when my sons were Cub Scouts. And long ago I learned to fly a light plane, but didn't keep it up.

History has overtaken the series in a number of ways. The geography, when real places were used, was always as accurate as I could make it. I wandered the world with camera and notebook and always returned home with maps, language guides, histories, and handy volumes on the local culture. But the names of streets, cities, and even countries have been changed, and I'm told the Place de Cocotiers In Noumea ("Phantom Shark") is now surrounded by highrise buildings, and of course the "Bagnards" are all long dead. But, when written, the books could have been used as guides.

Time has also brought much of the then-long-range projections to reality. The moon bounce of the "Lost City" actually came off a decade later in a Navy experiment, but was quickly overtaken by Comsats. The tethered submersible of "100 Fathoms Under" was built in several versions, but gave way to free submersibles. The "Tractosaur" of "Stairway to Danger" was a projection of W. Gray Walter's first programmed mobile robot, "machina speculatrix", but is now very primitive compared to modern gadgets. The earth scanner of 'Golden Skull' was created some years later and is in use daily as a proton magnetometer. The "Electronic Mind Reader" hasn't happened yet, but I bet it will- unfortunately. The surgical laser of "Ruby Ray" is now a fact, although it was just a probability then. And so on.

Ideas for the books came in a number of ways. For Instance, Egypt and its history has always fascinated me, and I searched Cairo in vain for a good Egyptian cat, which led to the 'gimmick' for the book, and at the time I was intrigued by Project Ozma, the radio telescope search for e.t. life. (Extra-terrestrial, that is.) "Ruby Ray" resulted from material I had on lasers plus an Air France flight from Copenhagen to Orly, Paris, and a previous trip to Switzerland. "Pirates of Shan" resulted from a news story that piracy was still going on in the Sulu SeaL, as it is today. "Deadly Dutchman" was triggered by a trip through the canals of Amsterdam when Libby and I looked up at the cargo doors of an ancient warehouse and she said, "What a place for Rick to get into trouble." That, plus a visit to the miniature Holland of Madurodam. "Flying Stingaree" grew out of seeing stingarees at the surface from the deck of our own cruising houseboat- yes, the 'Spindrift'-in Chesapeake Bay. "Veiled Raiders" was launched by a trip to the NASA tracking station at Kano, Nigeria, where I sat under a neem tree during Ramadan and bargained with a Hausa trader.

In sum, there were times when a scene started the juices flowing. At other times a gimmick came to mind that could be either the reason for the boys' actions or an actual artifact that could play a part, e.g. the whispering box and Rick's rocket belt; or the heavy water in the "Caves of Fear" which grew out of finding an unusual concentration of heavy water in Lake Baikal; or the infrared camera of "Smugglers' Reef" and "Caves of Fear".

There was never a lack of plots, backgrounds, or gimmicks. From this viewpoint, the series could have gone on forever.

The story always came first. Background and gimmicks were essential to the plots, but in the end, a plot always depends on the need to resolve something. It may be solving a mystery, finding a "treasure" (which need not be an actual treasure) or overcoming a problem or a situation. There has to be conflict. In the Rick series, the conflict is the opposition, sometimes with a hazard to the boys or their objective mixed in. These are universal generalities, of course.

Except for the usual juvenile taboos (of the publishers, but also to a considerable extent of good taste), the series never compromised with integrity as I saw it. While perfection was always an impossible goal, the backgrounds were as authentic as my own knowledge, the words used were the words I thought most suitable without counting syllables, and I didn't hesitate to put in a quotation from Shakespeare or anyone else when appropriate.

On the whole, writing the series was enjoyable, a relaxation from the demanding technical stuff of my various careers. Only once did I lose enthusiasm temporarily and arranged through my agent to farm out the drafting of "Golden Skull" after plotting the book. It didn't work. The draft was so far afield from Rick style and values that it had to be done over from scratch. There are also a few places, e.g. in "Phantom Shark", where the story continuity suffered because I was overseas and got Barby too heavily involved, a no-no in a "boy's series", which I resented because the series had a substantial girl audience, too. Anyway, heavy-handed editing back on the mainland resulted in a rough spot. Adding Jan Miller to the series gave the girl readers a bright and shining female and added just the faintest hint of romance- and anyone who thinks boys of twelve and up don't fantasize about romance doesn't know boys.

The basic problem with the Rick Brant series, apart from my own faults and limitations, was the Grosset & Dunlap sales department, a problem shared by Sam Epstein with the Ken Holt series, Clair Bee with the sports series, and all other independent writers. Books for young people are not really written for young people- they're written for the adults who buy books for young people. The series were an exception, designed to be bought by the kids themselves, which meant they had to be available and visible to the kid market. Given the spate of books published each year, display space is at a premium in book stores, and the G & D salesmen pushed the Stratemeyer Syndicate series -Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift Jr., et al, and didn't pay much attention to Rick Brant or Ken Holt. Of course the syndicate could turn out many more books, at least two annually, because of the old Dumas/Stratemeyer technique of hiring impecunious young writers to do the drafting.

Sam and I tried to beat the system by cross-referencing our series. Ken Holt borrowed the "Megabuck network" from Rick and Rick turned to Ken and Sandy for help in "Flying Stingaree". If it helped, the improvement wasn't measurable to us.

Another problem was with the G & D art department. Low rates meant poor artists for the most part, and most of them couldn't read or didn't bother. To mention just a couple of goofs, the "Sea Gold" plot called for Rick and Scotty to be stuck in a pressure dome with water rising and Rick's trusty boy scout knife enabled him to unscrew the door. But the cover, in living color, shows Rick using the knife blade instead of the screwdriver blade, trying to unfasten bolt heads! And, in "Electronic Mind Reader", part of the plot hinges on identification of a pram, which is a rowboat with blunt ends. The artist gave us a sharp pointed ordinary rowboat. G & D's art director and I parted bad friends when I sent him a medical diagnosis of the boy on the cover of "Rick Brant's Science Projects" listing all the genetic disabilities he suffered plus evidence that he'd been a polio victim.

But let it be said, also, that Anne Hagen, my editor at G & D, now retired, saved my bacon more than once with her careful checking of facts. We fought sometimes, but working with her was a help to the series and to me.

By the time "Rocket Jumper" was published, sales of all series were dropping. Even the syndicate stuff wasn't doing so well, though it got a big boost from the TV Hardy Boys. Ken Holt ended, and Rick kept going for two books more, then folded. I think there were many reasons: kids aren't reading much any more; the low school literacy rates of today may be either cause or effect- perhaps both. Television creates an appetite for the superficial and synoptic. So-called adult series with plenty of violence and sex, both explicit, are like prose comic books and cost less in paperback than Ken or Rick. And, although it may seem somewhat old-fashioned a view, I think modern kids lose their innocence and sense of wonder too early in today's world, and I mean innocence in the broad sense, not sexual.

I regret the passing of Rick. What Ken, Rick, Tom Quest, and some of the series did was to stimulate both curiosity and imagination. They were the stuff of constructive fantasy, and I'm committed to the view that such fantasy in the young is the wellspring of adult creativity. I don't know how many kids Sam Epstein's Ken Holt turned into reporters or Sandy into photographers, but my reader mail from kids who've grown up and finished college, and who have taken time to write, includes several budding scientists and at least five budding authors. I'm proudest of letters, some dozens of them, from such readers who have reread the series and who tell me that time hasn't faded their pleasure.

The idea of pushing G&D into re-releasing Rick and Ken Holt is flattering, to say the least, but I think rather impractical. I can't speak for Sam and we haven't discussed it, but I'd have to do major revisions on most of the Ricks, to update the geography and the science and technology at least, and there are passages that I'd like to rewrite, too. (Hardest thing for an author is to let a completed manuscript go to the printer. We always know it could be better, but there's always a deadline, too, and not enough time for more revision.)

A final note: The last Rick was never published. The plot hung on a combination of stage magic and a hint of real magic, plus the revelation of a slight esp talent in one of the girls. The G & D readers and editor wanted complete rewrite because magic and esp weren't plausible- and this was just before "Carrie", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Shining"... name them all. So "The Magic Talisman" will never see print. Perhaps it's just as well. Books, like writers, serve their times, and then give way to what we euphemistically call 'progress'.

HLG

Bethesda, Maryland

September 1980

PS: If any old RB readers have questions about the series, I'll be glad to send the editor answers for publication. Can't reply personally to all letters, though.

Reprinted with permission from The Mystery & Adventure Series Review