I mentioned picking this up at the local booksale. Apparently 'Roy Rockwood' is a pseudonym, and I can well believe it. If I had written it, the only piece of paper I'd want to see that associated this book with my name would be the undeserved paycheck.

A funny scientist uncle invites the boys to see his spaceship and takes them to Saturn, where hijinx ensue. Kidnapped goats. Saturnian brontosaurs. And of course, they end up in the middle of a war between rival factions among the human inhabitants of Saturn (who are large and purple). There is little trouble communicating with the autochrons, as you will recall that "old legend we heard in school": namely that

Long before the dawn of civilization on our earth, there were other worlds with very intelligent people ... Some of them invented a strange chariot which took them through the sky to our planet. They became gods and did not mingle with the earth-dwellers. ... They spoke Latin, and gave that language to our world, so the story goes.

The best part of the book was the added illustration by the previous owner:

From Jul 22, 2011

Okay, maybe another amusing thing is the list in the back of the titles of other volumes in the series. Especially the porntastic titles of the 'girls' fiction': Joy and Gypsy Joe, Helen's Strange Boarder, Judy Jordan's Discovery, Polly at Pebbly Pit, Jane Withers and the Hidden Room, Smilin' Jack and the Daredevil Girl Pilot.

It's also odd that I next picked up Pynchon's Against the Day, which begins with something of a boys' adventure story, with airships in the skies around the Columbian Expo in Chicago. Though incorporating some of the same tropes, Pynchon's prose is a thousand times more invigorating than anything in this wretched book.