The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron, has been in print since the 1950s. It features the adventures of Chuck and David, two boys who travel to the alien planet Basidium in their homemade spaceship. This classic, primarily for children, is fun for adults, too, and you’ll get a surge of pleasure as you return to a youthful perspective of space travel, published in 1958, well before humans got to the moon. It was my introduction to sci fi and turned me into a fan.
The book is set in Pacific Grove, California, and on Basidium, a tiny habitable moon of Earth, invisible from the planet in its orbit 50,000 miles away. When two boys find an ad in a newspaper asking for two young boys to build a spaceship, they quickly construct one out of old tin and scrap wood and bring it to the advertiser. This man is the mysterious Mr. Tyco Bass, an inventor and scientist. Using his marvelous stroboscopic polarizing filter he shows the boys a previously undetected satellite of the Earth, which he calls Basidium-X. He refits their spaceship, giving them some special fuel to power it, and tells them to fly to the mushroom planet (after getting their parents’ permission).
Upon arrival, they find the planet of Basidium to be a small, verdant world covered in soft moss and tree-size mushrooms. Residents of the mushroom planet, small people with large heads and slightly green skin like the mysterious Mr. Bass, all are slowly dying of a strange sickness. The boys meet the king of the planet, the Great Ta, and end up solving the natives’ problem before returning to Earth.
Created pre-women’s or anyone else’s rights, the book proves fiction breaks down all mental barriers about science and adventure and writing. Thoughts about the need for oxygen or hurtling asteroids are nil, and any one can dream, as I did decades ago.
Tenacity is responsible for the successes in my life. Since fifth grade, I’ve been determined to be a writer, when I submitted a poem to the Saturday Evening Post (it was immediately rejected). Thousands of rejections along with some acceptances taught me the craft, and after decades, I decided to follow my passion, fiction writing. My recent novels are proof of my persistence.
My interest in writing led to my career in nonprofits focusing on public and community relations and marketing. I’ve worked for libraries, directed a small arts organization, and managed Denver’s beautification program. My civic involvement includes grass-roots organizations, political campaigns, writers’ and arts’ groups, and children’s literacy.
Simultaneously, I’ve been a free lance writer with publications in local, regional, and specialty publications for news and features. A secret love—live theater, and had I been seven inches taller and 30 pounds lighter, I might have been an actress. For years, I entered recipe contests and was once a finalist in the Pillsbury Cook Off.