A great present for you all today…
In 1970, when I was ten, my city (Bell Gardens, California) built a new state-of-the-art library — right across the street from my house. (It was then that I knew that I was the favorite of the gods. The vicissitudes of life have since led me to revise that reckless assumption, but then I no longer live across the street from a library.) Every time I walked through the building’s doors (five or six times a day, probably), I sent up a silent thanks to Richard M. Nixon, whose name was prominently displayed on the dedication plaque by the entrance, even though he really had nothing to do with the project. (He had other things on his mind in those days — boy, did he.) I practically lived in that library, and I knew every shelf of the large children’s section intimately; I could have drawn a quite accurate map of the layout from memory, with large arrows pointing to the location of my favorite books, many of which I checked out repeatedly and read over and over again. I retain fond memories of those stories, though nothing in the world would persuade me to reread most of them. This is because few things in life are more hazardous than returning to a beloved children’s book after the passage of many years. It’s doubly dangerous if the work in question is one that’s “just” a children’s book and not one of those — like Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan or The Wind in the Willows or the Little House books — that depth and brilliance and long endurance have accorded the status of literature. There are exceptions, though, children’s books that might be less ambitious than the aforementioned classics but which can still engage an adult reader in search of something more than mere nostalgia. Exceptions like The Mad Scientists’ Club. The Mad Scientist’s Club has seven members, all boys and all seemingly between thirteen and sixteen years old. Levelheaded Jeff Crocker is the club president (the group meets in his father’s barn) and the blond, bespectacled Henry Mulligan is vice-president and the club’s resident genius and “idea man.” Comic relief is provided by the Laurel and Hardyish pair of overweight Freddy Muldoon and his sidekick, the small and nimble Dinky Poore. The rest of the roster is filled out by Homer Snodgrass, Mortimer Dalrymple (noted for his unflappability, and with a name like that he’d have to be), and Charlie, who narrates the stories. (Charlie didn’t acquire a last name until the final tale in the series, The Big Chunk of Ice. It turned out to be Finkledinck, arguably one Brinley’s few missteps.) As in many children’s books, most of the stories follow a familiar pattern. In this case, the boys come up with an interesting “research project” and/or see an opportunity to shake their sleepy town up a bit, which they proceed to do with an ingenious application of creative science and practical engineering… which winds up getting them in a fix that they must extricate themselves from with even more creative science and practical engineering. Likewise, the boys themselves are “types,” which is common in children’s books of this vintage, which generally didn’t aim for psychological realism or emotional depth. The boys are fun-loving but not malicious; they enjoy bamboozling pompous Mayor Scragg and Billy Dahr, the slow-witted town constable, but their schemes frequently wind up benefiting the community, and the only thing that gets hurt is the pride of a few folks who need to have a little air let out them anyway. Usually the mad scientists’ projects begin as inventive and elaborate practical jokes, as when they use electromagnets and hidden microphones to transform an abandoned mansion into a genuine haunted house, all in order to scare the beejeebers out of Freddy’s obnoxious cousin Harmon and his gang (“The Voice in the Chimney”), but sometimes the club’s activities have a more serious purpose. The scientists’ resourcefulness saves a life in “Night Rescue,” where they locate a downed Air Force pilot, and in “Big Chief Rainmaker,” the boys use homemade rockets packed with silver iodide crystals to end a drought that’s plaguing the area’s farmers. Some stories manage to blend practical jokes with beneficial results, as in “The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake,” which begins as a prank and ends up helping the town. It was the first Mad Scientist’s Club story, and it’s one of the best. The trouble begins when Dinky Poore has to come up with an excuse for getting home late for supper. He spins an elaborate yarn about “running around the lake trying to get a close look at a huge, snakelike thing he’d seen in the water, and the first thing he knew he was too far from home to get back in time.” His folks don’t necessarily believe this fib, but his sisters are more credulous, and soon they’ve spread Dinky’s fiction all over town, and that’s when the fun really begins. Henry suggests that it would be relatively simple to build a sea monster, and so it proves. Working in a secluded area near the lake, the mad scientists erect a framework of light lumber “in the shape of a big land lizard” over Jeff Crocker’s canoe. They cover the framework with chicken wire, and when canvas is tightly stretched over that and decorated with paint and tin can lids, (and red-lensed flashlights are installed for the beast’s eyes) the result is all the boys could hope for: “We soon had a loathsome-looking creature guaranteed to scare the life out of anyone a hundred yards away from it.” With four of the boys hunkered down in their monster to paddle, the creature makes its debut on a Saturday at dusk, “when the lake cabins and beachfront were crowded with weekend visitors.” The club’s creation causes a sensation, and after a few more appearances, nobody in Mammoth falls can talk about anything else. There are newspaper stories and offers of rewards for photos, and the town’s hotel rooms and beachfront cabins fill up with reporters and sightseers from all over the state. The whole thing is a bonanza for the local economy, but there is one drawback: Pretty soon we realized that we had a tiger by the tail. Business was so good, and people in town were so happy, that we didn’t dare stop taking the monster out, even though it was wearing us down. Before long the mad scientists have something more serious to worry about — a pair of hunters who make camp on the beach, hoping to get a shot at the monster with an elephant gun. The ever-resourceful Henry has a quick solution to this dilemma: an outboard motor (a very quiet one) attached to the canoe and outfitted so that it can be controlled by radio. Also, since “Freddy could make a bellow like a bull moose on a rampage, because his voice was beginning to change,” the boys place a loudspeaker in the belly of their creature so it can give an occasional roar. (Radio and walkie-talkies are the tools most used by the Mad Scientist’s Club. Today it would be cell phones, and it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.) After the first appearance of the new souped-up (and bullet proof — the hunters take their shots, to no effect) sea monster, the town — and not just the town – goes wild: The next day every newspaper in the country must have carried the story. They quoted eyewitnesses who swore that the monster was mad about something, because it was swimming a lot faster and making a frightening noise. A scientist in New York speculated that it might be the mating season for the beast, and suggested the possibility that there might actually be two of them. Within three days there must have been a hundred and fifty reporters in Mammoth Falls from newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations. Newsreel camera crews were lined up along the beach, and several of them had large searchlights ready to sweep across the lake at dusk, when the monster usually appeared. Clearly, the situation is getting out of hand, and when their arch-enemy Harmon Muldoon (who was expelled from the club for giving away club secrets and for “conduct unbecoming a scientist”) starts hinting that he knows what’s really going on and is ready to spill the beans to the media, the boys decide to wrap things up in a decisive and spectacular fashion. Late at night, they strip their equipment off of the creature, mount it on a raft, and tow it out to a spot where it will be visible from the beachfront when the sun rises. Once the people on the shore have noticed the monster’s presence, Henry pushes a button, activating a “diabolical device” the boys have installed, causing their masterpiece to go up in flames. When the smoke had cleared away there was nothing left on the lake but a dirty smear of oil and a few pieces of black debris — and that was the last that anyone ever saw of the strange sea monster of Strawberry Lake. As this initial story demonstrates, Brinley was scrupulous about keeping the science realistic; there are no iron moles, anti-gravity boots, or time machines. Everything the boys do could actually be done with technology that was readily available at the time. Our heroes are creative and clever, but always within the bounds of believability, which is one thing that makes the stories so engaging; you can easily imagine them actually happening. The thing that makes the mad scientist tales work best, though, is Brinley’s skill as a storyteller. These relaxed, good-humored stories are consummately crafted, and the fun plays out with perfect ease, each always amusing (and often hilarious) incident flowing smoothly from the next. The lively plots neatly combine the surprising and the plausible, the dialogue is natural and occasionally witty, the interaction between the boys is unaffected and believable, and you finish each swiftly moving story feeling refreshed and invigorated, as if you had just taken a brisk swim in a clear, cool lake. The care that Brinley took is evident on every page, and the mad scientist stories can still be read with pleasure long after you’ve graduated from the children’s section. (I know that I’m far from being the only person to feel this way about these books — before Purple House Press brought them back into print in 2001, battered Scholastic paperback copies from the seventies would often sell online for over a hundred dollars.) The mad scientist stories are very much products of the optimistic era of the early sixties, and their strengths and weaknesses derive from that time. Diversity is nowhere to be seen; the characters are all white (which was likely a fairly accurate depiction of many small Midwestern towns in 1960) and our club members are all boys (though Brinley did induct two female characters into the organization in the posthumous final novel). Though they’re in their early to mid-teens, none of the mad scientists seem to have any interest in the opposite sex; none of them even drive. (They get around on bicycles.) Families are seemingly intact (parents barely appear in the books, in fact) and it’s taken for granted that life is benign and filled with nothing but exciting opportunities, making Brinley’s work very different from today’s “get used to the grim facts while you can, kid” breed of YA books. Truly, the stories of the Mad Scientists’ Club exist outside of ordinary space and time; they take place in the idyllic, unfettered world that is a child’s perfect dream (a dream with walkie-talkies and rockets!) Our seven heroes think for themselves and overcome all obstacles, and in the course of their adventures they go where they please and do what they want, free from adult interference. I haven’t done an exhaustive, line-by-line examination of every page, but I’m fairly sure that school never gets mentioned; the stories unfold in an endless summer of fabulous possibilities. Bertrand Brinley didn’t write down to his audience, but neither did he induce a sweat in himself or in his readers by trying to do any improving or elevating; his purpose was clearly to entertain and delight, and in that he succeeded so well that his stories of the Mad Scientists’ Club are still giving pleasure to readers old and new more than a half a century after they were written. He didn’t have any heavy-handed moral or social lessons to teach, other than imbuing in his young audience the conviction that if they’re willing to combine creative thinking and elbow grease, they can do anything they put their minds to, and in these books, the wide-open world is a wonderful place to explore, especially if you do it in the company of friends. If message there must be, that’s a pretty good one, however young — or old — you are.
Thomas Parker is a native Southern Californian and a lifelong science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fan. When not corrupting the next generation as a fourth grade teacher, he collects Roger Corman movies, Silver Age comic books, Ace doubles, and despairing looks from his wife. His last article for us was Harlan Ellison 1934-2018: Essential and Impossible.
Mammoth Falls
A strange sea monster appears on the lake...a fortune is unearthed from an old cannon ...a valuable dinosaur egg is stolen. Watch out as the Mad Scientists turn Mammoth Falls upside down! Take seven, lively, "normal" boys -- one an inventive genius -- give them a clubhouse for cooking up ideas, an electronics lab above the town hardware store, and a good supply of Army surplus equipment, and you, dear reader, have a boyhood dream come true and a situation that bears watching. In the hands of an author whose own work involved technological pioneering, the proceedings are well worth undivided attention, as the boys explore every conceivable possibility for high and happy adventure in the neighborhood of Mammoth Falls. To the unutterable confusion of the local dignitaries -- and the unalloyed delight of Bertrand Brinley's fans -- the young heroes not only outwit their insidious rival, Harmon Muldoon, but emerge as town heroes.
The stories were told in first person by character Charlie Finckledinck (who didn’t have a last name until the first novel came out) but clearly the club’s most prominent member was the bespeckled teenager Henry Mulligan.
Henry, the group’s resident science genius, was just as likely to come up with some outlandish prank as a legitimate experiment or invention.
Other MSC members included Jeff Crocker, the president (by virtue of the club meeting in his father’s barn), Homer Snodgrass and Mortimer Dalrymple (experts in electronics and radio).
The club membership was rounded out by Freddy Mulldoon and Dinky Poore, the group’s Mutt and Jeff pair.
A couple of points about the characters: Freddy Muldoon was originally called Fatso Brown, and his cousin, the notorious Harmon Muldoon, Skinny Brown, in The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake. My father changed the names in the version that was published in Boys' Life and subsequently in The Mad Scientists' Club. Charlie Finckledinck, the narrator, did not have a last name until The Big Kerplop! -The Mad Scientists Club
The adults of the mythical town of Mammoth Falls where the stories were set found themselves forever involved in some scheme or prank the club had thought up.
These, for example, took the forms of a fake monster in the local lake, an electronically-haunted house at the city limits and a mad balloonist in the town square.
When the boys weren’t giving Mayor Scragg, Police Chief Putney or Constable Billy Dahr problems, they often found themselves at odds with a rival gang formed by Harmon Mulldoon who had been a MSC member but had been thrown out for activity unbecoming of a scientist.
It always amazed me how the characters in the books were so clearly and finely drawn. Unfortunately Bertrand Brinley is no longer with us, but his son, Sheridan Brinley, explained how his father had come up with the characters.
Like many authors, Bertrand Brinley’s own personality found its ways into the people he created. “Henry is my father through and through,” said Sheridan. “A guy who thinks before he speaks, has an unusual perspective on things, has a vivid imagination, secretly feeds the dog at the table, is late to dinner because he is thinking about something, etc., etc.”
“Dinky Poore, I have always thought, was in part me, as I was small and skinny as a child and a bit of a whiner,” said Sheridan. “The Poore name is a family name in Westbury, Massachusetts, which is the source of a number of the names and places in the stories. For example, Billy Dahr is based on the constable in West Newbury in the ’30s. He was a bumbling sort of cop, as is Dahr.”
At least some of the events in the stories were inspired by real incidents that would have appeared in the news at the time. The accidental loss of a nuclear device off the coast of Spain in 1966 surely provided inspiration for the first novel, The Big Kerplop!, where an atomic bomb splashes into Mammoth Fall’s Strawberry Lake.
The Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO sightings, may have also been material for Brinley’s imagination to chew on. “The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls was, I think, a parody of the Air Force program spending taxpayers’ dollars to trace down UFO sightings,” muses Sheridan.
“What a great joke: create a flying mannequin that makes fools of the town elders and police and scrambles the planes from the nearby Air Force base. Some of the same stuff is in The Flying Sorcerer.“
Engineers and Scientists
I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about how the original Star Trek TV show in the 60’s influenced people to become scientists and engineers, and as a longtime Treker myself, I believe it is true.
However, I think there may quite a few people who made their career choices based on Brinley’s work. A gentleman named Mark Maxham runs a MSC tribute site and has collected some quotes from anonymous fans including this one:
I have had at least 5 copies of the Mad Scientist's Club over the years. I just gave away my only duplicate set. [...] They too were my favorites when I was younger. I am now a spacecraft flight engineer (worked with NASA controlling the Magellan Spacecraft to Venus) thanks in part to those books.
I suspect that this sentiment is widespread. There aren’t as many MSC fans around as Trekers, but those that exist seem to cherish their memories of the stories just as much as episodes of that seminal TV series.
I even suspect that my own choice of career as an Aerospace engineer hearkens back to Brinley’s tales of crazed boys tinkering around with electronics, rockets, and machinery. Sure there were many other influences. But only Brinley translated that love for gadgetry and messing around with machines that I so very love today.
Like all my books, I eventually lost my old tattered book. My best guess is that it lies at the bottom of some landfill in San Luis Obispo California.
By the way, do you know what I could use right now?
I could use a thin-crust cheese pizza with a goodly amount of salt on it. Maybe with a icy Coke. Not a beer. My doctor is telling me that my beer-drinking days are over. Beer is a “cold” food. I can only drink “warm” foods; like red wine and 53% alcohol. Sigh.
Anyways. For some reason, when I would plop myself and read these books, it was always with either sandwiches or pizza. I guess that I am just that kind of a silly guy. Eh?
What I liked about the thin crust pizza was that you could fold it up, and eat it like a gooey taco. I would plop myself down on this big sprawling 1940’s chair inherited from my grandparents, or our La-Z-boy and chill out. Smunching on a pizza, book about other kids like you, a nice breeze though the window, and a television or radio playing softly in the other room was what my boyhood was like.
Anyways, I had two books. They actually had a second volume that I had bought. It was titled The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club. I thought that it was even better than the first!
Unfortunately a novel entitled The Big Kerplop! Came out that I was unaware of, and so I never had the opportunity to read it.
Trying to get all these books has been a herculean task over the years. Not only due to the lack of availability, but also to the fact that I am in China. And obscure books in English are not readily available.
Unfortunately all of them had been out of print for many years and were almost impossible to find. This was bad news as I desperately wanted to get a hold of them for both myself and all the kids.
Introduction by MM
Here is my introduction to the book and series that I wrote years ago before the PDF was available.
Intro to The Mad Scientists' ClubThe Full Text of the book for FREE
The Mad Scientists’ Club – Seven Short Stories
– The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake – The club decides to shake up the town with a fake lake monster, but things go frather than they ever envisioned.
– The Big Egg – The kids find a dinosaur egg and it hatches, or does it?
– The Secret of the Old Cannon – What is hidden in an old civil war cannon up on Memorial Point?
-The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls – A mad ballooner upsets the town’s Founder’s Day celebration.
– The Great Gas Bag Race – The club enters a balloon in the annual race and find themselves up against their old rival, Harmon Mulldoon.
– The Voice in the Chimney – The old house on Blueberry Hill is haunted, or is it just peoples’ imagination?
– Night Rescue – The club tries to rescue a downed jet pilot.
And now for the full PDF of volume #1…
Mad Scientists' ClubDownload the FREE PDF of
