Through the Clouds of Saturn

About the Book

Through the Clouds of Saturn tells the story of those intrepid astronauts, Smelly, Belly, and Jelly, who, on assignment from SpaceCentral, blast off on a mission to save the galaxy from the nefarious doings of that All-Around Really Bad Guy, Flummox MacSneere. A rarity among scientists, MacSneere was truly an evil genius, in the same class as the infamous Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s arch enemy. MacSneere had set out to steal at least one of the rings of Saturn, and it was up to our heroes to put a stop to such madness and all-around badness. To allow MacSneere to control such riches and power was unthinkable, right? After a history-making space battle, the Goferit, our heroes’ trusty space ship, was damaged and forced to the surface of Saturn, down, down, down through the thick cloud cover of the ringed planet. And having achieved a safe landing on the formerly unknown core world, Smelly, Belly, and Jelly meet and deal in a variety of ways with the planet’s strange inhabitants with equally strange names like Gleeps, Frongprotzils, Chibabba-Chibabbans, and Fardraytenkopps — some good, some bad (just like living creatures on Earth itself). They experience wonders undreamed of, their wits and super-astronaut training and downright bravery put to the test at every step along their perilous way. Belly’s large stock of peanut butter certainly contriuted to … well, something or another. The results of their experiences? You must read the story to find out. Do the boys make it safely back to our familiar old Mother Earth? Ditto. And what of MacSneere? Oh, beware of MacSneere!

About the Author

Henry F. Beechhold, Ph. D., a veteran of WW II (Europe), is Professor Emeritus of English and former Chair of the Linguistics Program at The College of New Jersey. He has a long history of writing and publication covering a wide range of topics. Prior to a 45-year career as a professor, he wrote technical manuals for one of our guided-missile systems. After entering academia, he wrote books and articles on computer repair and maintenance and on linguistics and pedagogy, numerous book reviews, and a large body of poetry, much of which has been published. He served as Associate Editor of Éire-Ireland (Irish studies) and Executive Editor of Bitterroot (poetry), and was part of the group that created Grammar Rock, winner of the Emmy for the best children’s instructional program on television in 1976. Although “officially” retired, though not retiring, he is pronunciation editor of the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (having written the pronunciations for every entry in the dictionary), and can be nearly always found at his computer keyboard writing poetry, composing music, and, at present, working on a sequel to Some We Loved.