The Times (UK, 4 June 2005) included a brief but interesting review of John Carter’s Sex And Rockets: The Occult World Of Jack Parsons.
“Destructively spiritual”?
SEX AND ROCKETS: The Occult World of Jack Parsons
BY JOHN CARTER
Feral House, £10.99
At almost every point during this irritatingly amateur biography of Jack Parsons the narrative demands a professional novelist — preferably T C Boyle…
During the 1940s, in Pasadena, Parsons worked on the principles of jet propulsion and co-founded what are now the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Aerojet Corporation. In 1952, at the age of 37, he blew up himself with most of the house where he kept explosives. His latter years, in close association with L Ron Hubbard (who invented Scientology) and the occultist Aleister Crowley, had been devoted to magical experiments. Parsons died believing he was the Antichrist. His weird world was creatively scientific but destructively spiritual.