The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
by Eleanor Cameron

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet A Portrait of Mr. Bass, an Amazing Scientific Thinker

As I was travelling up the California coast in 1979 to visit the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, I stopped in a used bookstore in the city of Pacific Grove on the Monterey Bay, where I found this novella. Its narrative is in part set in that city; the descendants of its protagonists live there, under assumed names, and there is an annual Mr. Bass Mushroom Festival which, though centered around characters from the book and the local mushroom industry, appears to contain elements of an ancient fertility cult such as one finds in isolated farming communities in North America. This novella is a thrilling adventure, relating the events leading up the journey of two boys who travel, at the behest of the mysterious Mr. Bass, to the hitherto unknown Mushroom Planet which invisibly circles our own.

What intrigued me most about the work, however, is that it is a moving and thorough portrait of a scientist on the fringes of mainstream science. The dedicated, visionary and insightful Mr. Tyco M. Bass, the genius behind the expedition to the Mushroom Planet, can serve as an inspiration for those who concern themselves with subjects not recognized by academicians, or who have novel approaches to recognized phenomena. The famed George Adamski, Richard S. Shaver, and Urbain Leverrier all would have seen in him a member of their circle, as the Pagan Poets in Limbo recognized Dante. Like these scientists, Mr. Bass makes use of scientific language and, to a lesser extent, experimental methodologies, but to new and earth-shattering ends. Following a hunch, Mr. Bass discovers that our Earth has a small satellite, Basidium-X, invisible to unaided sight. Refusing to bow down to empirical evidence that no such planet exists, proceeding by intuition, he invents a device specifically for the purpose of exposing the planet's presence to our world: a "Stroboscopic Polaroid Filter." The sight of this planet is apparently sufficient validation for Mr. Bass: he never seeks confirmation from other researchers, and his entire corpus is found in his safe at the end of the book, with no evidence that he attempted to publish his findings. His only audience for these discoveries is a pair of young boys, Dave and Chuck, and their adult guardians--hardly fit judges for claims as amazing as the discovery of an invisible satellite! Furthermore, he insists that his findings remain a secret to those of his inner circle, as if to ensure his grip on his followers.

What follows his revelation is perhaps even more fantastic. It is possible that the boys do indeed travel to the Mushroom Planet in a rocket ship of their own creation. The fact that the stroboscopic filter through which the planet is viewed produces intermittent flashes of light makes me wonder, however, if perhaps they were not merely hypnotized into seeing the planet and imagining that they went on a journey. The device reminds me of the flashes of light which signal the presence of the Men in Black, UFOs, and other such entities in John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. This reading of the events makes Mr. Bass a much more sinister figure than is allowed by traditional readings of the novella: he may in fact be a near relative of Mr. Indrid Cold and his unearthly associates, and the trip to the Mushroom Planet a hypnotically induced fantasy, like Woodrow Derenberger's trip to Lanulos.

The narrative does not center on the conflict between hypnotic fantasy and everyday reality, however, and the author apparently prefers the idea that the boys actually did visit Basidium-X. This is ultimately a more satisfying reading of the novella: it thus becomes a thrilling adventure of two boys who hold fast to their visions and hopes and make them come to pass. At the center of it all, the mover and shaker of this fantasy adventure, is someone we cannot ever forget, once having met him in these pages: the amazing, the dedicated, the visionary (and perhaps even a bit sinister) Mr. Tyco M. Bass.



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