Donald A. Wollheim 3 hr 3 min read

Someone is stealing the Sun's light, and young Burl Denning joins a desperate expedition that rockets from Mercury to Pluto to find the hidden alien 'suntappers' draining the solar system's energy.

Donald A. Wollheim's 1959 juvenile novel is a rousing planet-hopping space opera. Fast, imaginative, wholesome period SF. Read it for a grand-tour adventure across the whole solar system, as a young hero and a scientific expedition race to uncover and stop a menace that threatens to snuff out the Sun.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

3 hr 3 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).