Victor Appleton 1 hr 27 min read

Tom Swift builds a giant telescope for peering into the heavens, but murderous plots, drugging, and a sea-monster encounter turn the great project into a fight for his life.

Victor Appleton's 1939 novel is a rousing later entry in the beloved Tom Swift juvenile series. Fast, wholesome, inventive. Read it for a classic boys' invention-adventure, a wondrous telescope, sinister enemies, and undersea peril, in the brisk, optimistic style that made Tom Swift a fixture of early-twentieth-century American juvenile fiction and a byword for young ingenuity.

In its time

Published in 1939, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

1 hr 27 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

James Gary