This book has to be history, because nobody could make up something so bizarre.

Scion of a wealthy Pasadena family, Parsons was one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry (JATO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, castable fuels), despite a lack of formal training or credentials. At the same time as he was turning rocketry from a pursuit for cranks into a pillar of the Military-Industrial Complex, Parsons was deeply involved in black magic, and was the high priest of the a Crowleyite Satanic lodge, where wife-swapping and sex magic were performed with an every changing crew of Hollywood types, leftist radicals, and science-fiction freaks, including L. Ron Hubbard (yes, that L. Ron Hubbard).

Pendle charts Parsons' rise through the mirrored worlds of rocketry and magic, and then his tragic and sudden decline as his bizarre lifestyle proved incompatible with top secret research in the paranoid political climate of the late 40s, and a series of bad decisions (most involving L. Ron Hubbard) shattered his social circles and finances. Parsons' death in a mysterious explosive accident seems the only fitting end for this forgotten figure of spaceflight, and the 'occult Che Guevara'.