The Mad Scientists' Club
Encyclopedia
The Mad Scientists' Club is a series of four books written for children by Bertrand R. Brinley
(1917 – 1994) and illustrated by Charles Geer
.
The title of The Big Kerplop was supposed to be The Big Kerplop!, but the original publisher, MacRae Smith Company, dropped the exclamation mark, which has now been restored. Even though it was written 14 years after the "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake", chronologically it is the first story in the series, telling how the Mad Scientists' Club came into being and the full story behind their long-standing animosity with Harmon Muldoon.
to pull off harebrained schemes. For example, in "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake," they build a fake sea monster out of chicken wire mounted to a rowboat, and row it out on Strawberry Lake. When it gets too dangerous to take the boat out on the lake themselves because hunters are preparing to shoot it with an elephant gun, they rig a remote control system to operate it at a distance.
The Mad Scientists' Club is an Explorer Scout organization, something that is mentioned occasionally in passing but generally does not drive the stories.
Living in the fictional small town of Mammoth Falls, the members of the Mad Scientists' Club are:
Dinky Poore is the smallest (and most sarcastic) of the Mad Scientists; this is sometimes relevant to the stories, as in "The Great Gas Bag Race", in which the boys prepare to compete in a hot-air balloon race without deciding which two Mad Scientists will have the honor of crewing the balloon; since Dinky weighs less than anyone else in the club, he is the only one who is certain of being chosen.
In contrast to the supernatural, mystical, romantic, or preachy moral elements usually found in children's books, The Mad Scientists' Club books build their plot devices around science
, mechanical inclination, a do it yourself
ethic, and some good-natured pranks, making the boys in these books sort of junior precursors to MacGyver
- or a fictional counterpart to the real-life Rocket Boys
. The early stories and the first book in the series were published in the wake of the impact of Sputnik and the space race
and reflect the thinking of that period (the first book even includes a plug for joining the United States Air Force
in the last story, "Night Rescue"). There are two odd, inexplicable exceptions to the usually science-based, non-supernatural nature of the stories. They are "The Secret of the Old Cannon" in the first book - at the end of the story it is hinted the boys unwittingly photographed a ghost - and the Indian Sun Dance from "Big Chief Rainmaker" in the second book. The level of technology found in these books is of course "low-tech" by today's standards with no commercial home computers or miniaturized electronics, but the technology depicted in the books (home-built computers, scuba, ham radio, helicopters, remotely radio-controlled devices) was, at the time, typical of the cutting edge of technology during the post-WWII, pre-Internet era. The science itself is accurate; Henry's 'big secret' to win "The Great Gas Bag Race" is now standard in hot-air ballooning. And Dinky provides actual Houdini escapology in "The Telltale Transmitter" that readers would do well to remember if they ever found themselves tied up.
Harmon Muldoon is the arch-enemy of the Mad Scientists' Club. Cousin to Freddy and brother to Homer's girlfriend Daphne, Harmon was expelled from the Mad Scientists' Club "for conduct unbecoming a scientist and for giving away secret information". Harmon responded by founding his own gang dedicated to interfering with the Mad Scientists' Club in any way they can. It is not stated whether Harmon's gang engages in any activities beyond pestering the Mad Scientists, nor is it absolutely clear how many are in the gang.
Harmon was the radio expert when he was in the club, and has equal if not better radio equipment, as hinted by "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake", where he temporarily jammed the signals sent by The Mad Scientists Club and came very close to unmasking the monster. In "The Great Confrontation" he goes too far and kidnaps Freddy and Dinky. However, Harmon's only triumph comes in "The Cool Cavern" where he makes such fools of the Mad Scientists that Henry uncharacteristically loses his temper. In "Big Chief Rainmaker" a truce is declared with Harmon's gang because the Mad Scientists need their help. The members of Harmon's gang who have been named are:
Harmon's gang meets on the second storey of an old garage at the back of Stony Martin's house. "It's a neat place to spy from" for the Mad Scientists Club. Stony and Buzzy are the members who appear the most frequently in the series as they are constant companions to Harmon.
Other characters include:
magazine, the official youth magazine of the Boy Scouts of America
. They were later collected into two volumes, The Mad Scientists' Club and The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club, originally published by the MacRae Smith Company of Philadelphia. Only about 1000 copies of the third novel, The Big Kerplop!, were published in 1974 before MacRae Smith went bankrupt, so it is not well known. Later publications in 1965 included Scholastic Book Services in paperback out of New York, London, Richmond Hill and Ontario.
Sheridan Brinley, the son of the author, authorized Purple House Press
to reprint these books starting in 2001. The new edition of The Big Kerplop! was released in 2003 (with the exclamation point included), which includes all new interior illustrations by Geer. The earlier MacRae Smith version is the only MSC title without interior drawings, since Macrae Smith never commissioned them. On November 17, 2005 they released the final one, the previously unpublished second novel titled The Big Chunk of Ice, which has been newly illustrated by Geer.
A two-part episode in 1971 of the TV series Wonderful World of Disney was loosely based on "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake". It was titled "The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove" and starred Burgess Meredith
. It was repeated a few times, but doesn't seem to be available on DVD or Video.
Bertrand R. Brinley
Bertrand R. Brinley was an American writer of short stories and children's tales. He was best known for his Mad Scientists' Club stories....
(1917 – 1994) and illustrated by Charles Geer
Charles Geer
Charles Geer was an American illustrator and author. He grew up on Long Island, New York, attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and then served in the United States Navy during World War II. Following the war he attended art school at the Pratt Institute.Geer illustrated many children’s...
.
Books in the series
- The Mad Scientists' Club (1965, 2001) consisting of:
- "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake" (1960), first published in Boys' LifeBoys' LifeBoys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America . Its targeted readership is young American males between the ages of 6 and 18.Boys' Life is published in two demographic editions...
(September 1961), with illustrations by Harold Eldridge - "The Big Egg" (1964)
- "The Secret of the Old Cannon" (1963), first published in Boy's Life (January 1966), with illustrations by Marvin Friedman
- "The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls" (1962), first published in Boy's Life (November 1962), with illustrations by Harold Eldridge
- "The Great Gas Bag Race" (1964), first published in Boy's Life (March 1966), with illustrations by Bernard Fuchs
- "The Voice in the Chimney" (1964)
- "Night Rescue" (1961), first published in Boy's Life (February 1964), with illustrations by David Stone
- "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake" (1960), first published in Boys' Life
- The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club (1968, 2002) consisting of:
- "Big Chief Rainmaker" (1965)
- "The Telltale Transmitter" (1966)
- "The Cool Cavern" (1966)
- "The Flying Sorcerer" (1968)
- "The Great Confrontation" (1968)
- The Big Kerplop; A Mad Scientists' Club Adventure (1974, 2003)
- The Big Chunk of Ice (2005)
The title of The Big Kerplop was supposed to be The Big Kerplop!, but the original publisher, MacRae Smith Company, dropped the exclamation mark, which has now been restored. Even though it was written 14 years after the "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake", chronologically it is the first story in the series, telling how the Mad Scientists' Club came into being and the full story behind their long-standing animosity with Harmon Muldoon.
Synopsis
During the course of the books, the boys often use technology (such as ham radios) and scienceScience
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
to pull off harebrained schemes. For example, in "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake," they build a fake sea monster out of chicken wire mounted to a rowboat, and row it out on Strawberry Lake. When it gets too dangerous to take the boat out on the lake themselves because hunters are preparing to shoot it with an elephant gun, they rig a remote control system to operate it at a distance.
The Mad Scientists' Club is an Explorer Scout organization, something that is mentioned occasionally in passing but generally does not drive the stories.
Living in the fictional small town of Mammoth Falls, the members of the Mad Scientists' Club are:
- Jeff Crocker, President
- Henry Mulligan, Vice President and Chief of Research
- Dinky Poore
- Freddy Muldoon
- Homer Snodgrass
- Mortimer Dalrymple
- Charlie Finckledinck, the narrator of the stories
Dinky Poore is the smallest (and most sarcastic) of the Mad Scientists; this is sometimes relevant to the stories, as in "The Great Gas Bag Race", in which the boys prepare to compete in a hot-air balloon race without deciding which two Mad Scientists will have the honor of crewing the balloon; since Dinky weighs less than anyone else in the club, he is the only one who is certain of being chosen.
In contrast to the supernatural, mystical, romantic, or preachy moral elements usually found in children's books, The Mad Scientists' Club books build their plot devices around science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, mechanical inclination, a do it yourself
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
ethic, and some good-natured pranks, making the boys in these books sort of junior precursors to MacGyver
MacGyver
MacGyver is an American action-adventure television series created by Lee David Zlotoff. Henry Winkler and John Rich were the executive producers. The show ran for seven seasons on ABC in the United States and various other networks abroad from 1985 to 1992. The series was filmed in Los Angeles...
- or a fictional counterpart to the real-life Rocket Boys
Rocket Boys
Rocket Boys is the first memoir in a series of three, by Homer Hickam, Jr. It is a story of growing up in a mining town, and a boy's pursuit of amateur rocketry in a coal mining town. It won the in 1998, the year of its release. Today, it is one of the most often picked community/library reads in...
. The early stories and the first book in the series were published in the wake of the impact of Sputnik and the space race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
and reflect the thinking of that period (the first book even includes a plug for joining the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
in the last story, "Night Rescue"). There are two odd, inexplicable exceptions to the usually science-based, non-supernatural nature of the stories. They are "The Secret of the Old Cannon" in the first book - at the end of the story it is hinted the boys unwittingly photographed a ghost - and the Indian Sun Dance from "Big Chief Rainmaker" in the second book. The level of technology found in these books is of course "low-tech" by today's standards with no commercial home computers or miniaturized electronics, but the technology depicted in the books (home-built computers, scuba, ham radio, helicopters, remotely radio-controlled devices) was, at the time, typical of the cutting edge of technology during the post-WWII, pre-Internet era. The science itself is accurate; Henry's 'big secret' to win "The Great Gas Bag Race" is now standard in hot-air ballooning. And Dinky provides actual Houdini escapology in "The Telltale Transmitter" that readers would do well to remember if they ever found themselves tied up.
Harmon Muldoon is the arch-enemy of the Mad Scientists' Club. Cousin to Freddy and brother to Homer's girlfriend Daphne, Harmon was expelled from the Mad Scientists' Club "for conduct unbecoming a scientist and for giving away secret information". Harmon responded by founding his own gang dedicated to interfering with the Mad Scientists' Club in any way they can. It is not stated whether Harmon's gang engages in any activities beyond pestering the Mad Scientists, nor is it absolutely clear how many are in the gang.
Harmon was the radio expert when he was in the club, and has equal if not better radio equipment, as hinted by "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake", where he temporarily jammed the signals sent by The Mad Scientists Club and came very close to unmasking the monster. In "The Great Confrontation" he goes too far and kidnaps Freddy and Dinky. However, Harmon's only triumph comes in "The Cool Cavern" where he makes such fools of the Mad Scientists that Henry uncharacteristically loses his temper. In "Big Chief Rainmaker" a truce is declared with Harmon's gang because the Mad Scientists need their help. The members of Harmon's gang who have been named are:
- Harmon Muldoon: the gang leader. He is a radio expert and "a big blabbermouth".
- Stony Martin: a "loudmouth". The gang meets at the back of his house.
- Buzzy McCauliffe
- Joe Turner
- Speedie Brown: "one of the best tree climbers in Harmon's gang".
Harmon's gang meets on the second storey of an old garage at the back of Stony Martin's house. "It's a neat place to spy from" for the Mad Scientists Club. Stony and Buzzy are the members who appear the most frequently in the series as they are constant companions to Harmon.
Other characters include:
- Alonzo Scragg: Mayor of Mammoth Falls
- Abner Sharples: arch-enemy of Mayor Scragg; lawyer and politician
- Chief Harold Putney: Chief of Police
- Constable Billy Dahr
- Zeke Boniface: junk-yard dealer and ally of the Mad Scientists
- Richard the Deep Breather: Zeke's truck
- Kaiser Bill: Zeke's guard-dog
- Colonel March: military ally of the Mad Scientists
- Elmer Pridgin: a hunter who literally holds the key to "The Secret of the Old Cannon"
- Jim Callahan: city engineer
- Mr Willis: bank manager
- Seth Hawkins: congressman for Mammoth Falls
- Charlie Brown: town treasurer
- Daphne Muldoon: Harmon's sister, Freddy's cousin, and Homer's girlfriend
- Melissa Plunkett: Stony Martin's girlfriend; has stick-out teeth
- Mike Corcoran: owner of the Idle Hour Pool Palace; he sponsors Harmon's entry in "The Great Gas Bag Race" and keeps the Unidentified Flying Man on display in his front window.
- Mrs Abner Larrabee: President of the Greater Mammoth Falls Garden Circle; conducts the Indian Sun Dance in "Big Chief Rainmaker"
- Jason Barnaby: orchardist
- Ned Carver: barber
- Bud Stewart: reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer
- Jasper Okeby: truck-garden farmer and the most cantankerous character in Mammoth Falls.
- Bo McSweeney: one of the few athletic heroes of Mammoth Falls and town favorite.
- Matilda Pratt: well-known personality for two reasons: she weighs over 300 pounds and has 13 girls.
- Old Pincushion: the trout nobody can catch.
- Professor Igor Stratavarious: State University professor whoe takes the Mad Scientists Club to Austria in The Big Chunk of Ice.
- Angelina Angelo and Angela Angelino: students who accompany the Mad Scientists to Austria in The Big Chunk of Ice. They become the first female members of the club.
Publication history
The Mad Scientists began as a series of short stories in Boys' LifeBoys' Life
Boys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America . Its targeted readership is young American males between the ages of 6 and 18.Boys' Life is published in two demographic editions...
magazine, the official youth magazine of the Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
. They were later collected into two volumes, The Mad Scientists' Club and The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club, originally published by the MacRae Smith Company of Philadelphia. Only about 1000 copies of the third novel, The Big Kerplop!, were published in 1974 before MacRae Smith went bankrupt, so it is not well known. Later publications in 1965 included Scholastic Book Services in paperback out of New York, London, Richmond Hill and Ontario.
Sheridan Brinley, the son of the author, authorized Purple House Press
Purple House Press
Purple House Press is a publishing house based in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Founded in 2000 by former software engineer Jill Morgan, it specializes in bringing out-of-print children's books back into print....
to reprint these books starting in 2001. The new edition of The Big Kerplop! was released in 2003 (with the exclamation point included), which includes all new interior illustrations by Geer. The earlier MacRae Smith version is the only MSC title without interior drawings, since Macrae Smith never commissioned them. On November 17, 2005 they released the final one, the previously unpublished second novel titled The Big Chunk of Ice, which has been newly illustrated by Geer.
A two-part episode in 1971 of the TV series Wonderful World of Disney was loosely based on "The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake". It was titled "The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove" and starred Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
. It was repeated a few times, but doesn't seem to be available on DVD or Video.
Trivia
- West Newbury, Massachusetts, provided the inspiration for the geography and some of the characters in the Mad Scientists' Club adventures.
- Narrator Charlie Finckledinck didn't have a last name until The Big Kerplop!