Passage to Pluto by Hugh Walters

The final review looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.


By now Chris is approaching the impossibly ancient age of forty and so the time has come for him to get pensioned off. The space exploration series ends with Passage to Pluto (pub 1973). Chris doesn't go on this mission as he's now been made head of the united world space program where he gets to spend more time with the oddly-shaped bloke Gail.

His three chums go off without him to find out why Pluto has such a weird orbit. The answer turns out to be a rogue tenth planet that's on a mission to wreck havoc through the solar system. With Chris's help from back home they send the blighter packing.

I can’t remember much about this one. It read it only the once, as I was then old enough to be moved into the adult section of the library. From then on, I had to make do with science fiction for adults featuring plots that were less plausible and less entertaining.

The Pluto novel didn't quite mark the end for the series. Another six books appeared throughout the rest of the 1970s, usually with Tony Hale as the lead, but he didn't have an exploratory agenda. Instead the stories where either earth-based mystery yarns or rehashs of the First Contact tale in which nice aliens arrive on earth wanting to be nice to us and we try to kill them.

I didn't read the later books, but I gather these additions were weak, probably because Walters forgot that nasty radiation wielding aliens who want to conquer the earth are more entertaining than chummy aliens who want to be liked. So the later books didn't get much of an audience. The cover above suggests that the contents didn't match the greatness of the earlier titles. This helped to ensure that the books were never reprinted and so they didn't get a chance to excite new generations of teens.

The low-key fizzling out of the series is sad, as this was a great juvenile science fiction saga. As I said in my first review, I may have poked fun at some of the antiquated science and attitudes displayed, but I adored these books. These reviews have been my belated thank you to the author for the hours of fun he provided me with his tales of Brits in space.

First Contact? By Hugh Walters

Review #12 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.
With Chris's plucky chums returning alive from Neptune, the failure of the British space program to take a look at Uranus now becomes a major concern. But the tricky problem of what to call the mission has yet to be solved. Luckily, help is at hand when another bout of mysterious radiation arrives mysteriously and attacks earth, and this time it's from Uranus.

With earth yet again paralysed by mysterious alien radiation, an emergency meeting of scientists decide they have to have a close look at Uranus no matter how embarrassing it will be. Someone though has the great idea to entitle the mission First Contact? (pub 1971).

With that major issue resolved, the crew hurries off to the gas giant where they make first contact with the alien race responsible for the bout of mysterious radiation. Nobody worries that they've met umpteen aliens before and this is about the eighth contact, but it turns out that this time the aliens are jolly decent chaps and they don't want to conquer earth. It's all been a bit of a mistake. Despite some gloomy mutterings from the crew, the chummy aliens eventually win everyone over and everybody heads home.

Next week the series bows out when Chris runs out of planets to explore.

Nearly Neptune by Hugh Walters

Review #11 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.

For his next adventure, Chris returns to space at which point we encounter the biggest disappointment of the series. After systematically exploring every planet in the solar system, usually with an alliterative title, every schoolboy fan was eagerly awaiting Chris going off to search for Uranus. The hours of fun to be had from just holding a book with Probe to Uranus or Find Uranus on the front cover were immeasurable. Sadly, the British space program decided that sending four blokes and a top-notch gal off on a two-year mission to explore the rings around Uranus might not be a good use of public money. So they decided they should head for Neptune instead in Nearly Neptune (pub 1968).

This was the last of the great Chris Godfrey books, and possibly the best, although as I was on the verge of getting too old to read them any more I didn't like this as much as the Venus tale. The story opens with a great hook of an opening line: 'Chris Godfrey is dead.' A good attention grabber there!

Chris isn’t dead of course, but before we learn the truth, we backtrack a bit. For this mission, cryogenics are required to survive the long journey. The lads, minus the gal as chilly Neptune is no place for a gal (and besides if a telepathic twin went on the mission she'd ruin the story by telling her twin everything... or then again it might just have been that she was a gal), are put into suspended animation and sent off to Neptune. Sadly, when they are halfway there the teapot overheats and a fire breaks out on board. Everyone wakes up coughing and by the time they've opened the windows and let the smoke out, they are in big trouble.

One of the suspended animation booths is ruined, they have little air, little food, little water and they're heading in the wrong direction slowly with no way to turn back until they've gone around Neptune, a journey of a year both ways. With the situation looking dire, Chris volunteers to not go into suspended animation and to die bravely.

Everyone quickly agrees to this plan as by this stage in the series they've had enough of him commanding every flaming mission into space and them being the only astronauts on the planet who are allowed to explore anything. So they quickly go to sleep before he can change his mind.

Chris passes his time before he dies bravely by avoiding switching on the radio. He scoffs up all the food, but by the time the ship arrives at Neptune, he's so weak and cold he can't summon the energy to wake everybody up to have a look at the planet. So he takes some snap-shots and sketches a few drawings of what everything looks like to help the scientists back home do important scientific stuff. Then he keels over from hunger and cold.

Luckily though, he's so cold and weak he falls into natural suspended animation. For a year he travels back to earth frozen like a giant icicle in the ruined ship and he doesn’t wake up until the sun thaws him out, conveniently just as the ship is about to enter earth orbit. Chris's alive, the world cries, and so the adventures can continue.

Next week Chris has another go at finding Uranus.

The Mohole Mystery by Hugh Walters

Review #10 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.
After Chris had explored every planet in the solar system out to Saturn, we got a change of pace in the bizarrely titled The Mohole Mystery (pub 1968). To this day I have no idea what a Mohole is and I resisted the urge to google it as I'm quite happy to stay ignorant.

After travelling a billion miles on his trip to Saturn, for this adventure Chris took the novel route of going five miles in the opposite direction. Apparently, a big hole has been uncovered beneath Dudley, Tony's home, and unless the reason why it's there can be discovered, it’s possible Dudley could fall down it and disappear. It seems this hole was discovered a long time ago and nobody saw this as a problem, but for the want of anything better to do scientists drop Serge Smyslov down the hole to see what happens.

Not surprisingly, Serge goes ouch when he hits the bottom and then is trapped in his Soviet-designed broken mohole exploring capsule. This looks like a job for small astronaut Chris Godfrey. Chris climbs into his British-designed mohole exploring capsule with big cushions on the bottom, drops down the hole and rescues his chum, again. They have a few tricky moments when they get attacked by weird egg creatures that explode into dust if you touch them that live in big holes beneath Dudley, but they still get out.

Next week the series has its biggest disappointment.

Spaceship to Saturn by Hugh Walters

Review #9 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.

The introduction to the team of a girl in the previous book was a resounding success in proving that being emotional and weepy has a place in space. So Gail gets to go on the next mission, Spaceship to Saturn (pub 1967), so she can make the tea while admiring the blokes and their vast knowledge of technical matters that are too complex for girls to understand.

Apparently, Saturn's orbit is so clogged up with debris that even ace space hero Chris can’t fly the ship around it and it needs a new-fangled thing called a computer to do it for him. With this computer thingy being about the size of Ireland, the computer has to stay on earth and the signals to move the ship must be sent over the radio. But with the radiation around Saturn and the Martian's going 'Whoo-oo' on the radio it needs a clever solution. Telepathy is again the only answer. It worked over fifty million miles so it'll work over a billion, scientists decide.

So plucky honorary bloke Gail blasts off with the chaps on what turns out to be a very dull mission. They hurtle around seeing the sights, taking some snap-shots, and making notes of interesting moons and stuff. Then they whizz through the Cassini division and come home in time for tea and the results of the test match.

This book suggested that the series was running out of steam as most of the permutations of danger in space had been explored. But as it turned out there were still a few more great moments to come before the British space program finally gave itself over to that lone odd-ball with the rockets tied to his feet.

Next week Chris becomes the only hero in sci-fi history who knows what a mohole is.

Mission to Mercury by Hugh Walters

Review #8 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.
After being the first man in space, the first to step foot on the moon, the first to visit Venus, Mars and Jupiter, for Chris Godfrey's next mission, Mission to Mercury (pub 1965), he confronts terrifying new frontiers in the form of those odd-looking blokes who are called girls.

By now a lot of time has passed since Blast Off at Woomera in which Chris was a short, spotty bookworm at school. Now he's a grown man in his late twenties, as are the rest of his chums. But despite spending most of his life cooped up on space missions with a lot of hairy blokes, none of them has ever once mentioned an interest in women, or each other for that matter. Suddenly though after seven books the first women appear in the form of all-round top-notch girls Gill and Gail, twin sisters with a desire to be astronauts despite the fact they are girls and don't play cricket.

For this mission scientists look inwards towards the sun, but this is a tricky mission. Apparently, when a ship is close to Mercury, the sun's radiation will be so strong it'll destroy any radio signals that are tuned into the frequency that avoids the Martians and their weird noises. Clearly this is a major problem requiring an especially large cup of tea to solve and an especially well thought out scientific solution. That solution, after one too many strong brews, turns out to be telepathy.

Get two twins who are so close they're telepathic then let them send signals to each other over the telepathic airwaves from sixty million miles away, is the foolproof plan. Sadly, this plan has a major flaw and it's not the obvious one. You see, the most telepathically inclined twins the scientists can find aren't blokes. They are girls and that means a girl will have to do a bloke's job by going into space. On the other hand this does mean the guys will get some posh totty on board for a long cramped up mission to somewhere really hot where there's bog-all else to do but bump into each other in zero gravity. Sadly, such thoughts never enter anyone's mind.

Although Chris is intrigued when he notices that Gail and Gill are oddly-shaped. So he invites one of them out to the pictures to explore this discovery a bit more and to find out how a girl thinks. But he's not sure which twin turns up. The only way to tell identical twins Gail and Gill apart is from a freckle on the forehead. He decides it's not the done thing to lift a girl's hair up on the first date to see if she has a freckle. So he remains none the wiser as to who she is. This turns out to be a major clue as to where the story will go.

Just before the rocket is due to leave Gail gets ill with some typical girly illness and only one girl has been trained to be an astronaut, but luckily that girl is Gill. The guys, and girl, blast off to Mercury but Gill turns out to be a rubbish astronaut, spilling tea over the consoles and dropping catches at first slip. At first, everyone puts her stupidity down to her being a girl, but then Chris in a bold move lifts her hair and sees the lack of a freckle. The wrong twin got ill, it seems, and the rubbish one has come aboard disguised as her identical twin.

Now the whole mission and everyone's lives depends on a mere girl's ability to communicate with earth and get them home. Luckily though, while everyone is pointing out for the umpteenth time that she's rubbish, she rounds on them and tells them she's the one who's acting normally, it's they who are acting oddly. The guys look at each other and mutter darkly about how this emotional outburst proves that space isn’t the right place for a girl. But it turns out that she's right.

You see the sun's radiation is making the blokes behave weirdly and now they are so busy having boggly eyes the ship will crash into the sun. Chris gives her a manly punch on the arm, has a strong brew, and pulls himself together. Then he lands the ship on the dark side of Mercury. He has a bit of a shiver when he encounters the absolute zero temperature. Then with a stiff upper lip he blasts off and heads back home to ponder some more on whether odd-looking blokes might have a place in space.

Next week Chris and the other twin explore Saturn.

Journey to Jupiter by Hugh Walters

Review #7 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.
With Mars now conquered Chris by-passes the asteroid belt and heads off to the nearest gas giant in Journey to Jupiter (pub 1965). Actually while writing this I discovered that after the Martian adventure there was a spin-off book I'd never heard of before involving Tony Hale having fun with his ham radio set. I'm glad I missed that.

With Jupiter being a long way away plucky Brit scientists have come up with a cunning plan to get there involving an ion drive that can go very fast indeed. Chris and his three chums arrive safely at Jupiter, but then danger arrives in what was frankly the silliest and most contrived plot development in the whole series.

The British scientists who are brilliant enough to build a rocket that can reach Jupiter have pressed some wrong buttons on their slide-rules and have miscalculated Jupiter's gravitational pull. It's stronger than they thought and there's no escape for the ship. I mean, is it really conceivable that space scientists would make basic mistakes such as getting inches and centimetres mixed up and ruin a multi-billion dollar space mission?

Anyhow, luckily the moon Io gets in the way of the falling ship and after landing there, having a spot of tea and a quick game of cricket, the Brits return home in triumph, again, ready for more adventure.

Next week Chris encounters his most terrifying danger yet: those oddly-shaped blokes called girls.

Destination Mars by Hugh Walters

Review #6 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.


With Venus now conquered and with all the world's grey slime problems in the previous book being solved in the intervening six months it's time for Chris to head to Mars in Destination Mars (pub 1963). This book introduces the bizarre idea that apparently Mars is outside the Van Allen belt and so anyone straying beyond it goes mad. But why?

Although nobody wonders why Chris didn’t go mad when he went to Venus, Chris leads a mission to Mars with his three chums to find out some answers. The madness turns out to be down to an ancient race of invisible Martians who have also read too much science fiction and are determined to take over the earth. They have a fiendish plan to achieve this which involves waiting for spaceships to come close to Mars then making weird noises on the radio that make astronauts go mad.

Soon, everyone on board is walking around with stiff legs and saying Martiany things like: "The chances of us leaving our home are a million to one, but still we come." Luckily, Chris is built of sterner stuff and after a strong cup of tea he resists the Martians, switches off the radio, and gets the ship back to earth. On returning, he provides scientists with the important answer on how to avoid being conquered by the Martians of: when in space, don't switch on the radio.

Next week Chris moves on to Jupiter.

Expedition Venus by Hugh Walters

Review #5 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.


After thoroughly exploring the moon, Chris wisely decided it was time to investigate further afield. By now he had a full team behind him of no-longer slimy Soviet Serge Smyslov, resourceful American Morrison Kant, and top-notch engineer despite being very young Tony Hale. The first planet to get conquered by the team was Venus in Expedition Venus (1962). This was my favourite book of the series.

An unmanned probe descends into the lush jungles of Venus (I know) and brings back samples of Venus plant life. Unfortunately that plant life has read too many science fiction novels and immediately breaks out of its capsule and starts growing at an exponential rate.

Within hours a town is coated with Venusian grey slime, within days a country, and within a week a continent. The world seems doomed. This is all very tragic, but when the pesky blighter has rampaged across Europe, destroyed France, and is poised to grey up the White Cliffs of Dover, the Brits decide it's time to spring into action.

Chris along with his mates Morrison, Serge and Tony are tasked with toddling off to Venus and finding an antidote. You see Venus isn't covered in slime so clearly there must be a slime scoffer over there that keeps it in check. They go to Venus, find the antidote, and just as the slime is about to do the worst thing imaginable and make London go grey they hurtle back to earth.

Unfortunately, due to a bit of a cock-up on the navigating front, they've already used up all their retro-rocket fuel darting in and out of Venus's atmosphere and they can't slow down. They can do nothing but whizz past the distinctly grey earth. Luckily, Chris comes up with a cunning plan.

He chucks a bottle of slime killer out the window as he surges past the earth. The bottle hurtles earthward being slowed only by some hankies tied together as a parachute. A helicopter is sent out to intercept it and to make sure it doesn't smash to the ground and be lost in the slime. Luckily a pilot with a big net snags it just before it's about to fall into the slime whereupon scientists take the bottle back to a laboratory, open it up, and sprinkle the slime-scoffer over the slime, thus destroying it. You might have guessed that that plot development irritated me!

The world though is saved and after some improbable manoeuvres in space Chris gets the spaceship back home to receive a hero's welcome.

Next week Chris battles the Martians.

Moon Base One by Hugh Walters

Review #4 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.After being the first man to set foot on the moon in Operation Columbus, Chris returned to the moon in Moon Base One (pub 1960). This was frankly a dull adventure compared to the earlier tension-packed stories.

Chris Godfrey and Serge Smyslov's co-operative behaviour in the previous book has convinced the world to set up a united world space program called UNEXA, with all the key roles being taken by Brits. Sadly international co-operation isn't as much fun as international tension and worse, the British led space program had explored all the interesting possibilities for moon based stories involving those blasted to bits domes near Pico.

This time Chris commands a mission to the moon to find a cure for the radiation sickness briefly mentioned two books back. Apparently, children are now getting very ill. His new found friend Serge goes with him as does American Morrison Kant. A new addition to the team is Tony Hale, from Dudley, a freckle-faced kid who is dying from radiation poisoning. Scientists reckon that the months of rigorous training followed by blasting him off into space and taking him to the source of the radiation might cure him. And it does!

There's not much more to say about this story as by now the moon had been pretty much over-explored. Afterwards Chris wisely decided it was time to go boldly elsewhere.

Next week the space adventure hots up when Chris starts to explore the solar system.

Operation Columbus by Hugh Walters

Review #3 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.

With the previous book in the series giving America and Russia a role in the space race, even if that was bombing the crap out of alien technology, the race to be the first nation to put a man on the moon hots up.

In the third book Operation Columbus (pub 1959), the brash Americans and the sneaky Russians decide they can't cope with losing out to the Brits on being the first to do everything in space. Both nations are determined to plant their flag on the moon first. The Brit scientists, viewing the whole empire building in space malarkey as being terribly unsporting and just not cricket, decide to drink tea and watch the test match instead.

With the sneaky Soviets being secretive Chris goes over to America to explain space travel to the technologically inferior Americans. But despite his help it looks as if the Russians will win. With super-slimy cosmonaut Serge Smyslov being ready to blast off first, the Americans seem doomed to come second.

So they fast track square-jawed all-American hero Morrison Kant, their chosen astronaut, but the trouble is they fast track him so much he falls over and breaks an arm. Tragically, despite spending several billion dollars on the space program, nobody thought to train a second astronaut. With failure looming, an ingenious Brit come up with a solution: send Chris Godfrey up in the American spaceship.

The race is now back on. Both rockets blast off at the same time. The Russians try some sneaky manoeuvres, but their duplicity can’t compete with American know-how and a plucky Brit's space piloting skills. Both crafts land on the moon, but they arrive so closely that nobody knows for sure who landed first. But with the Russians having fast-tracked Serge so much they didn’t have the time to build him a spacesuit, Chris leaps out of his ship and plants the Union Jack.

Chris has a spot of tea then explores the blasted to hell domes of Pico, but then he encounters a problem. Serge Smyslov is hell-bent on killing him. If he can’t be the first to the moon, then he'll make sure he's the only one to get back. He comes out of his ship in his rover and destroys Chris's ship. Then he moves on to get Chris. But with the radiation from the ruined domes being so strong it's appearing as a mysterious grey mist that seemingly has a mind of its own, it's making them both woozy. The attempted murder fails and Serge only succeeds in blowing up his own lunar rover and trapping himself inside.

Chris is now free to steal the Soviet ship and pilot it back to earth, but despite their fundamental differences, Chris resolves that Serge can’t be left on the moon to die; it's just not the British way. So he drags Serge out of his rover to take him back with him on the Soviet ship, even if the extra weight will ruin his own chances of returning to earth. They argue, they fight, they argue some more, but no matter Chris crams Serge into the ship and they return to earth.

Despite going on a diet to get home, this act of international non-diplomacy almost starts World War III. With nuclear warheads trained on Buckingham Palace, tensions on the ship are nearly as high. But then the ship suddenly has a new problem to face. A meteorite rips through the craft and they start losing their air.

Worse, a holed ship means they'll burn-up on re-entry. As they have no sticky tape available after throwing all non-essential objects out the airlock to save on fuel, there's only one way to save the ship. Serge and Chris put their own bare hands over the holes and plug the gaps. With them co-operating for the first time, the ship lands safely. There's probably a message there, (and it's not that they'd burn their hands off on re-entry) but the whole world is happy. World peace is declared, the cold war ends, and from then on international co-operation in space is the only way.

Next week Chris returns to the moon for the last time.

The Domes of Pico by Hugh Walters

Review #2 looking back at the old and largely forgotten science-fiction series Chris Godfrey of UNEXA.

With the Brits having won the first space race by getting a man into space in Blast off at Woomera, the question then was: would we win the next race? The answer of course was the hell we would.

With the second-rate nations of the Russians and the Americans looking on in awe at our advanced technology, the plucky Brits returned in The Domes of Pico (pub 1958) with a mission to be the first to circle the moon.

This story cleverly picked up on an aspect of the first book in which Chris's spaceship had photographed a mysterious structure on the moon near the crater Plato. Now the mysterious structure is transmitting mysterious bursts of radiation that are causing nuclear power stations to mysteriously stop working. It's been many years since I read this book, but whenever I look at the moon through a telescope I always look at Plato and the range of mountains above where the action takes place.

Anyhow, this book moves away from the gritty and low-key plot of the first book to notch up the tension with a deadline along with bringing in what would become the series' main plotting style. Namely, a major problem is unleashed and Chris must face considerable danger to resolve it, but before he's got comfortable in his spacesuit in rapid succession several even bigger problems come along. Then, just when Chris is starting to think there's no way he can solve everything, a major calamity befalls… All the best books in the series stick to this brilliant plotting style. Those that deviate from it work less well.

So for this story the race against time is on to get a ship into space that can reach the moon. With every corner on safety being cut Chris pilots a ship into orbit around the moon, drops a probe, and only then does he discover that he's been duped. With the urgency of getting those nuclear power stations producing clean, efficient energy again, the scientists couldn't afford to waste time building a rocket that could bring him back home. This is strictly a one way mission.

Chris's stiff upper lip doesn't quiver for even a moment, and as he waits to die bravely out there in the depths of space, he pinpoints the domes' location accurately. Then the Americans and the Russians bomb the crap out of the site with their precision controlled nuclear bombs and so successfully wipe out the radiation.

But, just when it looks as if Chris is doomed to circle the moon forever, the seemingly nasty mission controller surprises everyone with the news that there's a second rocket sitting on the launch pad that nobody's noticed. Just in the nick of time, a brave rescue attempt reaches Chris and he returns home a hero, again.

Next week Chris becomes the first Brit to set foot on the moon.

Chris Godfrey: Britain's greatest space hero

My favourite book series as a teenager was the Chris Godfrey of UNEXA science fiction saga written by Hugh Walters.



As I reckon these books have been pretty much forgotten, I'd like to address the balance in the first of a weekly series. In looking at the saga, I'll poke a bit of gentle fun at some of the absurdities that were inevitable in a YA sf series that started life before man started to explore space. But for the record I adored these books as a youngster. I gather that the author died in 1993, and so these reviews are a belated thank you to Hugh Walters for the many hours I enjoyed reading about Brits in space.

Walters' series chronicled the British space program. In reality the British space program consists of a potting shed near Lossiemouth airstrip in which a lone odd-ball attempts to kill himself with two rockets strapped to his feet and a catherine wheel nailed to his hat. But in Walters' series it was so much more grand than that…

The series started with Blast off at Woomera. In this low-key and quite gritty book, written in the late 50s, plucky Brit scientists are hell-bent on ensuring that Britain is the first nation to send a man into space. They've managed to get some chimps into orbit but that's been the limit of their achievements. No matter how plucky they are, they can't build rockets that are big enough for a man. But down in a local school there's this ordinary kid, Chris Godfrey.

Chris is clever, and so bullied a lot. He's also rubbish at sport, and so bullied a lot. And he's small, and so bullied a lot. But that doesn't worry him as he always has his nose in a book. Then one day a scientist working on the small rockets that can only carry a chimp sees this small, clever but bullied kid and he makes an intriguing connection.

Now there might have been an important message there somewhere, but either way, Chris is whisked off to Australia. Once there, he foils a plot by some sneaky sabotaging Soviets and then he is blasted off into space for about five minutes. When he comes down, he's full of confidence and despite his small stature he is ready to become the greatest British space hero there's ever been.

Check back next week when Chris shoots for the moon.