The Kemlo series is a series of children's science fiction novels written by Reginald Alec Martin, under the pseudonym of E. C. Eliott. The first book, Kemlo and the Crazy Planet was published in 1954; the fifteenth and final book in the series, Kemlo and the Masters of Space, was published in 1963.
I'm not sure how I missed them while growing up in the fifties, because at the time they must have been my kind of book. Science fiction, kids in space doing exciting things. How could I miss that?
The only explanation I've come up with is that Derby library didn't stock them so I never encountered Kemlo books until now. Which is too late of course - although I do like those covers. Maybe it illustrates how restricted we were by TV, radio and what was available in the local library.
The central character, Kemlo, was born and raised in space, on a satellite named Satellite Belt K (one of a number of similar space stations named after a letter of the alphabet). All children born on a space station were given names with the same initial, hence the names Kemlo, Kartin, Kerowski, Krillie, and so on. Kemlo is a Captain of the Space Scouts, who have their own "scooters" - small two-seat personal spacecraft for travel around and between the Satellite Belts. Kemlo, like all children born in space, breathes "plasmorgia" instead of air. This allows him to breathe in space, although it means he is unable to travel to Earth without the aid of compressed plasmorgia and "gravity rays".
Had I known, there was no way I'd have missed out on space scooters zooming around the Satellite Belts or gravity rays. Although "plasmorgia" does sound like something woke folk could be inhaling.
4 comments:
Kemlo, Kartin, Kerowski, Krillie...and Keir.
Explains a lot.
Never 'eard of it.
I do remember a treat on the wireless - Journey Into Space produced (?) by Charles Chilton.
I have never heard of them either, although by '63, age 13, I had already moved onto the harder stuff. The mobile library used to visit the village every couple of weeks, I was always at school but my Mother had standing instructions to get anything by various authors, anything in the yellow jacket Gollancz SF series, and failing that anything described as SF. I must have read hundreds of books between the age of about 12 to about 16 when I noticed the attractions of, and became distracted from my bookishness, by girls.
Sam - it does explain a lot - thanks. Inspired me to do a post on it.
dearieme - I don't remember that even though it sounds like my kind of programme. According to Wikipedia it was the last UK radio programme to attract a bigger evening audience than television. End of an era.
Woodsy - I may have been too old for them as well by the time they appeared on library shelves, assuming they eventually did.
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