The Radio Detectives

by A. Hyatt Verrill

“Oh, Dad! I’ve made a new set,” cried Tom, as he entered the dining room. “That so, Son?” replied Mr. Pauling interestedly. “Seems to me you boys do nothing but junk your sets as fast as you make them and build others. Does this one work better than the last?” “It’s a peacherino!” declared Tom enthusiastically. “Just wait till you see it and listen to the music coming in.” “I’ll come up after dinner,” his father assured him. “Let me know when the fun begins. I’ve some papers to go over in the library first.” Throughout the meal the talk was all of radio, in which Tom and his boy friends had become madly interested and in which Tom’s father and mother had encouraged him. “Go to it, Tom,” his father had said when the boy had glowingly expatiated on the wonderful things he had heard on a friend’s instrument and had asked his father’s permission to get a set. “I’m glad you’re interested in it,” he had continued. “It’s going to be a big thing in the future and the more you learn about it the better. But begin at the beginning, Tom. Don’t be satisfied merely with buying instruments and using them.

Genres: Classics

114 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, known as Hyatt Verrill, was an American zoologist, explorer, inventor, illustrator and author. He was the son of Addison Emery Verrill (1839–1926), the first professor of zoology at Yale University.

Hyatt Verrill wrote on a wide variety of topics, including natural history, travel, radio and whaling. He participated in a number of archaeological expeditions to the West Indies, South, and Central America. He travelled extensively throughout the West Indies, and all of the Americas, North, Central and South. Theodore Roosevelt stated: "It was my friend Verrill here, who really put the West Indies on the map.”

During 1896 he served as natural history editor of Webster's International Dictionary., and he illustrated many of his own writings as well. In 1902 Verrill invented the autochrome process of natural-color photography.

Among his writings are many science fiction works including twenty six published in Amazing Stories pulp magazines. Upon his death, P. Schuyler Miller noted that Verrill "was one of the most prolific and successful writers of our time," with 115 books to his credit as well as "articles in innumerable newspapers." Everett F. Bleiler described Verrill's "lost race" stories as "more literate than most of their competition, but stodgy."

When the Moon Ran Wild (1962) was published posthumously using the name Ray Ainsbury.

Reviews

[Bettie]

Opening: A hurricane had swept through the West Indies leaving death and destruction in its path and wrecking scores of vessels, uprooting trees, stripping the tops from palms, destroying crops and blowing down the flimsy native houses.

Now that it was over and there was no danger of its return those ships that had escaped the storm within snug harbors began to creep forth to resume their interrupted voyages. Some were uninjured. Others had rigging or deck fittings carried away, while some were so badly crippled that they limped as rapidly as possible towards the nearest dry dock for repairs.

Among them was a lean gray destroyer which slipped out of Coral Bay at St. John and headed her sharp prow southward. That she had borne the brunt of the terrific gale was evident, for of her four funnels only two were standing, her decks had been swept bare, fathoms of her railings had been carried away and from half way up her military mast she was white with encrusted salt. But she had received no vital injury. From her two remaining funnels dense volumes of smoke were pouring, a busy crowd of bluejackets labored like ants at repairing the damages to superstructure and fittings and, despite the buffeting she had received and the fact that half her boilers were out of commission until the funnels could be replaced, she slid through the oily seas at a twenty-knot clip.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42545