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The Mushroom Planet #6
Time and Mr. Bass
When an ancient scroll and necklace are stolen from the Mycetian League, Chuck, David, and Mr. Bass are called into action to help recover them. This means a trip in the rocket to Wales (Carn Bassyd in the Rhinogs, specifically), and then a drive to Stonehenge and London to recover the stones from the necklace. These have been spread among different owners, and have caused the new owners - a doctor, an architect, an artist, and a fashion designer to begin introducing attributes of Mycetian culture into their work.
David and Chuck also learn that Mr. Bass's Elder Grandfather was the founder of the Mytcetian League during the time of King Arthur. His enemy, a being of pure evil called Narrow Brain, continues to seek the destruction of the Mycetian way of life. Defeating him will require both retrieval and translation of the scroll, as well as a trip to Basidium.
David and Chuck also learn that Mr. Bass's Elder Grandfather was the founder of the Mytcetian League during the time of King Arthur. His enemy, a being of pure evil called Narrow Brain, continues to seek the destruction of the Mycetian way of life. Defeating him will require both retrieval and translation of the scroll, as well as a trip to Basidium.
247 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
190 people want to read
About the author
Eleanor Cameron
28 books52 followersEleanor Frances Butler Cameron (1912 - 1996) was a Canadian children's author who spent most of her life in California. Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1912, her family then moved to South Charleston, Ohio when she was 3 years old. Her father farmed and her mother ran a hotel. After three years, they moved to Berkeley, California. Her parents divorced a few years later. At 16, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Los Angeles. She credits her English mother's love of story telling for her inspiration to write and make up stories.
She attended UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1930, she started working at the Los Angeles Public Library and later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and two different advertising companies. She married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the couple had a son, David, in 1944.
Her first book came out in 1950, based on her experience as a librarian. It was well received by critics, but didn't sell well. She did not start writing children's books until her son asked him to write one starring him as a character. this resulted in her popular series The Mushroom Planet.
With the success of the Mushroom Planet books, Cameron focused on writing for children. Between 1959 and 1988 she produced 12 additional children's novels, including The Court of the Stone Children (1973) and the semi-autobiographical five book Julia Redfern series (1971–1988). She won the National Book Award for Court of the Stone Children in 1973, and was a runner up for To The Green Mountains in 1979.
In addition to her fiction work, Cameron wrote two books of criticism and reflection on children's literature. The first, The Green and Burning Tree, was released in 1969 and led an increased profile for Cameron in the world of children's literature. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s Cameron worked as a traveling speaker and contributor to publications such as The Horn Book Magazine, Wilson Library Bulletin, and Children's Literature in Education. She was also a member of the founding editorial board for the children's magazine Cricket, which debuted in 1973. In 1972 she and Roald Dahl exchanged barbs across three issues of The Horn Book, a magazine devoted to critical discussions of children's and young adult fiction. Her second book of essays, The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books, came out in 1993. It is her final published book.
From late 1967 until her death Cameron made her home in Pebble Beach, California. She died in hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84.[
She attended UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1930, she started working at the Los Angeles Public Library and later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and two different advertising companies. She married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the couple had a son, David, in 1944.
Her first book came out in 1950, based on her experience as a librarian. It was well received by critics, but didn't sell well. She did not start writing children's books until her son asked him to write one starring him as a character. this resulted in her popular series The Mushroom Planet.
With the success of the Mushroom Planet books, Cameron focused on writing for children. Between 1959 and 1988 she produced 12 additional children's novels, including The Court of the Stone Children (1973) and the semi-autobiographical five book Julia Redfern series (1971–1988). She won the National Book Award for Court of the Stone Children in 1973, and was a runner up for To The Green Mountains in 1979.
In addition to her fiction work, Cameron wrote two books of criticism and reflection on children's literature. The first, The Green and Burning Tree, was released in 1969 and led an increased profile for Cameron in the world of children's literature. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s Cameron worked as a traveling speaker and contributor to publications such as The Horn Book Magazine, Wilson Library Bulletin, and Children's Literature in Education. She was also a member of the founding editorial board for the children's magazine Cricket, which debuted in 1973. In 1972 she and Roald Dahl exchanged barbs across three issues of The Horn Book, a magazine devoted to critical discussions of children's and young adult fiction. Her second book of essays, The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books, came out in 1993. It is her final published book.
From late 1967 until her death Cameron made her home in Pebble Beach, California. She died in hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84.[
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 3, 2018
Long ago and long ago and even before that, came the Mycetians to Earth from Basidium, the Mushroom Planet. Much of their history has been lost to Deep Time, but it is known that they were stranded on this planet, and eventually wound up settling in the mountains of Wales. In recent times, the new leader of the Mycetians, Tyco Bass, with the aid of human boys Chuck Masterton and David Topman, has re-established communications with the Mushroom Planet.
Mr. Bass and his young friends have had many fine adventures. A new one begins when it is learned that two relics of the Mycetian people have been stolen, the Necklace of Ta, and the Thirteenth Scroll, the latter said to have information about the missing years of Mycetian history–if anyone could read it. Our heroes must track down the thief and recover the items, but that will only lead to a battle against ancient evil!
This is the fifth and final book in the Mushroom Planet children’s science fiction series that began with The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet in 1954. Chuck and David, who live in Pacific Grove, California, see an ad in the newspaper asking for a rocketship to be built by clever boys, with a reward offered. They build a small ship out of materials lying around, meet Mr. Bass, who installs the parts to make the ship actually work, and fly to the invisible moon Basidium and meet its people.
Back in its day, this series was very popular, and it’s easy to see why. There’s fast-paced action, a general sense of wonder, and the ending is terrific as a farewell to the series.
However, in a number of ways the series is very dated. Real-life space exploration tore the suspension of disbelief for the invisible moon stuff, the paucity of decent female characters is notable, and as the stories went along they became much more science fantasy than science fiction.
The book falls fairly neatly into two sections. In the first, the stolen items must be recovered. This is made a bit complicated by the thief selling bits of the necklace to other people. The stones of Ta cause a person’s passions to become unhealthy obsessions with a Basidian twist. For an example, a doctor who wants to heal sick people becomes obsessed with mushrooms as a panacea for all ills.
Mr. Bass and the boys must appeal to each victim’s underlying true nature to get them to relinquish the stones. This bit had a very C.S. Lewis feel to it.
Introduced during this part, and taking center stage in the second half of the book, is Mycetian history. While Mr. Bass is over five hundred years old, and the story does convey something of how that affects him, he has a connection to an even older ancestor, the Bassyd. Elder Grandfather (as he is called by Mr. Bass) was a bard at the court of King Arthur, and had been given great powers by the Ancient Ones who later gave them to Mr. Bass.
But all his powers could not save Arthur if the king would not take his advice, and the other lords did not support their ruler. Also, both Arthur and the Bassyd had an enemy (whose name is never given but is nicknamed Narrow Brain) who was jealous of the Bassyd’s power and sought to steal the magic that the Bassyd did not have. After Arthur’s death at Camlann, Narrow Brain tracked down and murdered the Bassyd, burying him in an unknown location.
This somehow gave Narrow Brain a form of immortality and supernatural powers. We learn that the reason there’s no indisputable physical evidence of the reign of Arthur is because Narrow Brain down the centuries methodically destroyed it. With the loss of the Bassyd, the Mycetians also lost valuable knowledge of their past, and have slowly withered as a people ever since.
Now that the scroll has been recovered, the translation process (including a side trip to Basidium for more clues) attracts Narrow Brain’s attention, and the ancient evil strikes again and again in an attempt to prevent the truth from coming to light.
Of the boys, young dreamer David is more prominent than Chuck, as his second sight is repeatedly useful, while Chuck’s more grounded approach is de-emphasized.
These books (past the first) are now difficult to find; your best bet is libraries with superior children’s collections. Primarily recommended to readers with nostalgia for the 1950s-1960s, and secondarily to collectors of Arthuriana.
Mr. Bass and his young friends have had many fine adventures. A new one begins when it is learned that two relics of the Mycetian people have been stolen, the Necklace of Ta, and the Thirteenth Scroll, the latter said to have information about the missing years of Mycetian history–if anyone could read it. Our heroes must track down the thief and recover the items, but that will only lead to a battle against ancient evil!
This is the fifth and final book in the Mushroom Planet children’s science fiction series that began with The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet in 1954. Chuck and David, who live in Pacific Grove, California, see an ad in the newspaper asking for a rocketship to be built by clever boys, with a reward offered. They build a small ship out of materials lying around, meet Mr. Bass, who installs the parts to make the ship actually work, and fly to the invisible moon Basidium and meet its people.
Back in its day, this series was very popular, and it’s easy to see why. There’s fast-paced action, a general sense of wonder, and the ending is terrific as a farewell to the series.
However, in a number of ways the series is very dated. Real-life space exploration tore the suspension of disbelief for the invisible moon stuff, the paucity of decent female characters is notable, and as the stories went along they became much more science fantasy than science fiction.
The book falls fairly neatly into two sections. In the first, the stolen items must be recovered. This is made a bit complicated by the thief selling bits of the necklace to other people. The stones of Ta cause a person’s passions to become unhealthy obsessions with a Basidian twist. For an example, a doctor who wants to heal sick people becomes obsessed with mushrooms as a panacea for all ills.
Mr. Bass and the boys must appeal to each victim’s underlying true nature to get them to relinquish the stones. This bit had a very C.S. Lewis feel to it.
Introduced during this part, and taking center stage in the second half of the book, is Mycetian history. While Mr. Bass is over five hundred years old, and the story does convey something of how that affects him, he has a connection to an even older ancestor, the Bassyd. Elder Grandfather (as he is called by Mr. Bass) was a bard at the court of King Arthur, and had been given great powers by the Ancient Ones who later gave them to Mr. Bass.
But all his powers could not save Arthur if the king would not take his advice, and the other lords did not support their ruler. Also, both Arthur and the Bassyd had an enemy (whose name is never given but is nicknamed Narrow Brain) who was jealous of the Bassyd’s power and sought to steal the magic that the Bassyd did not have. After Arthur’s death at Camlann, Narrow Brain tracked down and murdered the Bassyd, burying him in an unknown location.
This somehow gave Narrow Brain a form of immortality and supernatural powers. We learn that the reason there’s no indisputable physical evidence of the reign of Arthur is because Narrow Brain down the centuries methodically destroyed it. With the loss of the Bassyd, the Mycetians also lost valuable knowledge of their past, and have slowly withered as a people ever since.
Now that the scroll has been recovered, the translation process (including a side trip to Basidium for more clues) attracts Narrow Brain’s attention, and the ancient evil strikes again and again in an attempt to prevent the truth from coming to light.
Of the boys, young dreamer David is more prominent than Chuck, as his second sight is repeatedly useful, while Chuck’s more grounded approach is de-emphasized.
These books (past the first) are now difficult to find; your best bet is libraries with superior children’s collections. Primarily recommended to readers with nostalgia for the 1950s-1960s, and secondarily to collectors of Arthuriana.
December 23, 2012
The final book in the children's series finds Tyco and the boys, David and chuck out to right a wrong done to an ancestor of Tyco's, a man alive during the time of King Arthur. He'd disappeared, presumed murdered, his bones not put in the ancestral burial grounds in Wales.
An old enemy still stalks the Mycetians and is out to destroy Tyco because he's the last Mycetian afforded the powers of the Ancient Ones, the ability to think himself instantly to any place he could see in his mind. His current home was on a small planet in galaxy M-81, millions of light years away.
Tyoc and the boys have to recover a scroll and old Ta's necklace, stolen, going from Wales to Stonehenge to London, picking up stones from the necklace that bring bad luck to the holder, so they can return to Basidium, the Mushroom planet to decipher the strange language of the scroll.
Lot of fun for this old geezer.
An old enemy still stalks the Mycetians and is out to destroy Tyco because he's the last Mycetian afforded the powers of the Ancient Ones, the ability to think himself instantly to any place he could see in his mind. His current home was on a small planet in galaxy M-81, millions of light years away.
Tyoc and the boys have to recover a scroll and old Ta's necklace, stolen, going from Wales to Stonehenge to London, picking up stones from the necklace that bring bad luck to the holder, so they can return to Basidium, the Mushroom planet to decipher the strange language of the scroll.
Lot of fun for this old geezer.
October 29, 2017
Many fantasy series deepen as they go along; Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Cycle and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come immediately to mind. But this final novel in Eleanor Cameron's five-book Mushroom Planet series is truly a leap. The earlier books, which came out between 1954 and 1960, are good light fun, but Time and Mr. Bass, which appeared in 1967, is rich, deep, intense, passionate, and unforgettable. The sense of evil is similar to that in Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 A Wrinkle in Time, which may have been an influence. It would be perfectly possible to read this book before the others and still thoroughly enjoy it.
November 20, 2018
Great kids story. I would say pre Hardy boys/Nancy drew age group.
March 27, 2022
Once again, Mr. Bass is needed for the Mycetian League, so he needs to return to Wales as soon as he can. Once he arrives with our stalwart companions, David and Chuck, discovers that the remaining one of thirteen scrolls from the Ancient Ones has been stolen (the other twelve have been missing for centuries), along with gems given to the League by King Ta of precious, and unique nature. Sadly, they were stolen by a trusted human- as they would say, an Other One.
While, in Wales, Mr. Bass takes the opportunity to tell the boys more about himself, the League. and their history. Who could have guessed how old Mr. Bass is, that his ability to travel by thought is extremely rare, and that the Mycetian League goes back further then the time of King Arthur, and to tell the tale of an evil presence that has plagued the League since that time.
Part One: The Necklace
In pursuit of the stolen gems, the boys, and Mr. Bass encounter how the humans that bought a Stone from Penmaen Perry are each drastically effected. Once a human posesses one of these stones they instantly become obsessed with an aspect - we later discover - connects to the inner core of each gem. By these clues of madness, the trail isn't too difficult to follow.
The author takes advantage of an British setting by offering several pieces of dialogue with regional accents, which always reminds me of Dickens.
Part Two: The Scroll
The author is one to use an interesting fact to weave into the. tale. In this volume she offers the Boghaz tablets, the Hamath stones, boustrophedon, and several ancient languages. Now the scroll must be deciphered, and the best way to do that is return to Basidium to consult with the cousin of Mr. Bass, Mr. Theo and the other elders of the planet to see what they have discovered. While exploring the writings on the wall of the Hall of Writings in the Lost City, the boys explore the dazzling wildlife to be found on Basidium. Once they return to Wales for the meeting of the League, all is revealed.
While, in Wales, Mr. Bass takes the opportunity to tell the boys more about himself, the League. and their history. Who could have guessed how old Mr. Bass is, that his ability to travel by thought is extremely rare, and that the Mycetian League goes back further then the time of King Arthur, and to tell the tale of an evil presence that has plagued the League since that time.
Part One: The Necklace
In pursuit of the stolen gems, the boys, and Mr. Bass encounter how the humans that bought a Stone from Penmaen Perry are each drastically effected. Once a human posesses one of these stones they instantly become obsessed with an aspect - we later discover - connects to the inner core of each gem. By these clues of madness, the trail isn't too difficult to follow.
The author takes advantage of an British setting by offering several pieces of dialogue with regional accents, which always reminds me of Dickens.
Part Two: The Scroll
The author is one to use an interesting fact to weave into the. tale. In this volume she offers the Boghaz tablets, the Hamath stones, boustrophedon, and several ancient languages. Now the scroll must be deciphered, and the best way to do that is return to Basidium to consult with the cousin of Mr. Bass, Mr. Theo and the other elders of the planet to see what they have discovered. While exploring the writings on the wall of the Hall of Writings in the Lost City, the boys explore the dazzling wildlife to be found on Basidium. Once they return to Wales for the meeting of the League, all is revealed.
July 7, 2017
Mr. Bass need's David's and Chuck's help in a battle against evil and time. Rife with adventure, second sight, another trip to Basidium and plenty of adventures on earth, this is another fun adventure in the Mushroom Planet Series. It was written a good decade or so after the first, but keeps its appeal for children of all ages. A little scifi, a little magic, a little fantasy, a lot of fun.
March 8, 2019
Basidiumites and Welsh legends.
July 7, 2025
Quality children's reading. well written and entertaining, with a challenging vocabulary for a young child.
March 15, 2015
Good conclusion to the Mushroom Planet books... a little tedious in spots but satisfying in the end. Written in 1967 it is actually older than I am and I could see this series being the inspiration for young people to want to be astronauts. I finally have read all five, having heard the first in fourth grade and I won't tell you how many years ago that was. Recommend to all young people ages like eight to twelve.
December 12, 2025
This is the book that inspired me to write my own novel -- to go to Wales and have my own adventures there -- to write to the author, Eleanor Cameron, who I subsequently met and enjoyed a correspondence with that lasted the rest of her life. -- (2025) and it remains one of my favorite books to go back and reread.
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June 12, 2009Time And Mr Bass by Cameron (1967)
June 16, 2008
I read this is elementary school and reread it earlier this year.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews