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Rick Brant Science-Adventures #10
The Golden Skull
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The Ifugaos, faces distorted with hatred and fury, pursued them.
Rick Brant is a boy who with his pal Scotty lives on an island called Spindrift and takes part in so many thrilling adventures and baffling mysteries involving science and electronic.
Rick Brant is the central character in a series of 24 adventure and mystery novels by John Blaine, a pseudonym for authors Harold L. Goodwin (all titles) and Peter J. Harkins (co-author of the first three). The series was published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1947 and 1968, with the previously unpublished title, The Magic Talisman printed in 1990 in a limited edition as the concluding #24.[1]
In the series, teenaged Rick Brant and his ex-Marine pal, Don Scott [Scotty] live on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey, where Rick's father, Hartson Brant, heads the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists. Rick and Scotty are involved in various adventures at home and abroad. Besides Hartson Brant, the recurring supporting characters in the series include:
* Barbara Brant (Barby), Rick's younger sister
* Chahda, a resourceful youth from India
* Janice Miller (Jan), daughter of Dr. Walter Miller, a Spindrift scientist, and Rick's girlfriend
* Dismal [Diz], the Brant family dog
* Steve Ames, an agent of "JANIG", the fictional Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Group
The Ifugaos, faces distorted with hatred and fury, pursued them.
Rick Brant is a boy who with his pal Scotty lives on an island called Spindrift and takes part in so many thrilling adventures and baffling mysteries involving science and electronic.
Rick Brant is the central character in a series of 24 adventure and mystery novels by John Blaine, a pseudonym for authors Harold L. Goodwin (all titles) and Peter J. Harkins (co-author of the first three). The series was published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1947 and 1968, with the previously unpublished title, The Magic Talisman printed in 1990 in a limited edition as the concluding #24.[1]
In the series, teenaged Rick Brant and his ex-Marine pal, Don Scott [Scotty] live on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey, where Rick's father, Hartson Brant, heads the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists. Rick and Scotty are involved in various adventures at home and abroad. Besides Hartson Brant, the recurring supporting characters in the series include:
* Barbara Brant (Barby), Rick's younger sister
* Chahda, a resourceful youth from India
* Janice Miller (Jan), daughter of Dr. Walter Miller, a Spindrift scientist, and Rick's girlfriend
* Dismal [Diz], the Brant family dog
* Steve Ames, an agent of "JANIG", the fictional Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Group
214 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
7 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
John Blaine
165 books9 followers"John Blaine" was a pseudonym of Harold Leland Goodwin and Peter J. Harkins.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 13, 2018
The Golden Skull is the tenth Rick Brant adventure, and is one of the more adventure-oriented rather than scientifically-based volumes in the series. (Or, rather, the science is archaeology a la Indiana Jones.) Rick and Scotty fly off to the Philippines, along with Dr. Tony Briotti, to search for the titular golden skull. I thought the depiction of the natives was, for the time, particularly sympathetic and realistic. It's a little hard to believe that the two boys and one adult scientist (rather than the Marines or local constabulary) would have all the detailed adventures and solutions, but what the heck. The same setting and many of the characters reappear in just four more volumes in The Pirates of Shan. Anyway, in this book, the day is eventually saved and many Johnny Quest-like adventures are had along the way. The Rick Brant books were a series of boys' (today they'd just be labeled "y.a.") scientific (originally called "electronic") adventures that were written between the late '40s and '60s. They were in many ways superior to the better-known Tom Swift, Jr. books; they were more realistic and included descriptions of projects and puzzles that engaged the reader, as well as having more down-to-earth settings and set-ups and more realistic and likable characters. Rick lived on Spindrift Island, the location of a small but superior scientific facility headed by his father, Hartson Brant, along with his friend Scotty (who was originally an ex-Marine veteran of World War Two), his younger sister Barby, his mother (who was never named other than "Mom" or "Mrs. Brant" so far as I can recall, and a large and expanding likable cast of scientists, and including Dismal (Diz), the family dog. Spindrift was a lovely and wonderful location, as detailed by the map on the endpapers in each volume, with a farm, a rocket launcher, cliffs and woods, a pirate's field, a dock and airfield, an orchard, a large house and laboratory facility; in short, everything a right-thinking young person of the 1950's could ever need. There was a fine and ever-changing cast of supporting characters in addition to the Island residents, including Chahda (an enterprising and bright young friend from India), and Agent Steve Ames, government liaison beyond compare, whom I always believed to be related to Harlan Ames, the security chief in the Tom Swift, Jr. books. Typically the stories started at home, on Spindrift, and then took the boys to some remote and exotic location in the company of one or more of the cast of scientists, where they would have adventures, solve mysteries, and perform valuable scientific experiments and research. They're fun and exciting stories despite inevitable dating, and I am enjoying revisiting them.
October 9, 2024
This series seems to be a middle ground between the Hardy Boys and the Tom Swift Jr. series. It was fun to read and my son and I will certainly try to find more of the books. If you get the feeling that this series (early to mid 1950s) may have influenced the Johnny Quest series (1964), I agree completely.
Rick and his friend Scotty are a bit older than Frank and Joe. Matter of fact, Scotty is more than a bit, having fought in the final year of WWII. I got the feeling he may have lied about his age, but he is certainly older than Rick. Another friend in this group is Chahda, a young man from India they added to their team in a previous adventure.
Rick's Dad runs The Spindrift organization, a team of scientists that perform their own research on an island off the coast of New Jersey. This group occasionally works for the U.S. Government. There is a regular team of scientists that appear in many of the adventures. I'd liken them to the team of geniuses gathered by Doc Savage.
The Science of the books is just that, real science. There are no flying laboratories or orbital rockets, and certainly no rocket packs or one-eyed spider robots. The group flies around in an aircraft called The Sky Wagon, the name for the Cessna 180, and later, the Cessna 185. The description of the aircraft is excellent and, according to fans and owners, flew like a dream. The 185 is still in use in many parts of the world.
In this adventure, Rick, Scotty and Chahda travel to the Philippines to help a new member of the team, archeologist Tony Briotti, find a legendary golden skull which would help prove the early culture of the Philippines was as advanced as the early Chinese and comparative to the Aztecs as well.
There is betrayal, phony identities, attempt assassinations, and a pretty good breakdown of how an archeological dig works. It was cut short due to an attack of indigenous Filipinos, but this is a work of fiction after all!
Highly recommended for fans of old school young adventure novels and especially for fans of Tom Swift that are looking for a new series to read and consume.
Find it! Buy it! READ IT!
Rick and his friend Scotty are a bit older than Frank and Joe. Matter of fact, Scotty is more than a bit, having fought in the final year of WWII. I got the feeling he may have lied about his age, but he is certainly older than Rick. Another friend in this group is Chahda, a young man from India they added to their team in a previous adventure.
Rick's Dad runs The Spindrift organization, a team of scientists that perform their own research on an island off the coast of New Jersey. This group occasionally works for the U.S. Government. There is a regular team of scientists that appear in many of the adventures. I'd liken them to the team of geniuses gathered by Doc Savage.
The Science of the books is just that, real science. There are no flying laboratories or orbital rockets, and certainly no rocket packs or one-eyed spider robots. The group flies around in an aircraft called The Sky Wagon, the name for the Cessna 180, and later, the Cessna 185. The description of the aircraft is excellent and, according to fans and owners, flew like a dream. The 185 is still in use in many parts of the world.
In this adventure, Rick, Scotty and Chahda travel to the Philippines to help a new member of the team, archeologist Tony Briotti, find a legendary golden skull which would help prove the early culture of the Philippines was as advanced as the early Chinese and comparative to the Aztecs as well.
There is betrayal, phony identities, attempt assassinations, and a pretty good breakdown of how an archeological dig works. It was cut short due to an attack of indigenous Filipinos, but this is a work of fiction after all!
Highly recommended for fans of old school young adventure novels and especially for fans of Tom Swift that are looking for a new series to read and consume.
Find it! Buy it! READ IT!
March 14, 2015
An exciting romp!!
May 19, 2020
Rick and the gang go to the Philippines for an archaeological dig, looking for the eponymous golden skull. Corrupt government officials want to steal it to sell on the black market, and head-hunting natives want to stop them because it will desecrate their land. The head-hunters, however, are more than happy to have a chance at their heads.
April 29, 2022
Set against an archeological expedition, this Rick Brant story is an adventure. The cultural attitudes and social commentary is dated due to the year it was written, however the book holds up fairly well and did not contain offensive language or attitudes.
October 8, 2017
Read a few Rick Brant series books back in the 70s
August 12, 2021
It was a fun read but it didn't knock my socks off. I'll most likely forget most of what happened in the book a few months from now.
August 24, 2024
This book though similar to many in the genre like a Tom Swift is a bit different. The death-threatening adventures and attempts against them don't start immediately. Once they do, they are very serious in nature and somewhat realistic the situations they get into: someone shooting at them, being attacked by a group of indigenous people who have been told the Americans are planning on looting their religious relics, etc. Tom Swift's adventures sometimes don't seem as threatening because they are less realistic like fighting aliens.
Another difference is that the writer acknowledges, more than once, that the native people of the Philippines have a complex and developed society that has existed for millennia. Rick Brant and his compatriots only want to discover the artifacts to take pictures of, measure, etc. and for them to stay in the area where they were found, to be used in religious ceremonies and to have a museum instead of taking it or their own or installing it in Manila. (This is a step forward from most books of this genre, boys or girls books, where the characters usually want to take it to America and keep it in a private collection or maybe give it to a museum in the United States where people would know how to "properly" take care of it.) Of course, there are definite prejudice and bias that most noticeable appears in the front of the book in the picture of Ifugaos in breech-cloths holding spears and racing after the "heroes."
If you are easily offended by the racial prejudice and Western bias of books of this time-period and genre without being able to put it in context, you shouldn't books of these series. This book is better than most but it is inevitable part of all of these stories.
Another difference is that the writer acknowledges, more than once, that the native people of the Philippines have a complex and developed society that has existed for millennia. Rick Brant and his compatriots only want to discover the artifacts to take pictures of, measure, etc. and for them to stay in the area where they were found, to be used in religious ceremonies and to have a museum instead of taking it or their own or installing it in Manila. (This is a step forward from most books of this genre, boys or girls books, where the characters usually want to take it to America and keep it in a private collection or maybe give it to a museum in the United States where people would know how to "properly" take care of it.) Of course, there are definite prejudice and bias that most noticeable appears in the front of the book in the picture of Ifugaos in breech-cloths holding spears and racing after the "heroes."
If you are easily offended by the racial prejudice and Western bias of books of this time-period and genre without being able to put it in context, you shouldn't books of these series. This book is better than most but it is inevitable part of all of these stories.
February 26, 2016
Rick Brant and his friend Scotty are helping a Spindrift scientist with his planned archealogical dig in the Philippines. Tony is looking for the fabled Golden Skull, buried among the rice terraces in the mountains. They haven't even reached Manila when an attempt is made on Tony's life as they ship bound on their way into port and this is just the beginning. It quickly becomes obvious that someone wants to stop them and that another party wants them to succeed only to be able to take control of the Skull.
This was my first Rick Brant, although I'm sure I've owned a few over the years as I buy any Grosset Dunlap series book I see. The science comes in not just with the archeology, but with the plane Rick brings with him, the tools they use and even some anthropology as they discuss the natives of the Philippine Islands.
The Golden Skull was almost a travelogue of Manila and the islands. It was an interesting view of the country Post World War II. Given the time it was written, I felt like it was quite respectful of the various cultures they met up with. Indigenous Philippine or Hindu, they all spoke broken English, but they were presented as intelligent, creative and brave - just as likely to rescue our American heroes as be rescued. All in all, it was a fun book.
This was my first Rick Brant, although I'm sure I've owned a few over the years as I buy any Grosset Dunlap series book I see. The science comes in not just with the archeology, but with the plane Rick brings with him, the tools they use and even some anthropology as they discuss the natives of the Philippine Islands.
The Golden Skull was almost a travelogue of Manila and the islands. It was an interesting view of the country Post World War II. Given the time it was written, I felt like it was quite respectful of the various cultures they met up with. Indigenous Philippine or Hindu, they all spoke broken English, but they were presented as intelligent, creative and brave - just as likely to rescue our American heroes as be rescued. All in all, it was a fun book.
May 18, 2020
A pretty exciting adventure but with some mildly racist overtones.
At one point, while a an archeologist is describing the accomplishments of the indigenous people, Scotty says, "you almost talk as if they were civilized"
The sciency thing is a souped up metal detector. If these were updated, it would probably use ground penetrating radar or something.
At one point, while a an archeologist is describing the accomplishments of the indigenous people, Scotty says, "you almost talk as if they were civilized"
The sciency thing is a souped up metal detector. If these were updated, it would probably use ground penetrating radar or something.
December 20, 2013
I'm once more reminded at how good these "Juvenile," we'd call it young adult today, science-adventure novels were and still are. Some mystery, some adventure, interesting characters, bad guys who aren't all bad, this is an exceptional series. It's much better than its competition from the 50s and 60s such as Tom Swift Jr. and Nancy Drew.
February 14, 2013
How did I not read these before? They're like an anthropological version of the Willard Price Adventure books, with a dash of Indiana Jones. Cracking, breakneck adventure, set in the unusual location of the Philippines. Now I'm going to hunt out the rest of the series.
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September 16, 2016See my review at: http://tims-reviews.blogspot.com/2016...
December 12, 2013
another amazing book by john blaine! I want to read more!!!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews