Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age by Jared S. Buss

Abstract

Reviewed by: Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age by Jared S. Buss Guillaume De Syon (bio) Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age. By Jared S. Buss. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2017. Pp. 336. Hardcover $34.95. For decades, space age aficionados combing through used bookstore shelves were likely to encounter various copies of Willy Ley's books on space travel. Ley, however, was a deeper and far more complex science popularizer than his space work lets on. As Jared Buss's welcome biography of Ley suggests, the German-born publicist was very much an explorer in the tradition of the Enlightenment. As such, he sought to share scientific knowledge with others, not simply through translation of complex ideas, but by suggesting ways to "domesticate" them. This biography of Ley fills a void in the list of Germans who traveled to United States before and after World War II and rebuilt their lives there. Though he only devotes the first two chapters to Ley's German background, Buss should be praised for endeavoring to solve its many riddles. We learn, for example, that Ley was an early member of the Nazi party, only to abandon his brown association by 1935, when he left Germany. Though troubling, such an instance is not unique; aeronautical publicist Alfred Hildebrandt, for example, sought to join the Nazi party perhaps out of patriotic pride like Ley, only to have his application revoked. More relevant perhaps to his American journey, Ley's lack of formal university training (he was mostly self-taught) may have defined his path far more than his political choices. Buss is at his best in documenting the rise of Ley as a science writer. Though he had been a member of the German rocket society in the 1920s, Ley did not become part of the so-called "rocket team" in the United States despite several attempts at drawing the interest of the military. His autodidact status also affected his relationship with Wernher von Braun. Documentation on the matter is sparse, but while the men were professionally cordial, they were never friends. Ley's publicist path does help explain his bouncing about diverse assignments beyond his space advocacy. From geology (his great passion) to translation (Otto Hahn's autobiography), Ley may have appeared as a kind of rolling stone in scientific journalism. Buss is careful to cast this career in relation to the more mundane need to make a living, and thus reminds us of the challenges science writers often face. At the time, Ley's diverse production cast him into the image of a successful polymath. However, Buss suggests Ley associated his intellectual approach with a life philosophy best summarized as neo-Humboldtian, reflecting enthusiasm for scientific investigation as a cultural phenomenon. Around 1950, as Ley was spreading his space gospel, Bertrand Russell advocated for a "science to save us all from science" in the pages of the New York Times. The [End Page 639] philosopher pointed to the neo-Humboldtian need for fields to associate together and form a cultural amalgam that would reflect a positive scientific culture rather than an individual "tools" approach to solving world problems. As Buss suggests, Ley espoused this neo-Humboldtian outlook despite the fact that fields necessarily specialize. The hope that the space age would succeed in blending ideals of the enlightenment with a kind of romanticism has led some cultural historians to cast space exploration as part of the "age of Aquarius." Buss more aptly echoes Dewitt Douglas Kilgore's analysis that Ley fits into the astrofuturist tradition, but not in a cultist sense. Regretfully, Ley did not live to see humans walk on the moon; he passed away a few weeks before the success of Apollo 11 in summer 1969. Summarizing his legacy, Buss compares Ley to astronaut explorers. There is some value to the conclusion, for the enthusiasm of the likes of Ley was essential to convincing the American public and its representatives to support a space program. Buss, however, goes so far as to suggest selflessness drove such explorers and that such a trait is missing from science and academe nowadays. Neither claim is easily supported, but it is...