Synopses & Reviews
Jetpack Dreams chronicles the colorful pop history and science of that most amazing and mysterious of machines, the jetpack. While exploring our collective fascination with flight, the tale takes readers from the first flimsy, shoulder-mounted wings to Bill Suitor's 1984 Olympic flight in front of billions of viewers around the world; from a gruesome jetpack-driven murder in Houston in the mid-1990s to the secret laboratories and government facilities of today. Journalist Mac Montandon also explores Hollywood's fascination with the subject, from the 1949 serial King of the Rocket Men to Lost in Space, The Jetsons and The Rocketeer to the cultural jetpack phenomenon represented by Buck Rogers, James Bond, and Boba Fett. He travels the world to meet jetpack enthusiasts who are readying their own personal flying machines for takeoff. Ultimately, it's the search for an answer to two simple questions: Where is the jetpack that was promised to him, and to all of us, years ago? And if it's out there, can he catch a ride?
Review
AmericanProfile.com, 1/31/10 “A wide-ranging odyssey…Fun, funny, fascinating, full of colorful characters and spiked with unexpected drama, Jetpack Dreams soars to places that might surprise you.”
San Francisco Book Review, March 2010
“[A] thorough, occasionally meandering, love letter to everyone’s favorite not-yet-realized from of transportation…Exhaustively explor[es] the rich history of personalized pyrotechnic-propelled portability…But perhaps the best part of the book is the ongoing examination of why we find them so fascinating, and why we even want jetpacks at all…A merry tribute to a quirky piece of aviation history.”
PopMatters.com, 3/23/10 “A book that is entertaining when it focuses on its proper subject: the jetpack and the people who invented it, its genesis in popular imagination and how its allure continues to lead people to try to build and perfect jetpacks…Great stories all and Montandon manages to tell them with the humor and wit and sympathetic eye they need.”
Midwest Book Review, April 2010
“Offers a lively search for a rocket-powered reality in a fun survey perfect for general lending libraries, science fiction and transportation collections alike.” Vicksburg Post, 10/10/10“Chronicles the colorful pop history and science of that most amazing and mysterious of machines, the jetpack.”
Synopsis
A hilarious pop-socio-cultural history of the greatest invention that never was, the jetpack, and a participatory journey through the bizarre subculture of jetpack enthusiasts in search of a working model
Synopsis
Jetpack Dreams chronicles the colorful pop history and science of that most amazing and mysterious of machines: the jetpack. Fueled by a fascination and lifelong obsession with the power of flight, journalist Mac Montandon goes on a vastly entertaining search of the elusive invention. He examines the jetpacks inspiration from the first shoulder-mounted wings to Bill Suitors 1984 Olympic flight, even uncovering a gruesome jetpack-related murder in Houston. From the earliest days of the pack to its enduring role in popular culturewith Buck Rogers, James Bond, Boba FettMontandon seeks to answer two simple questions: Where is the jetpack that was promised to him, and to all of us, years ago? And if its out there, can he catch a ride?
About the Author
Mac Montandon is the editor of Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader. He has written for the New York Times, Radar, Salon.com, and Interview. He lives in Brooklyn.