In the 1950s and 1960s, at the dawn of the Rocket Age, we didn’t really know what we would find when we went to another planet. The Moon was clearly airless, but the telescope images of Mars were still indistinct enough to leave open the hope that the canals were real, and Venus was a cloud-covered mystery. Writing boldly into this mystery went Hugh Walters, writing a series of space adventure books where a quartet of young men started off by going into space and then, by virtue of the fact of being the most experienced spacemen, continued on and outwards to the other planets.

I fondly remembered Walters’ books from my childhood, where they were stocked by the local library, but it’s been many years since they featured on any library shelves and, looking idly on Abebooks, I found that second-hand editions were selling for hundreds of pounds, rapidly quashing my idle interest in rereading these books.

Which is where electronic editions of books come in. It’s now possible to republish books at very little cost by making them available on Kindle and similar platforms. As such, it’s worthwhile publishers doing so, as the investment is low and the returns, particularly with books like this that people are searching for, will be steady and long lasting.

I look forward to rereading the adventures of Chris Godfrey (in this universe, an Englishman is, quite properly, the first man in space) and his comrades, and reliving my childhood, when the stars were closer and I might dream of being an astronaut myself.