"He's Looney, I Tell You!"

 

Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates (1972), by Jerome Beatty Jr. (Illustrations by Gahan Wilson)

This Sunday I finally read Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates after having it in my library for well over a decade. It was bought at one of the now defunct Half Price Books, mainly as a ‘remembrance’ of the first Matthew Looney book read back in grade school, but never browsed for fear of ‘spoilers’ about the two volumes published in between. Well, now I’ve recently bought and read the previous three books, so this Sunday I finally sat down and read Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates.

I found it a pleasant read, but nowhere near as innovative as the first three, which, admittedly, had the advantage of setting things up and exploring their oddities.  I think it benefitted by my having read the previous books; it would have been harder to follow otherwise. MLSP follows the adventures of Matthew Looney, who has advanced through the books from a Cabin Boy to a Commander, and who, in the face of further encroachments from the Earth, is sent on an expedition to found a Moon colony on the distant uninhabited world of Freeholy. This is complicated first by the machinations of his old frenemy, Hector Hornblower (who blows his own horn while hectoring his way into situations), who weasels his way onto the expedition, then by space pirates who locate and hijack their spaceship thanks to Hector’s carelessness. Matthew is set adrift by the pirates into space, and the rest of the tale involves his rescue and his adventures to overcome the pirates and save the expedition.

This was the last of the Matthew adventures in the Looney series by Jerome Beatty. There are three others featuring Matthew’s younger sister, Maria. I shall probably wait a bit before trying to get them; at least two are in the $30 range on Amazon. But I do want to eventually complete the sequence.