Within each Tom Swift novel there are a couple major characters who you get to know, and a lot of secondary characters who walk in, say a few lines, and walk out. You never get the chance to know who they are other that in that context I have set about writing back stories for these people. The novels may not have the 9,000 - 15,000 words to devote to giving you a good background story about them, but these collections do. This fourth book contains stories about Ken Horton, the commander of Tom's Outpost in Space, one about the girlfriend that never was, another about Tom's sister Sandy as she turns sixteen and becomes a very determined young woman, the very first cookbook from Chow Winkler (including his Rattlesnake Soup recipe), and the tale of how the special evacuation device used at the Outpost came to be.