The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

Edisonade  

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The Edisonade, coined by critic John Clute after the Robinsonade,¹ can be defined simply enough: it is a story in which a young American male invents a form of transportation and uses it to travel to uncivilized parts of America or the world, enriches himself, and punishes the enemies of the United States, whether domestic (Native Americans) or foreign. The Edisonades were almost entirely an American creation and appeared in dime novels as serials and as complete novels. They were the single largest category of dime novel science fiction and were the direct ancestors not only of twentieth century boys’ fiction characters like Howard R. Garis’ Tom Swift but also one of the fathers of early twentieth century science fiction, especially in the pulps. And the Edisonades were among the most morally reprehensible works of fiction of the nineteenth century, on a par with the dime novels the Confederacy published to glorify slavery.

Although the first Edisonade, Edward S. Ellis’ “The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies” appeared in 1868, the Edisonades did not become successful until 1876, with the first appearance of Harry Enton’s Frank Reade (see: The Frank Reade Adventures). There is no significant difference in textual quality (such as it is) between Ellis’ work and Enton’s, but several environmental changes had taken place to make the figure of the boy inventor more pleasing to the American dime novel audience. The work of Jules Verne (see: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), among others, had established the concept of the engineer/inventor as hero. Although the figure of the scientist was beginning to change from the Frankenstein-like danger to the intrepid scientific adventurer of the early twentieth century, there was still a taint to the figure of the scientist left over from their portrayal in popular fiction as madmen. But the engineer/inventor was a much humbler, realistic character, one who dealt with iron and steam rather than staying secluded in a laboratory, putting into practice dangerous ideas. The engineer/inventor offered the allure of practical science without the danger of experimental science.

Conditions on the western frontier had worsened by the mid-1870s. The discovery of silver and gold in the west in the 1860s had led to an influx of miners and then to the establishment of the Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming territories. The 1870s saw the discovery of silver in Nevada and gold in the Black Hills, and a movement of settlers west to the frontier. This population change, along with the decline in the population of buffalo, had increased pressure on Native Americans in those territories, and the American government had been at war with the Plains Sioux in 1866 and again in 1876, and with the Nez Perce in 1877. The dime novel audience was far more preconditioned to enjoy fiction which glorified the slaughter of Native Americans in 1876 than they had been in 1866, especially following the March 1877 defeat of General George Custer at the Little Big Horn River.

The nature of boy protagonists had changed as well (see: Boy Heroes). The innocence of Tom Brown (see: Tom Brown’s Schooldays) had given way by the mid-1870s to the viciousness of Jack Harkaway (see: The Jack Harkaway’s Adventures). The main character in boys’ fiction became less of a realistic (if idealized) representation of boys and more of a wish-fulfillment figure for boys. The protagonists of boys’ fiction were men in boys’ bodies, independent of parental control and supervision and acting in the stories as if they were the independently wealthy men of mainstream adventure fiction. The appearance and popularity of the boys’ travelogue series in the 1870s, especially Thomas Wallace Knox’s twenty-volume Boy Travelers series (1879-1899), gave rise to boy heroes in other genres, including dime novels.

All of these conditions, not present to any significant degree when Johnny Brainerd first appeared, helped create the success of Frank Reade and the boy inventors who followed him. Enton’s Frank Reade was succeeded by Luis Senarens’ Frank Reade, Jr., who was the dominant Edisonade boy inventor during the 1880s (though not the only one; another series, Fred Hazel’s Ike Anderson stories, appeared briefly in The Boy’s Champion from 1881-1883). The series Edisonade reached its peak in 1891, when both Luis Senarens’ Jack Wright (see: The Jack Wright Adventures) and Philip Reade’s Tom Edison, Jr. (see: The Tom Edison, Jr. Adventures) appeared. Robert Toombs’ Electric Bob (see: The Electric Bob Adventures), appearing in 1893, may have been a satire of a by-then dying genre.

By 1895 the original version of the boy inventor series was finished. What replaced it were shorter series, continually new characters (as opposed to recurring regulars), and an emphasis on the discovery of Lost Races and Lost Worlds (see: The Lost Race Story) and more overtly science fictional environments. The Edisonade motifs began to appear in mainstream science fiction (see: Edison’s Conquest of Mars) and children’s literature, and in the twentieth century influenced the science fictional stories of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, especially the Tom Swift series, and the pulps early in the century. In England the Edisonade format was transformed into something more recognizably British (see: The Ferrers Lord Adventures).

During its heyday, when the boy inventor series was the dominant form of the Edisonade, the stories’ content remained consistent. The main character was always a brilliant, inventive boy (in the world of the Edisonade women were objects to be won rather than persons) whose parent or parents were absent, either through death or because the boy wished to be left alone. He would always create a method of transportation (often but not always armed), a vehicle capable of quickly traversing the land, sea, and/or air. The boy inventor would take his new vehicle to a land where “civilization” had not yet reached: for a long time the American frontier, but in later years the countries of the Third World were the settings. The boy inventor would be accompanied by friends and, in the later years of the Edisonade, by the crew of the inventor’s vehicle. In the early years of the boy inventor Edisonade, the final result of the boy inventor’s trip would be the discovery and acquisition of wealth. In later years the boy inventor’s treasure hunting would become secondary to the destruction of the enemies of white America.

Although exploitative capitalism (via the acquisition of wealth, which was usually owned by native peoples or existed on their land) was important to the boy inventor Edisonade genre and provided a key element of wish fulfillment, the vicarious exercise of bigotry is what lies at the center of the boy inventor Edisonade. The hatred of non-WASPs is not a displacement of anxiety about the fate of country, as took place in British penny dreadfuls and story papers (see: English Jack Amongst the Afghans), but instead a justification of existing biases and American Manifest Destiny. When the boy inventor adventured inside the United States, his enemies were Native Americans, immigrants, blacks, Mexicans, and Mormons. When the boy inventor traveled outside the United States, his enemies were those of the United States itself. Following the Baltimore Affair (see: “A Question of Reciprocity”) the Chileans figured as the villains. During tensions between the United States and Spain over Cuba, the Spanish became the enemy. Countries whose international reputations were low, such as Tsarist Russia, slave-trading Portugal, or China, whether due to piracy or the Boxer Rebellion, also became the target of the boy inventor.

The boy inventor Edisonade is a racist, imperialist genre of stories, full of assumptions about the superiority of white Americans and the moral righteousness of acquisitiveness and expansionism. But despite its morality the genre was undeniably influential on twentieth century science fiction.