The Frank Reade Adventures were written by a number of authors and began with “Noname”’s “Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains, or, The Terror of the West” (Boys of New York #28, February 28, 1876). “Noname,” in this case, was the pseudonym of Harry Enton (1854-1927), a medical doctor and author of dime novels. In the 1880s and 1890s, for American boys, the Frank Reade Adventures were “apparently the utmost in science fiction adventure—no matter what we think of them now—and they were read out of existence.”¹

There were three Frank Reades: Frank Reade, who appeared in four serials, 1876-1880; his son, Frank Reade, Jr., who appeared in 182 stories, 1881-1899; and Jr.’s son, Young Frank Reade, who appeared in one serial, 1899. Although the stories were written by several authors, the series’ main authors were Harry Enton (as “Noname”), writing the Frank Reade stories, and Luis Senarens (1863-1939) (as “Noname”), writing the Frank Reade, Jr. stories. There were mild variations between the various Frank Reades, but those variations are differences without distinction, and this entry will treat them as one character.

The stories about the three Frank Reades were the most famous and successful of the Edisonade dime novel series and were in many ways the most representative of them. Frank Reade was not the first Edisonade hero; that was Edward S. Ellis’ Johnny Brainerd (see: “The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies”). The Frank Reade stories were not the best-written Edisonades; those were Robert Toombs’ Electric Bob Adventures. But the Reade series had the most longevity of any of the Edisonades, lasting for 187 stories over twenty-three years, and were the most influential of the Edisonades.

Frank Reade was created after Ellis’ “The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies” had been reissued in Beadle’s Pocket Novels #40 (January 4, 1876) to some success. Frank Tousey, the publisher of the Tousey family of magazines, saw how profitable “The Steam Man of the Prairies” was for his rival, the Beadle House publishers, and decided that he wanted something similar. Tousey commissioned Harry Enton to write the story. Enton agreed and produced “Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains.” In this story Frank Reade is a sixteen-year-old living in New York City. He is “of a studious nature, and quite a thinker, was pale, slim, and not over-strong.”² He decides to construct a steam man, which becomes an improved version of Brainerd’s creation (although Brainerd is never named or referred to). Reade, his cousin Charley Gorse, and Reade’s Steam Man travel to the western frontier and have the predictable Edisonade adventures, fighting Indians, bad men, and buffalo, and enriching themselves in the process. Three sequels followed. In these stories Reade continued his adventures on the frontier and produced further steam engines and variations of steam men and steam horses.

But Tousey had forced Enton to use the Tousey company pseudonym “Noname” on two of the Frank Reade stories, and Enton was dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Enton wanted to receive credit for every Frank Reade story, which Frank Tousey was unwilling to give him. Enton and Tousey quarreled, and Enton quit the series. Tousey then approached Luis Senarens to replace Enton. In Senarens' first story, “Frank Reade Jr. and His Steam Wonder” (The Boys of New York, Feb. 4-Apr 29, 1882), Frank Reade has suddenly become aged and is a retiree in Readestown, “the smart little town where several generations of Reades had dwelt.”³ Reade is happy, enjoying his sedate lifestyle and tending to his steam-powered garden, but Reade's son, Frank Reade, Jr., is not. Junior has drive and energy:

Frank Reade was noted the world over as a wonderful and distinguished inventor of marvelous machines in the line of steam and electricity. But he had grown old and unable to knock about the world, as he had been wont once to do.

So it happened that his son, Frank Reade, Jr., a handsome and talented young man, succeeded his father as a great inventor, even excelling him in variety and complexity of invention. The son speedily outstripped his sire.

The great machine shops in Readestown were enlarged by young Frank, and new flying machines, electric wonders, and so forth, were brought into being.⁴

But outstripping his father is not enough for Junior, and when news comes to Readestown that an innocent man has been unfairly convicted of a crime and jailed, Junior decides to intervene. He takes his new Steam Man out West, along with Barney and Pomp, his father's two servants. Dozens of adventures followed, and Junior kept inventing new steam and later electric machines and kept getting wealthier.

In 1899, a few months after the last Frank Reade, Jr. story had appeared, an unknown author, using the Tousey house pseudonym of “Noname,” wrote the only Young Frank Reade story. In “Young Frank Reade and his Electric Air Ship; or, A 10,000 Mile Search for a Missing Man” (Happy Days, Oct. 14-Dec. 1, 1899) Frank Reade, Jr. has, like his father before him, suddenly become a middle-aged retiree. Frank Reade, Jr’s son, Young Frank, has his father’s adventuring spirit and builds his own wonder craft, a special airship. Young Frank then leaves Readestown in search of a missing family friend. Young Frank, who is a virtual twin of his father, is assisted by his sister, Kate, who is spunky and resourceful and in most ways just like her brother, father, and grandfather.

Although the first adventures of the Reades are on the American western frontier, before long the Reades are traveling around the world, from Siberia to Australia to the Andes. Like the other Edisonade heroes, the Frank Reade series combines the traditional adventure story motive of treasure hunting with propaganda for imperialistic expansion and violent plotlines which demonstrate the superiority of White Men over non-Whites. Racism and ethnic bias were an essential part of the Edisonades and of the Frank Reade stories in particular. In the world of all three Frank Reades, only WASPs are civilized. Immigrants are a criminal threat to the integrity of the country, Native Americans are savages, Mexicans are cruel “greasers,” Jews are greedy and treacherous, and blacks, whether African or African-American, are subhuman brutes deserving of mass slaughter. In Frank Reade’s first appearance he gleefully kills over 200 Native Americans. In “The Mysterious Mirage; or, Frank Reade, Jr.’s Desert Search for a Secret City with his New Overland Chaise” (Frank Reade Library #113, Aug 9, 1895) Frank and his companions find a Lost Race of “original Hebrews,” who are tall, blond, peaceful, and Christian. One of Frank’s companions, the journalist Hilton, describes “the Hebrew, the Israelite, and the Jew as all one race, dark-skinned, coarse-featured and the enemies of Christ.”⁵ When meeting Mexicans, in “Frank Reade, Jr., and his Air Ship” (Boys of New York, Dec. 1, 1883) Frank’s opinion is that “greasers” are cowardly, vain, stupid, and vicious, and Frank shows no compunction and no small pleasure at murdering them by the dozens.

However, the Frank Reade stories are not unrelievedly negative about non-WASPs. Frank’s two servants, Barney O'Shea and Pomp, are respectively Irish and African-American. Barney O'Shea is a stereotypical Irishman, loving brawling and alcohol, and lethal with his shillelagh. Pomp embodies most of the contemporary negative stereotypes of African-Americans, and E.F. Bleiler accurately describes him as an “embodied slur.”⁶ The pair join up with Frank Reade in his first two stories, and when Frank, Jr., went adventuring the two accompanied him. When Young Frank Reade went adventuring the sons of Barney and Pomp went with him. Barney and Pomp fight each other in nearly every story, and often require rescuing by Frank, although they often help Frank, and even save his life on occasion. The series portray both Barney and Pomp in mixed terms. Pomp’s physical appearance corresponds to every racist stereotype, as does his speech, but Pomp genuinely cares for Frank and is willing to risk his life to save him, and Pomp is shown as having some talents beyond what a stereotype might possess. Pomp is one of the greatest horsemen who ever lived and is a deadly shot. There is a genuine (if hidden) affection between Pomp and Barney, despite their endless squabbling. Both are involved in the operations of the Reades’ machines and ships in a more than menial way. And both Pomp and Barney are shown as being capable of feats of real heroism, inspired by fair play and patriotism. But despite the positive elements of Barney and Pomp’s characters the Frank Reade series as a whole has an implicit assumption of the superiority of the WASP and the corresponding inferiority of non-WASPs, even if, after “Franke Reade, Jr.’s Marvel; or, Above and Below Water” (Frank Reade Library 27, May 10, 1894), Frank Reade Jr. “suddenly makes a statement for tolerance¼[and] the racial types and interracial byplay¼somewhat softened.”⁷

The racism of the Frank Reade stories is a more emphatic version of the ethnic bias common to most dime novels of the time. The inventions in the series were not. The imagination behind the inventions, and the way in which the writers of the stories fetishized the inventions—something writers like Verne and Wells refrained from doing—were new to dime novels. It was the Frank Reade series, rather than the Johnny Brainerd story, which inspired imitations and essentially founded the Edisonade genre, and it is the Frank Reade stories which are the precursors to pulp science fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. In the pulps the characterization of the super-scientists are of secondary importance to their brand new inventions and discoveries. The technology and weapons fetishism of the Frank Reade stories can still be seen today in the works of techno-thriller writers like the long line of Tom Clancy imitators.

Harry Enton’s work is undistinguished and no different from that of his contemporaries. But Luis Senarens’ stories, which make up 174 of the 182 Frank Reade stories, are an exaggerated version of what appears in other dime novel stories. The racism is more poisonous, the position of whites is more privileged, and the idea of America’s Manifest Destiny is more implicitly taken for granted. The plotting is lazier, the cruelty more sadistic, the adventures bloodier, the dialogue more awkward, the violence and sadism rendered more acutely, and the facts more badly researched and incorrect. “The Africa that Senarens wrote about is the Africa of Paul Du Chaillu, Richard Burton, and Henry Stanley, suitably distorted. His Russia was the Czarist Empire, with its slave labor and oppression, while Mexico was a somewhat hostile power that needed to be shown.”⁸

But Senarens’ ideas for Reade, Jr.’s machines were also more interesting than those of Senarens’ contemporaries or successors. Reade, Jr.’s Steam Man is capable of speeds of fifty mph and can shoot “fiery missiles.” Reade’s first airship, the Cloud Cutter, is a sea vessel pulled aloft by propellers; its decks can be electrified in case boarders take the ship, as happened when Reade attacked a gang of Siberian bandits, and the ship is stocked with anti-smallpox “disinfectants.” Reade invents the Neptune, a submarine shaped like a ship. The Neptune is armed with torpedoes and limpet mines and its crew has diving suits which allow them to walk on the floor of the ocean. Reade’s Demon of the Clouds is drawn into space in the wake of Verdi’s comet in “Lost in a Comet’s Tail” (Frank Reade Library no. 122, Dec. 13, 1895) and does double duty as a spaceship.

Although pride of place in each story was given to the new ship which the Reades invent, the Reades have other, ancillary inventions, including automatic pistols filled with flashless powder and special bullets; nitroglycerin grenades; steam-powered and later feedless electric locomotives; several varieties of armed, fast-moving airships that are usually variations on the theme of helicopters but occasionally are proto-jets; one-person battery-powered electric flying suits, complete with wings; “electric cannon,” pneumatic machine guns; an early version of the instant camera; motorcycle-like “bicycle cars;” armed and armored "overland omnibuses;" and chariot-like “electric phaetons.”

The Frank Reade Library is often considered the world’s first science-fiction magazine, and in a sense this is true. It was a regular serial publication and the stories belong to one of the strongest subgenres in nineteenth-century science fiction, the invention story.

The actual semiotics of the invention story, however, was likely to vary greatly, depending upon the writer’s national literary tradition. In France, particularly with Verne, the invention was usually associated with a plot of travel or geographical discovery. In Great Britain, however, it was most likely to be found in another subgenre, the imaginary war [see: Future War]¼Frank Reade, however, made little use of the imaginary war, and worked out his inventions in a combination of Vernian geographical story and the native American Western dime novel.⁹

Frank Reade, Jr., the most typical of the three Reades, embodies the Edisonade genre and is the best example of it. He scorns everyone except WASPs; he may treat non-WASPs politely, but his biases are only lightly concealed. He is a polylinguist and a wonderful inventor, with a brilliant mind capable of scientific advancements, but he is egotistical, an unashamed imperialist, and a moral hypocrite. He can, in the same sentence, express an aversion for taking human life but also say “to send the black craft and her crew to the bottom of the sea could be no crime.” The Reade stories are imaginative, but those who read them will need to shower afterwards.

¹ E.F. Bleiler, “Introduction,” The Frank Reade Library volume 1 (New York: Garland, 1979), vii.

² Noname, “Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains, or, The Terror of the West,” Boys of New York (February 28, 1876): 2.

³ Noname, “Frank Reade and His Steam Team,” Boys of New York (Jan 5, 1880): 2.

⁴ Noname, “Frank Reade, Jr., and His New Steam Man; or, The Young Inventor’s Trip to the Far West,” Frank Reade Library 1 (Sept. 24, 1892): 2.

⁵ Noname, “The Mysterious Mirage; or, Frank Reade, Jr.’s Desert Search for a Secret City with his New Overland Chaise,” Frank Reade Library 113 (August 9, 1895): 5.

⁶ Bleiler, “Introduction,” x.

⁷ Bleiler, “Introduction,” x.

⁸ Bleiler, “Introduction,” xi.

⁹ Bleiler, “Introduction,” xii.