The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana
by Jess Nevins
The Tom Edison, Jr. Adventures (1891-1892)
copyright © Jess Nevins 2022
The eleven Tom Edison, Jr. Adventures were written by “Philip Reade” beginning with “Tom Edison, Jr.'s Sky Scraping Trip; or Over the Wild West Like a Flying Squirrel” (Nugget Library #102, July 16, 1891). “Philip Reade” was a house name for writers at Street and Smith. It is not known who created or wrote most of the Tom Edison, Jr., stories, although two are known to have been written by Henry Llewellyn Williams, Jr. (1842-?), a prolific but untalented writer and editor whose best work was in his translations, of Victor Hugo, Dumas père, Balzac, and others. (His translation of Paul Féval’s The Hunchback is mediocre).
Tom Edison, Jr. is a young inventor and adventurer. At the start of “Tom Edison, Jr.'s Sky Scraping Trip” Tom, Jr. is a teenaged orphan living on the left bank of the Mississippi. Tom's mother had died at his birth, and Tom’s father, the celebrated inventor Tom Edison, Sr.—who, it is emphasized, is not Thomas Alva Edison—disappeared years before under mysterious circumstances. Tom, Sr., had invented a “wonder balloon” and was working on a heavier-than-air craft when he disappeared. Tom, Jr. has inherited his father's considerable skill in invention and mechanical matters. Tom, Jr. decides to find out what happened to his father, so he gathers several of his inventions and heads west. Tom, Jr. takes with him a “flying squirrel suit” filled with a gas that permits the wearer to leap for long distances or even float in the air, a team of horses who wear “footsprings” that allow for speeds of up to fifty m.p.h., and a “landrover,” which is armored, durable, mobile and quick, and filled with various weapons. Tom is attacked by various roughnecks and Indians, and he uses his suit to leap sixty feet into the air to avoid his attackers while he shoots at them. Of more danger to Tom is the mysterious outlaw Blue Mask who flies above Tom’s landrover in a huge aircraft and drops bombs on them. Blue Mask’s aircraft is the Cloud Jumper, a balloon which is filled with gas but electrically operated and propelled by rotary blades and flapping wings. It is soon revealed that Blue Mask is actually Tom’s cousin Louis Gubrious.
Tom eventually finds his father in Wyoming. However, Tom, Sr., has gone insane, and pilots his old, patched balloon to fight against both Gubrious and Junior. After a series of victories and reversals Tom, Jr. succeeds in driving his cousin off and capturing his father. Gubrious swears that he will turn pirate and defeat Tom, Jr., a threat Tom does not take seriously. But Gubrious reappears in the American West as a sky-pirate, using his fleet of aircraft to terrorize commercial trade. Tom uses his new airship, the Sky Courser, to hunt down Gubrious. Tom pursues Gubrious from the Rockies to the pampas of Brazil, eventually destroying his largest ship. Gubrious is last seen plummeting to the Earth in a defective parachute.
In later stories Tom uses a new, fast airship to help an Indian prince recover his family treasure, a quest that takes Tom from Scotland to India to the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda; Tom defeats bandits and rebellious Indians on the American frontier, using Tom’s new electric mule (in this story Louis Gubrious returns but is eventually knifed and killed); Tom fights the Chinese inventor-pirate Kiang Ho (see: “Tom Edison Jr.'s Electric Sea Spider; or, The wizard of the submarine world”); Tom uses his new submersible aircraft to defeat Chilean aggression (see: “A Question of Reciprocity”); Tom fights angry natives in Australia; and Tom finds gold in Africa.
The Tom Edison, Jr. stories are the third major Edisonade sequence, after Edward S. Ellis’ Johnny Brainerd story (see: “The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies”) and the Frank Reade Adventures. The Edison, Jr. stories are in many ways stereotypical Edisonades, but they have certain elements which set them apart from the Frank Reade stories and the Jack Wright Adventures. The Tom Edison, Jr. stories display the standard Edisonade trope of taming the frontier, but also make much more use of standard dime novel adventure story tropes—exploring the world, fighting a rival inventor, and discovering Lost Races—than was the case with the Reade and Wright stories. Moreover, the Tom Edison, Jr. stories are linked and display a vague consciousness of continuity, something rare in both the dime novels and in the Edisonades.
The Tom Edison, Jr. stories are slightly better written than the Frank Reade, Jr. stories, containing less racial rancor, but claims by some critics about the sense of humor and lively writing to be found in the Tom Edison, Jr. stories are mislaid. The stories are only little better than stereotypical Edisonades. The range of story ideas and vehicles have some inventiveness, but the stories themselves are average in quality.
Recommended Edition
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