Baron Dave Romm
Tom Swift
By Baron Dave Romm
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Tom Swift: 100 Years Of The Future
The first Tom Swift book was published on July 1, 1910CE. Alerted by my brother Joe, I wrote this essay for his blog, which he hasn't published yet.
The end of the 19th Century was a period of intense technological advance. As usual, it took about a half-generation, roughly 15 years, before the kids who grew up with these advances would use them to change the world forever.
Fifteen years after H.G. Wells published "The Time Machine" and fifteen years (or so) before Hugo Gernsback coined the marketing category 'science fiction', the adventures of a teenaged inventor captured the imagination. "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle, or Fun and Adventure on the Road" was the first of four pulp novels published in 1910. Motorcycles may not seem like the "goshwowboyoboy" invention today, but they were on the cutting edge of technology of the time: In 1905, there were 78,000 motor vehicles in the US; by 1915 the number had risen to 2.33 million.
"Tom Swift and His Motorcycle" was followed by "Tom Swift and His Motor Boat", "Tom Swift and His Airship", "Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat" and "Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout". These were all written by Howard Garis under the house pseudonym Victor Appleton. I confess I haven't read more than a few of the older, Tom Swift Sr., books. Unlike the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew series, the original Tom Swift books were never "updated" from their Edwardian-Era settings. The first series ran for 31 years, spanning current technology (like the motor boat) through the City of Adventure, Talking Pictures (pretty good for 1928), Sky Train and Magnetic Silencer. Along the way, Tom got married, so he wasn't quite the "young" inventor anymore. Tom got a life where Superman didn't. Tom Swift was more than adventure: He grew up, and we grew with him.
The impact of Tom Swift is hard to quantify. The original series sold in the millions, not including reprints, and the second series did well. At least one invention was named after the fictional character: Taser stands for "Thomas A Swift's Electric Rifle". An entire class of jokes, the Tom Swifty, pays homage to the author's stylistic attempt to avoid the standard "he said" when writing dialog.
Before I could read, my mother used to read Tom Swift Jr. books to her kids. They were Hi! Sci! Fi! Adventure! which used just-over-cutting edge technology' - and beyond. Tom was not slow to invent a bunch of neat-o gadgets and explore the possible just-over-the-rainbow future. Jonny Quest, another son of a scientist who went on exciting adventures in exotic locales, was more about the action; Tom Swift was about the interplay of ideas.
Tom Swift Jr. was written by by several people under the house pseudonym Victor Appleton II. (Hey, I thought it was clever.) The series was dumbed down enough for kids, with repeating characters and catchphrases, and smart enough to fire up the imagination even decades later. Perhaps the better titles stick in my mind, or perhaps I should have been picking favorite writers (assuming that info was easy enough for a ten-year-old to find). But I remember "Tom Swift Jr. and His Deep-Sea Hydrodome", with repelatron tech that reminded me of the electro-gravitic spectra in Heinlein's "Sixth Column". I remember "Tom Swift Jr. and His Triphibian Atomicar" which came out about the same time as the British tv show "Supercar".
The series got dumber and dumber by the late 60s and early 70s. Or maybe I grew out of them. I haven't gone back to reread them since I went off to college and bequeathed my collection to brother Joe. I'm almost afraid to.
And having moved on, I never dipped my literary toes into Tom Swift III, IV or V. They are not for me anymore. Several new generations of young boys (and the occasional girl) have their imagination fired up by the incarnations of Tom Swift. After 100 years as a pulp character written by many authors, Tom's stories continue to be created where other characters live in the published works of long ago.
Costumes at Convergence - A Sampler
Of the several Convergence videos I made, this is probably the one of greatest interest to Bartcop-E followers. Make it go viral!
The first person in the video, Best In Show at the Masquerade, happens to be a friend of mine from more than 20 years ago who I hadn't seen in years... and didn't recognize. I was co-sysop on his BBS (remember BBSes?) 1985-1990, and he moved away and we lost track. But he came back!
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog maintains a Facebook Page, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. A nascent collection of videos are on Baron Dave's YouTube channel. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
YouTube: Guy Hit in Head with .50-calibre ricochet
Sid/Diane: "Aren't guns GREAT? Turn the sound up - you can hear the bullet head back. Watch in full screen to see it better. The target, is a steel plate, 1000 yards away. You can hear the ping of the hit, and then the bullet comes back and hits the ground just in front of his position. This is a very, very lucky sportsman."
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Michele Hanson: It's time we showed teachers some respect (guardian.co.uk)
Put your average captain of industry in front of a class and he'd probably be done for.
Rejection letters: Just saying no (guardian.co.uk)
Andy Warhol got one, so did Jimi Hendrix and Gertrude Stein. Tim Dowling remembers the sting of receiving a rejection letter.
Daniel Gross: Do-It-Yourself Recovery (slate.com)
When policy solutions don't work, America turns to foreign investment and homegrown ingenuity.
Terry Savage: Debt Manager Put to the Test (creators.com)
Over the years, I have written several columns about the dangers of debt settlement firms. My main complaint is that they are expensive, unregulated and may cause more problems for your credit than they solve.
Marilyn Preston: In the Doctor-Patient Dance, You Get to Lead (creators.com)
I don't usually quote from comic strips when doling out healthy lifestyle advice, but this recent panel from "Wizard of Id" has inspired me. The king - a wide-bodied fellow with several royal chins - is sitting in an examining room, and his doctor walks in, carrying a medical chart, wearing a scowl. "You should start losing weight and start exercising right away," the doctor tells him. "What if I don't?" says the king. "Then your pallbearers should," the doctor replies, heading out the door.
Randy Lewis: Mary Gauthier, storyteller in song (atimes.com)
On the new 'The Foundling' album, Mary Gauthier recounts her complex churn of emotions as an adoptee.
Kira Cochrane: "Natalie Merchant: mother superior" (guardian.co.uk)
With songs about female poverty, teenage pregnancy - and now motherhood - the American singer-songwriter is an unlikely pop sensation.
George Varga: A Mother's Work is Never Done -- McLachlan's Baby, Lilith Fair, returns after 11 Years (creators.com)
Sarah McLachlan is midway through a phone interview from her "working vacation" on Vancouver Island when she is interrupted by someone nearby with an urgent concern.
Roger Ebert: Review of "AFTER DARK, MY SWEET" (R; An Overlooked DVD; 4 stars)
There is something wrong with Collie, but it's hard to put your finger on it. He tells the bartender he pours a good glass of beer, and the bartender feels like throwing him out of the bar.
Roger Ebert: THE ONLY SON (UNRATED; 1936; A Great Movie)
Why was I thinking about flower arrangement while watching "The Only Son" the first sound film made by the Japanese master Ozu?
The Weekly Poll
Summer Sabbatical
Poll returns tomorrow!
BadToTheBoneBob
wrote:
responded:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Witchhazel
Marty,
Take a look at these guys. One of them belongs to my forum site and is English, but I don't know about the others.
Whatever, they are quite wonderful. They'll have an album out this fall and I believe they are going to make it.
Uncle Pen is bluegrass, Gulf Coast Highway is folk and Minor Swing is, simply, amazing.
Link from RJ
The Modern Muses
Hi there
A possible link perhaps? Thanks for taking a look!
Reader Question
Re: Caterpillars
Will we see butterflies?!
Your caterpillar pictures are amazing and beautiful. Think you'll be able to capture them as they transform?!
Linda >^..^<
Thanks, Linda!
According to this, some of them are close to pupating, so the kid & I are
going to try to document the cycle.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and comfortable.
Wild Horses Rescued
Nevada
With the financial backing of a California winery owner, activists on Saturday purchased almost all 174 horses up for sale at a state-sanctioned auction in Nevada to keep the horses from going to the slaughterhouse.
Stephanie Hoefener of the Lancaster, Calif.-based Livesavers Wild Horse Rescue group said activists purchased 172 horses for $31,415. The other two horses were acquired by private individuals for their personal use, she said.
The horses were rounded up by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last month near the Nevada-Utah line and turned over to the Nevada Department of Agriculture for disposal.
Jill Starr, president of Lifesavers, said the purchase of the horses at the Fallon auction was made possible by the financial backing of Ellie Phipps Price, owner of Sand Hill Durell Vineyards in Sonoma, Calif. Madeleine Pickens, wife of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, also contributed financially.
Nevada
Plays Montreux Jazz Festival
Gil Scott-Heron
Gil Scott-Heron, the hard living 'godfather of rap,' had a message for his audience at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
"For those of you who bet I would not be here - you lose."
The poet-singer from Chicago whose angry lyrics about racism, poverty and addiction struck a chord with young black Americans growing up in the 1970s, opened his set in Montreux with "Blue Collar."
Out of the limelight for over a decade, his songs have stayed on the airwaves thanks to sampling by a new generation of artists such as Tupac Shakur, Kanye West, Mos Def, Common and Dr. Dre.
Joking about his encounters with border guards on the way to Switzerland - "I've been arrested by bigger police than you" - the elder statesman of protest lyrics baffled some in the audience with his trademark blunt delivery, but stayed away from the songs that marked an angrier time.
Gil Scott-Heron
Retiring From Crystal Cathedral
Rev. Schuller
The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California's Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the "Hour of Power" televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.
The 83-year-old Schuller told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor, after sharing that role with her father for the past year.
She was ordained just a month before she was appointed to head up Crystal Cathedral Ministries.
Coleman's appointment comes two years after Schuller's son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, split from the church during a family rift that made headlines. The younger Schuller had been groomed to take over for his father.
Robert A. Schuller is now part of Dallas-based American Life Network, a cable channel aiming to produce family-oriented programming.
Rev. Schuller
Wedding News
Underwood - Fisher
Grammy-winning country singer Carrie Underwood has married Ottawa Senators hockey player Mike Fisher at a resort in Georgia.
The wedding took place Saturday at the Reynolds Plantation resort in Greensboro, Ga.
Underwood, 27, rose to fame after winning the fourth season of American Idol. Fisher, 30, is a forward for the NHL team.
Underwood - Fisher
Money More Than Morals
Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson
When William Morris Endeavor dropped Mel Gibson as a client last week, sources at the agency cited the star's misconduct as the reason.
Its revulsion may be genuine, but the decision also was based on the bottom line, a calculation that Gibson no longer has real monetary value to the agency.
Hollywood has routinely overlooked reprehensible, even illegal behavior when there's money to be made. And observers -- including a studio chief and an insider at William Morris -- said the industry might even have gotten past Gibson's alleged assault on his former girlfriend. (Consider Charlie Sheen.)
But the repeated allegations of bigoted comments have left his relationship with the public in tatters, and that's a deal-breaker. With tapes surfacing in which Gibson apparently used unforgivable language when referring to African-Americans and Latinos, he has antagonized two groups that are disproportionately represented in movie audiences.
Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson
Filmmaker As Undercover Law Firm Operative
Jason Glaser
A filmmaker who went to Nicaragua to make a documentary said Thursday he became an undercover operative for a Texas law firm that was suing Dole Foods on behalf of purported banana plantation workers who claim they were left sterile by pesticide exposure.
Jason Glaser testified about his transformation into a secret sleuth, saying he told none of the people he interviewed in Latin America about his dual role.
He was called to the witness stand by attorney Steve Condie, who represents six men claiming they were left sterile by pesticide exposure while working on Dole banana plantations from 1970 to 1980.
Dole investigators uncovered evidence that some Nicaraguans suing the company had lied, saying they were sterile when they had fathered children and vowing they worked on banana farms when they did not.
Glaser, 32, said he went to Latin America to pursue a documentary in 2007 after brief stints working for MTV and HBO.
Jason Glaser
Mapping The Battlefield
Pequot War
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood. A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries.
It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.
Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide.
The battle site was farmland for years before being developed in the mid-20th century into a residential neighborhood of tidy Capes, Colonials and ranch homes. A "Tree of Peace" is planted at a hilltop traffic circle that marks the center of an old Pequot fort.
Pequot War
Slaughtered For Bait
Amazon River Dolphins
The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearlessly up to fishing boats.
Now, their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on riverbanks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causing researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world.
"The population of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them," said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic mammals expert at the government's Institute of Amazonian Research. "We've been studying an area of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) for 17 years, and of late the population is dropping 7 percent each year."
That translates to about 1,500 dolphins killed annually in the part of the Mamiraua Reserve of the western Amazon where da Silva studies the mammals.
Amazon River Dolphins
Seek Movie Shoots On Campus
LA Schools
In an era of yawning budget deficits and teacher layoffs, schools in the Los Angeles area are looking at a non-traditional source for some extra cash - Hollywood.
School districts from Lawndale to Glendale are seeking to earn thousands of dollars a day from renting their campuses as locations for movies, TV shows, commercials and even truck parking.
The money is being used to save teachers' jobs, upgrade school facilities and replenish districts' dwindling funds.
Officials at FilmLA, the Los Angeles film promotion nonprofit, say they've had a flurry of inquiries from cash-strapped districts in recent months asking how they can market themselves to production companies, but not all schools allow movie shoots because the campus can be disrupted.
LA Schools
American Association For
Nude Recreation
More than 100 people with nothing on but sunscreen and smiles crowded into a San Francisco Bay area swimming pool over the weekend in an attempt to set a skinny dipping record.
The 111 naked people in the pool at a Los Gatos nudist resort took part in a series of efforts on Saturday to establish a record tracked by a group calling itself the American Association For Nude Recreation.
Organizers say besides the event in Los Gatos, there were about 100 other record-breaking attempts across the country.
In order to be counted in the competition, all the participants had to be at the same location at exactly noon.
Nude Recreation
Weekend Box Office
'Despicable Me'
"Despicable Me" wasn't such a bad guy after all, it seems, opening at the top of the box office with an estimated $60.1 million.
The first 3-D animated movie from Universal Pictures stars Steve Carell as the voice of Gru, a bumbling villain with plans to steal the moon - until three adorable orphan girls enter his life. Jason Segel, Russell Brand and Julie Andrews are among the star-studded voice cast.
The week's other new wide release, "Predators," grossed $25.3 million to open at No. 3. A sequel of sorts to the 1987 sci-fi cult classic "Predator," the 20th Century Fox film stars Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne as mercenaries being stalked by alien hunters in the jungle.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Despicable Me," $60.1 million.
2. "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," $33.35 million.
3. "Predators," $25.3 million.
4. "Toy Story 3," $22 million.
5. "The Last Airbender," $17.15 million.
6. "Grown Ups," $16.4 million.
7. "Knight and Day," $7.85 million.
8. "The Karate Kid," $5.7 million.
9. "The A-Team," $1.8 million.
10. "Cyrus," $1.4 million.
'Despicable Me'
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