Tom Swift
For this series, and some later ones, the main character is "Tom Swift Jr." New titles have been published again from 2019 after a gap of about ten years, roughly the time that has passed before every resumption.
The books generally describe the effects of science and technology as wholly beneficial, and the role of the inventor in society as admirable and heroic.
In the earlier series, he is said to have had little formal education, the character modeled originally after such inventors as Henry Ford,[3] Thomas Edison,[4] aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss[4] and Alberto Santos-Dumont.
[7] Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (1952) features a flying submarine similar to one planned by the United States Department of Defense four years later in 1956.
[10] The Syndicate's authors created the Tom Swift stories by first preparing an outline with the plot elements, followed by drafting and editing the detailed manuscript.
In addition to publication in the United States, Tom Swift books have been published extensively in England, and translated into Norwegian, French, Icelandic, and Finnish.
"Folks laughed at Bell, when he said he could send a human voice over a copper string ..." In the original series, Tom Swift lives in fictional Shopton, New York.
[10] Tom usually shares his adventures with close friend Ned Newton, who eventually becomes the Swift Construction Company's financial manager.
Regularly appearing characters include Wakefield Damon, an older man, whose dialogue is characterized by frequent use of such whimsical expressions as "Bless my brakeshoes!"
"[25] However, as the series progresses, Tom's inventions "show an increasingly independent genius as he develops devices, such as an electric rifle and a photo telephone, further removed from the scientific norm".
Stratemeyer Syndicate employee Andrew Svenson described the new series as based "on scientific fact and probability, whereas the old Toms were in the main adventure stories mixed with pseudo-science".
Perhaps the most impressive of his inventions and the one essential to the series as a whole is the robot he designs and builds, Aristotle, which becomes a winning and likeable character in its own right."
The books deal with what Richard Pyle describes as "modern and futuristic concepts" and, as in the third series, feature an ethnically diverse cast of characters.
Genius here begins to recapitulate earlier myths of the mad scientist whose technological and scientific ambitions are so out of harmony with nature and contemporary science that the results are usually unfortunate.
Tom's personal nemesis is Andy Foger, teenage son of his father's former business partner who now owns a competing (and ethically dubious) high-technology company.
[38] A sixth series, Tom Swift Inventors' Academy, published by Simon and Schuster, debuted in July 2019 with #1 The Drone Pursuit and #2 The Sonic Breach.
[15] Parker Brothers produced a Tom Swift board game in 1966,[39] although it was never widely distributed, and the character has appeared in one television show.
[40] Twentieth Century Fox planned a Tom Swift feature movie in 1968, to be directed by Gene Kelly.
A television pilot show for a series to be called The Adventures of Tom Swift was filmed in 1958, featuring Gary Vinson.
[40] In 1977, Glen A. Larson wrote an unproduced television pilot show entitled "TS, I Love You: The Further Adventures of Tom Swift".
[40] In 2007, digital studio Worldwide Biggies acquired movie rights to Tom Swift[42] and announced plans to release a feature film and video game, followed by a television series.
Tom Swift appeared in the episode "The Celestial Visitor" from the second season of The CW's Nancy Drew with Tian Richards portraying the character as a black, gay, billionaire inventor.
[49] Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (published 1911) depicts Africans as brutish, uncivilized animals, and the white protagonist as their paternal savior.
In the book, as in America today, the black people are rendered as either passive, simple and childlike, or animalistic and capable of unimaginable violence.
They are described in the book at various points as "hideous in their savagery, wearing only the loin cloth, and with their kinky hair stuck full of sticks", and as "wild, savage and ferocious ... like little red apes".The Tom Swift books have been credited with assisting the success of American science fiction and with establishing the edisonade (stories focusing on brilliant scientists and inventors) as a basic cultural myth.
The invention was named for the central device in the story Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (1911); according to inventor Jack Cover, "an 'A' was added because we got tired of answering the phone 'TSER'.
"[56] A number of scientists, inventors, and science fiction writers have also credited Tom Swift with inspiring them, including Ray Kurzweil,[57] Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov.
Scientist and television presenter Bill Nye said the books helped "make me who I am", and they inspired him to launch his own young adult series.
[61] Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates also read the books as children, as did co-founder of competing company Apple, Steve Wozniak.
[62][63] Wozniak, who cited the series as his inspiration to become a scientist, said the books made him feel "that engineers can save the world from all sorts of conflict and evil".
