Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle; or, Daring Adventures in Elephant Land is a young adult novel published in 1911, written by Stratemeyer Syndicate writers using the pen name Victor Appleton.

[1] While Tom Swift is working on his latest new invention, the electric rifle, he meets an African safari master whose stories of elephant hunting sends the group off to deepest, darkest Africa.

The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity, and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa.

The Thomas Swift series included depictions of its non-white characters now considered racist:In the book, 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.