In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Before the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, and before the rise of the pulp magazine industry where modern science fiction was named and refined, there were people writing stories about inventors at the cutting edge of science, experimenting with forces like steam power and electricity and creating vehicles that would fly through the air or sail beneath the sea. Overseas, this included authors like France’s Jules Verne and England’s H.G. Wells. In America, where dime novels were among the most popular forms of entertainment, the adventures of Frank Reade Junior, boy inventor, were read throughout the nation.
Writing this column has allowed me to re-read and research the background of some of my favorite books from childhood. When I was reviewing the Tom Swift series, I ran across a name I had never heard of before—that of another fictional young inventor, Frank Reade Junior, who had preceded Tom Swift and inspired his adventures. Over the years, especially when looking at the earliest days of the science fiction genre, the name of Frank Reade Junior has continued to come up, and I saw the author of the series referred to as “the American Jules Verne.” So when I ran across a collection of three of the earliest Frank Reade Junior adventures, I ordered it to see what all the fuss was about.
The volume is a trade paperback from Ornamental Publishing LLC, with a cover that evokes the style of the old dime novels. It was edited by Gil Ruiz, who provides an affectionate essay on the author that also acknowledges the flaws and prejudices of the dime novel era. The text does suffer from a number of typos, mostly missing periods and capitalizations, which I suspect originated from the limitations of scanning software in accurately capturing old and faded documents.
About the Author
Luis Senarens (1863-1936) was a Cuban American author from Brooklyn, New York, who became a prolific writer, and later editor, of dime novels and other periodicals. Sources differ on the extent of his output, and he wrote under dozens of pen names, making it difficult to give an exhaustive accounting of his work—he is credited in several sources with writing over two thousand stories during his career. Senarens enjoyed an admirable career, entering the publishing industry through slush pile submissions at age 16, eventually rising to editorial positions, and even writing treatments for the emerging movie business.
Senarens is most widely known for his tales of Frank Reade Junior, a boy inventor, whose adventures followed the formula of popular stories that later became known as “Edisonades,” after the real-life inventor. The Frank Reade adventures were begun by Henry Enton, writing under the house name “NONAME,” and consisted of four books featuring Frank Reade Senior. When Senarens took over the title, he kept the “NONAME” pseudonym, but differentiated his adventures by focusing on the inventor’s son, Frank Reade Junior. There were 174 Frank Reade Junior novels published between 1879 and 1899, and Senarens is believed to have written most of them. Because of the popularity of these stories, Senarens was asked by his publisher to launch another similar series, this time featuring the boy inventor Jack Wright.
Since the Frank Reade Junior tales were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they have passed out of copyright, and a number of them—including the first and third books discussed in this column—are available to read for free on Project Gutenberg.
Dime Novels
In the period after the Civil War, improved transportation was beginning to knit together the United States like never before. Steam trains and vessels turned journeys that would have taken weeks into trips that required mere days. At the same time, public education was creating widespread literacy. The public’s appetite for reading material of all sorts was increasing. Newspapers had circulations wider than anything ever seen in the past. The publishing industry was booming, selling books nationwide…but the market for bound books was limited by their price. A new market was emerging for fiction with broad appeal, available at a low enough price point that everyone could afford it.
Into this gap came what was called the dime novel, slim volumes that generally contained less than a hundred pages. The stories that filled these volumes were designed to catch the attention of readers, and were often lurid and sensationalistic. Dime novels contained all sorts of content, including historical stories, adventure fiction, nautical adventures, crime stories, Wild West tales, success stories, romances, and melodramas. And while the term “science fiction” hadn’t been popularized yet, dime novels contained stories that established the foundation for the genre that would emerge and flourish during the following century.
The Collected Extraordinary Adventures of Frank Reade Junior
There are three books collected in Volume 1, following the earliest adventures of Frank Reade Junior after he takes up the adventuring mantle from his father. Before discussing each book in turn, I’ll address some features they have in common. If you are looking for female characters, these are not the books for you. There are young women who are kidnapped to set plots in motion, but they function more as MacGuffins than characters. Frank has a wife and children, but other than his wife fussing about his safety before he leaves on each adventure, they play no role at all (in fact, I don’t remember any of them even being named).
There is a statement at the opening of this edition: “Although some of the most objectionable language has been edited to better suit contemporary sensibilities, as much of the original wording as possible has been retained for the sake of historical accuracy.” This unfortunately still leaves a lot of objectional material intact, with Native Americans getting the worst of it. They are called “injuns,” “redskins,” and “savages,” and it is repeatedly claimed that they are treacherous. Even though by this time, Native Americans were no longer widely resisting Western Expansion, the West is portrayed as being full of large bands of warriors itching for a fight. The books reflect the imperialist ambitions of the time, when the United States was believed by some to have a Manifest Destiny not only to expand its territory across the continent but to other lands as well, and explorers felt that anything they found along the way was theirs by right of discovery.
There are bloody battles depicted throughout the books, with enemies who continue to press their attacks despite a level of slaughter that would have destroyed the cohesion of even crack military units. And it is a mystery how villains who own a single ranch can muster dozens, if not hundreds, of ruffians to do their bidding. Enemies are shot in droves, and even more gruesomely, sometimes trampled to death by Frank Reade’s robot-like Steam Man or crushed by the steel wheels of the armored wagon it pulls.
While the Frank Reade Junior adventures as a series feature a whole host of interesting inventions, these three books focus on only one, the rather ludicrous Steam Man. The Steam Man can do only one thing—run—and exists only to draw a wagon constructed of steel, with a mesh over the top that protects the occupants from bullets. Replicating the action of human legs is extremely complex, the steam pressures that would be required are extremely high, and the idea of packing a steam engine that can pull a wagon at great speeds into even a very large human shape is a bit hard to swallow. And while the Steam Man, the wagon, and its mesh canopy are described as being made of the finest steel, I suspect only a fictional metal, like the comic book substances vibranium or adamantium, would be able to perform as described.
Frank Reade Junior is accompanied by two loyal servants in his adventures. The first is Pomp, an older Black man who had long served his father. Pomp is dedicated, brave, and resourceful, and a former Buffalo Soldier. While he is generally treated with respect by the author, his bickering with Frank’s other servant is often used for comic relief. But his portrayal is far more positive than that of Eradicate Sampson, the Black man from the later Tom Swift series, whose ignorance is the subject of mockery, and when not used for comic relief, Sampson is used as an excuse for Tom to deliver expository “as you know, Bob…” speeches. The second servant is Barney O’Shea, an Irishman, who while less clearly drawn than Pomp, is also courageous and competent. The use of Black and Irish people as servants in the literature of the time was not uncommon, but the fact that the author treats the characters with respect is certainly of note. Irritatingly, the two characters are presented as speaking in a thickly accented vernacular, spelled phonetically and peppered with apostrophes, which is not only demeaning, but makes their dialogue painful to wade through and decipher.
All that being said, the books have a great deal of energy, and the action moves at a fast pace. The paragraphs are short—at times, especially during action scenes, consisting only of one or two sentences. Chapters often end in cliffhangers, with characters in imminent danger. And the characters are often separated for dramatic effect, rushing to each other’s rescue in the proverbial nick of time. Since the purpose of a dime novel was purely entertainment, the stories certainly succeed on that level.
The first volume in the collection, Frank Reade, Jr., and His New Steam Man; or The Young Inventor’s Trip to the Far West, begins with Frank Reade Senior deciding he is getting too old for adventuring, and his son showing dad an improved version of his Steam Man invention. When an old friend is framed for murder (probably by his no-good nephew Artemus Cliff, who stands to inherit the old man’s money), Frank Reade Junior decides to take his new Steam Man, and servants Pomp and Barney, and head out west to Cliff’s ranch and investigate. Once they reach the plains, they are immediately set upon by Sioux warriors led by the fierce Black Buffalo, and Pomp is captured. Then they encounter a group of cowboys led by the villain they are looking for, Artemus Cliff, who immediately tries to capture them, but the Steam Man outruns Cliff and his minions, many of whom are killed during the pursuit. They find the Sioux being attacked by Pawnees, and rescue Pomp during the chaos. They are again set upon by Cliff’s minions, who attempt to crush them with a giant rock, and many more minions are killed.
Then they come across some allies, a group who call themselves the Vigilants, and are trying to rescue beautiful young Bessie Rodman from Cliff. He’s apparently fallen in love with her, and demonstrated that love the way any self-respecting villain would, by immediately kidnapping her. Frank, Barney, and the Steam Man are captured, but Pomp escapes, only to be captured by the Sioux again, and then rescued by a U.S. Cavalry troop. What then follows is a series of pitched battles, with Cavalry, Sioux, Vigilants, Cliff’s minions, and Frank and his Steam Man all struggling for victory. There are many reversals of fortune and staggering casualty counts before the good guys are finally victorious and Frank and his friends can return home.
Unfortunately for the reader, the next volume, Frank Reade, Jr. With His New Steam Man in No Man’s Land; or On a Mysterious Trail, treads much of the same ground as the previous adventure. Again, we have an attempt to frame someone for murder, an evil rancher, and a beautiful young woman kidnapped. The twist this time is that the villain’s ranch is in “No Man’s Land,” a region now in the panhandle of Oklahoma, which for a time from 1850 to 1890 was under no state or territorial legal jurisdiction. There are battles with Native American warriors and cowboy minions, as well as captures, escapes, and chases. Toward the end, Pomp is separated from the rest of the group, almost swallowed in a treacherous bog, and set upon by wolves. The sequence is unrelated to the plot, and I suspect it exists simply to make the story fit the required length. But all is set right in the end, and once again our heroes return home triumphant.
While the third volume, Frank Reade, Jr. With His New Steam Man in Central America, also features the Steam Man, it mercifully does not take us back out West again. Instead, to rescue an old college chum of Frank’s, our heroes travel south to the Yucatan, which is inhabited by strange creatures whose size and menace is exaggerated by the author’s vivid imagination. As our heroes travel out of Campeche, they are set upon by a gigantic python, improbably big enough to crush their armored wagon. They crash the red-hot Steam Man into the snake and follow that with explosive shells from an elephant gun, killing the creature. Then Frank is almost killed by a giant puma.
They discover a mysterious white marble temple built by a strange people who live in underground caves during the day. Barney falls through a secret hatch, finds Frank’s friend, and the two of them have all sorts of underground adventures during their escape. When everyone is reunited, after a fierce battle with a group of murderous jaguars, they set out in search of a mysterious lost city full of treasure. There are more murderous snakes, serpents so large that when they lie across a road they are mistaken for tree trunks. They find the city, although its treasures have been exaggerated. There are more underground perils, and finally a climactic attack by scores of giant snakes, from which they are rescued by a fortuitous earthquake which not only destroys the snakes, but the lost city itself. They all return to civilization, and Frank’s friend decides he has had enough adventure for one lifetime.
Final Thoughts
The Frank Reade Junior adventures are certainly dated, packed with clichés and sometimes offensive stereotypes, and while those aspects serve to remind us of the shortcomings of this era of popular fiction, they are also fast-paced and exciting adventures. It is easy to see why they were popular at the time, as they possess a lurid energy that keeps the reader engaged, and plenty of cliff-hanger situations to keep the pages turning. From the sample of these three tales, I would call the “American Jules Verne” comparison hyperbole, as these stories lack the quality and imagination of Verne’s work. Although I also suspect that, had these stories not all featured the implausible and not-very-thrilling “Steam Man,” instead of the many fanciful inventions featured in later Frank Reade Junior tales, that comparison might seem at least somewhat more appropriate.
Now I’m interested to hear from you. Are there any of you who have found and read Frank Reade Junior’s adventures? And if not, what are the earliest science fiction tales you have encountered, and what did you think of them?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
