Proto-Steampunk

Dime Novels and the Edisonade

The Dime Novel• 1860: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter is considered the first• Developed from the storypapers of the 1850s. Something for each member of the family, serialized.• The dime novel was almost immediately viewed as cheap, dominated by sensationalized narratives.• Late 1870s and into 1880s: Novels tend to stand alone, but characters and settings remain consistent in some.

• Sleuth stories• Frontier stories

• 1896: The publishers drop the price to five cents to make them more accessible to children, the primary readers.• Remained unchanged until they shifted to pulp magazines early in the 20th century (Remember Hugo Gernsback!)

The Edisonade• Term first used by John Clute in an encyclopedia of SF in 1993.

•Fashioned after the Robinsonade

• 1868:The Huge Hunter first appears in Irwin P. Beadle’s American Novels (#45)

• Authored by Edward Ellis• No sequel written by Ellis and it wasn’t much of a success

• 1876: Reissued and sold well.• Frank Tousey (rival publisher) took note of the sales and commissioned his own version.

• Harry Enton authored, Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains. • Wrote 3 sequels• Tousey had him publishing them under the name Noname, and when he refused to let Enton take credit, he quit.

• 1879: Tousey hired a teenager, Luis Senarens, to author more of the tales.

• Among the hundreds of stories, Senarens also stole the ideas for his vehicles and weapons from Jules Verne, who he claimed was one of his fans (yeah, right).

The Edisonade Split!• This form was fashionable for more than 20 years.• Near the turn of the century it had peaked, though, and began a decline.

• The Dime novel moves away from longer serials.• Subject matter necessarily changes, as the frontier closes.

• Lost cities• Other planets• Essentially Science Fiction Environs

• The Adult Edisonade• Protagonists Adult Male Inventors• Stories retained Ameri-centricism• Politically xenophobic• Trappings of Verne, Ideology of the Edisonade

• Edison’s Conquest of Mars (1898)• Essentially War of the Worlds, with Edison leading an army to Mars to open a can of whoopass

The Edisonade Split!• Edisonade for Juvenile Audiences

• Tom Swift series• Smart American Child Inventor• These stories were more familial. MC has a father.• Far more innocent.

• While this form never became a major genre of science fiction (the adult version is more vital), it does have predecessors through today.

• Dexter’s Laboratory• Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius