adventure
Tom's aerial warship was difficult to perfect, This story gives a good idea of the creative process and how it is to the idea of "failing forward.
" If I could remove all references to Koku, Eradicate and Mr, Damon, these would be fun adventure books, But Damon is useless and Koku and Eradicate are horribly racist and this detracts from a modern readers enjoyment So far the least inspired of the series.
And it seems like the author just got bored with it, so he ended the book abruptly, Like all these Tom Swift Sr, books, to be read mostly for the historical value, Tom builds a zeppelinish warship for the US government the book was published in, He is beset by foreign European spies who provide various obstacles for him to overcome, Of note, Tom's dad is quite a downer for Tom throughout the book, scoffing at his idea that he can create recoiless guns.
Way to encourage your genius son, dad! And of course like in the other TSSr books I've read, Tom is accompanied by his loyal band of racial stereotypes.
Not everyone serves the USA in the military, Some make their contributions to the national defense by working for a defense contractor and developing the weapons and systems that those in the military use.
Tom Swift contributed to his country with a powerful searchlight used to patrol the Canadian border and with a giant cannon used to defend the Panama Canal.
In the book Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship, he makes another contribution to the nations fighting capability,
Before this latest invention, Tom had a lot of experience in developing various kinds of aircraft, including dirigible style airships.
Now he has designed a very large one that could be used in war, One issue with putting guns on such an airship is that the recoil from shooting them can cause damage.
In this book, the first solution to the recoil problem is similar to the mechanism keeping a door from slamming shut.
I remembered that from my first reading of this book back in elementary school, However, that solution to the recoil problem only worked to some degree another solution had to be found,
In previous books, Toms team included his friends and perhaps one or two other people relevant to the invention or adventure in that book.
Now, various employees of the Swift family business are mentioned, It shows that it takes more than just a few people to create the technology associated with Tom Swift.
Another reason for this development is to note the infiltration and corruption of the employees by foreign spies trying to harm Toms warship or to harm Tom himself.
In this book, Mr, Swift said multiple times that Tom would not solve the gun recoil problem on the warship Mars, In the previous book, he said that Toms photo telephone would never work, Tom loves his dad, but he doesnt let Mr, Swifts doubts stop him. Each time, in the end, Mr, Swift admits that he was wrong,
Mary Nestor makes an appearance in this book, During the development of the aerial warship, Ned Newton convinces Tom to take a break and to go on a double date with Mary, Ned and Marys cousin, Helen Randall.
It is when Tom is strolling through a wooded area with Mary that he makes a discovery important to the story.
I am glad that Tom does not allow his work to dominate his life, It is very easy to allow your career to take up all your time so that you someday find yourself at an advanced age alone with no spouse and no children.
Young readers of these books should have an example of someone with a good worklife balance,
In the chapter in which the test of dropping bombs from the aerial warship was described, the acceleration of a falling object was incorrectly specified asfeet per second.
When you sayfeet per second you are specifying a speed or a velocity, although that is more precisely described as a vector.
To specify an acceleration you must sayfeet per second per second, I don't know if the error was in the original book, or if it was made during the creation of the digital book by a group of volunteers.
Perhaps some nontechnical volunteer thought that the “per second per second” phrase was an error and made it “per second.
” Starting with the first Tom Swift book, I have been reading the books that are free on Amazon, i.
e. the books entered into digital form by a group of volunteers, Perhaps that was a mistake, Perhaps I should have been reading Tom Swift digital books prepared by a publishing company, Still, in either case, someone probably typed the book into a computer, although I believe that there is hardware and software in existence that can read printed material and convert it to digital form.
Modern day books are as likely to be free of mistakes in the Kindle format as they are in the printed format.
They most likely existed in digital form before they ever existed in physical form,
The book Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship is a good combination of invention and adventure, I recommend it. Now, it is on to theth entry in the original Tom Swift series of books, I think I have a pretty high tolerance for racism and sexism and other forms of jerkiness in literary form sure, The Planter's Northern Bride is incredibly racist, but it's an interesting historical document see review sure, Lovecraft is racist, but there's other stuff going on in his stories, so you can recognize the racism and like them despite it.
By contrast, Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship is just an awful book, where the black helper shucks and jives and the romantic interest is a big fainterbecause that's what women do.
If I hadn't been listening to this on my iPod while cleaning my apartment, I might not have gotten through it.
In this novel, Tom invents a military zeppelin, foreign agents want it, and there's an adventure, It's really not very memorable or really enjoyable,
Of course, there's some historical significance to the Tom Swift series in that it was part of the fiction that bridged the gap between the science fiction dime novels, like The Steam Man of the Prairies, and the science fiction magazines in America.
And it ran for a long timethis is theth ofbooks in the original seriesthe second series hadthe third series,published, andmore unpublished the fourth series,again, with such titles as Cyborg Kickboxer and the fifth series,, withunpublishedwhich is a total ofbooks all told.
I know they can't all be as bad as this one, and Thomas Disch makes a defense of them as helping readers transition from comic books to novels and
for him, as a novelist, this is an unqualified good thing, but really, I don't think I could give another Tom Swift book a chance.
It seems pretty typical for boys lit of the first half of the last century, though I found the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew to be more compelling.
Still, a book about a young man who's invented a warship for possible use if the US enters WWI the book was written in, when the US was still trying hard to stay out of the European conflict is interesting.
In this installment, Our Hero Tom creates an aerial gun platform, A group of foreign spies tries to get the gun ship and do harm to Tom, They even get as far as hijacking the ship, However, a convenient lightening strike disables the cabal of spies and our hero et al overcome them and save the day.
These are addicting, in that you know they're bad for you, there's no nutrition in them, but they go down so easy! Really good old classic young readers book about a young inventor that invents this awesome inventions and then goes on these wild and crazy adventures, sometimes getting into trouble in the process.
With the likes of a military zepplin, inventions, explosions, foreign agents and spies, etc, etc, what more do you want for a classic adventure tale.
. .
This is the first Tom Swift book I have read, It is the kind of book I would have enjoyed as a boy, There are definetly some dated stereotypes that some may find objectionable, but I think they offer an interesting window on attitudes and views prevelant in the early's.
I enjoyed the inventive nature of Tom's character and his resourcefullness in solving problems technical and other wise that saved him and his "chums" from trouble.
American boys' fiction under pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate who produced Tom Swift series, Nancy Drew mysteries, the Hardy Boys, Dave Fearless and many others.
My father didn't have a lot of books and didn't read books very often, But he had several old boys adventure books from his childhood in thes, including Tom Swift, the Radio Boys, and more.
The Tom Swift books particularly fascinated me, I read them over and over again, and for a while I believed that Tom Swift was an actual person who had invented all of these things aerial warships, electric rifles, portable movie cameras, and on and on.
I was VERY young. They are fun books to read even today, Thanks, Dad. Victor Appleton was a house pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its successors, most famous for being associated with the Tom Swift series of books.
sitelink character of Tom Swift was conceived inby Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book packaging company.
Stratemeyer invented the series to capitalize on the market for childrens science adventure, The Syndicates authors created the Tom Swift books by first preparing an outline with all the plot elements, followed by drafting and editing the detailed manuscript.
The books were published under the house name of Victor Appleton, Edward Stratemeyer and Howard Garis wrote most of the volumes in the original series Victor Appleton was a house pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its successors, most famous for being associated with the Tom Swift series of books.
sitelink character of Tom Swift was conceived inby Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book packaging company.
Stratemeyer invented the series to capitalize on the market for children's science adventure, The Syndicate's authors created the Tom Swift books by first preparing an outline with all the plot elements, followed by drafting and editing the detailed manuscript.
The books were published under the house name of Victor Appleton, Edward Stratemeyer and Howard Garis wrote most of the volumes in the original series Stratemeyer's daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, wrote the last three volumes.
The first Tom Swift series ended in, In, Harriet Adams created the Tom Swift, Jr, series, which was published under the name "Victor Appleton II", Most titles were outlined and plotted by Adams, The texts were written by various writers, among them William Dougherty, John Almquist, Richard Sklar, James Duncan Lawrence, Tom Mulvey and Richard McKenna.
The Tom Swift, Jr. , series ended in. sitelink sitelink.