Tom Swift

Tom Swift is the protagonist in a series of children's adventure novels from the early twentieth century. The stories featured technology (especially transport technology) as the real star.

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Tom Swift is a young inventor living in the town of Shopton in New York State. His father is the frail inventor Barton Swift who is too infirm to take part in many adventures. Tom himself is by no means lab-bound, and is in good physical shape, which is fortunate as his adventures are inevitably strenuous. His best friend is Ned Newton, not himself an inventor; his girlfriend (and later wife) is Mary Nestor.

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The grounds keeper at the Swift estate is Eradicate Sampson, known as "Rad". Though portrayed with some affection, the elderly ex-slave Sampson is an unfortunate example of the demeaning comic black stereotype common in American popular culture of the time. Illiterate, Sampson once packed a gift from Tom to Mary in a leftover box labelled "dynamite", an incident which is often referenced later. Despite the stereotypical "darkie" behavior attributed to "Rad", he accompanies Tom on several of his adventures and demonstrates his courage many times. In Thomas Pynchon's short story "The Secret Integration" (1964), the "boy genius" Grover is tormented by Tom Swift books which constantly appear around his home. Discussing the matter with his friend Tim, he wonders whether his parents are trying to make him into an inventor or a racist.

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Tom's most remembered friend is Mr. Wakefield Damon, from whom Tom bought the motorcycle on which he started his adventures. Mr. Damon is much given to colorful expostulations such as: "Bless my collarbutton!", and he can be expected to deliver several such at any appearance. (Mr. Damon, long gone, is memorialized in the Tom Swift Jr. series by having his name sentimentally attached to one of Tom Jr.'s inventions, the damonscope.)

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The books were written under the pseudonym Victor Appleton, who was really Howard Garis for most of the novels, and W. Bert Foster, John Duffield, and Thomas M. Mitchell for some others. The pseudonym was created by Edward Stratemeyer as part of his Stratemeyer Syndicate.

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Another 33 books were written in the Tom Swift, Jr. series, which were created to the pseudonym of Victor Appleton II. Two other series followed, Tom Swift III published from 1981 to 1984 and Tom Swift IV from 1991 to 1993. The former series featured Tom and a troupe of friends exploring the universe in the starship Excedra, using a faster-than-light drive which Tom had reverse engineered from an alien space probe, and maintains only a loose connection to the continuity of the two previous series. The fourth series is perhaps the most rigorously connected to the technology of its time; for example, one of Tom's inventions for improving telescope resolution using a laser has in fact been implemented, and information technology plays as important a role as the super-vehicles the series has always been associated with. In both series, Tom's father is named Thomas Swift, Sr., and is the chief executive of Swift Enterprises. Inside jokes, such as allusions to Tom Swift, Jr.'s Lake Carlopa, indicate that the fourth series's writers were at least passingly familiar with Tom Swift's earlier incarnations.

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A Tom Swifty is a type of pun. However, this sentence structure is not actually used in the text of the series. The format of the book titles is also occasionally used in jokes, for example Tom Swift and His Electric Girlfriend.

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Technology: :See also: Innovation...

Transport: :For other article subjects named transport, see Transport (disambiguation)....

Girlfriend: The term girlfriend is usually used in one of two senses, each implying a kind of intimate friendship:...

Tom Swift related Images and Photos (experimental)

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