Review of
Tom
Swift and His Air Glider, by Victor Appleton
Four out of five stars
Like most of
the books published in the early years of the twentieth century, an effective
reading of this book requires you to suspend some of your modern notions of
literature. For example, there is the depiction of blacks, unusual phrasing and
differences in how the characters interact. If you can do that and mentally
take yourself back to the years immediately before World War I, this is a book
that you can enjoy.
For it is one
in a series of books that lit a spark of inventive and engineering interest in
generations of young boys and girls. In this case, it is the original Tom Swift
and he has invented an incredible airship. The premise is that a Russian man is
exiled from the Russian Empire under the Czar after escaping from one of the
Siberian work camps where dissidents are sent. The man opposes the government
of the Czar, but is not a violent man, believing that education of the masses
is the way forward.
His brother is
still held in a camp and when both were free for a time, they managed to
stumble on a mine containing high grade platinum. A material that Tom needs. Therefore,
Tom, Ned, Mr. Damon and the Russian man depart on Tom’s airship to Siberia in
order to free the prisoner and find the mine so that Tom can acquire some of
the highest grade platinum. The fact that such an action is in violation of
International Law and an act of theft is never raised in the story.
Of course, Tom
and his crew face several dangers in their around-the-world adventure, yet
manage to “rescue” both the prisoner and the platinum. The presentation of the
adventure conforms to the literary style of the time, reading it is a lesson in
pulp fiction of the early twentieth century. It is very instructive to read and
compare examples of the different Tom Swift series as they conform to the new
scientific and mechanical marvels. It is a lesson in the evolution of
scientific adolescent literature.
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