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.

Tom Swift is a young inventor living in the New England town of Shopton. 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.

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. An illiterate, Sampson once packed a gift from Tom to Mary in a leftover box labelled "dynamite", an incident which is often referenced later. 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.

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.)

The books were written quickly 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.

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. 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.

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

Books in The Original Tom Swift Series:

1. Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle: Fun and Adventure on the Road 1910
2. Tom Swift and His Motor Boat: The Rivals of Lake Carlopa 1910
3. Tom Swift and His Airship: The Stirring Cruise of the Red Cloud 1910
4. Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat: Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure 1910
5. Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout: The Speediest Car on the Road 1910
6. Tom Swift and His Wireless Message: The Castaways of Earthquake Island 1911
7. Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers: The Secret of Phantom Mountain 1911
8. Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice: The Wreck of the Airship 1911
9. Tom Swift and His Sky Racer: The Quickest Flight on Record 1911
10. Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle: Daring Adventures on Elephant Island 1911
11. Tom Swift in the City of Gold: Marvelous Adventures Underground 1912
12. Tom Swift and His Air Glider: Seeking the Platinum Treasure 1912
13. Tom Swift in Captivity: A Daring Escape by Airship 1912
14. Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera: Thrilling Adventures While Taking Moving Pictures 1912
15. Tom Swift and His Great Search Light: On the Border for Uncle Sam 1912
16. Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon: The Longest Shots on Record 1913
17. Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone: The Picture That Saved a Fortune 1914
18. Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship: The Naval Terror of the Seas 1915
19. Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel: The Hidden City of the Andes 1916
20. Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders: The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold 1917
21. Tom Swift and His War Tank: Doing His Bit for Uncle Sam 1918
22. Tom Swift and His Air Scout: Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky 1919
23. Tom Swift and His Undersea Search: The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic 1920
24. Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters: Battling with Flames in the Air (1921)
25. Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive: Two Miles a Minute on the Rails 1922
26. Tom Swift and His Flying Boat: Castaways of the Giant Iceberg 1923
27. Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher: The Treasure of Goby Farm 1924
28. Tom Swift and His Chest of Secrets: Tracing the Stolen Inventions 1925
29. Tom Swift and His Airline Express: From Ocean to Ocean by Daylight 1926
30. Tom Swift Circling the Globe: The Daring Cruise of the Air Monarch 1927
31. Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures: The Greatest Invention on Record 1928
32. Tom Swift and His House on Wheels: A Trip around the Mountain of Mystery 1929
33. Tom Swift and His Big Dirigible: Adventures Over the Forest of Fire 1930
34. Tom Swift and His Sky Train: Overland Through the Clouds 1931
35. Tom Swift and His Giant Magnet: Bringing Up the Lost Submarine 1932
36. Tom Swift and His Television Detector: Trailing the Secret Plotters 1933
37. Tom Swift and His Ocean Airport: Foiling the Haargolanders 1934
38. Tom Swift and His Planet Stone: Discovering the Secret of Another World 1935
39. Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope 1939
40. Tom Swift and His Magnetic Silencer 1941

Many of the Tom Swift books are available as downloadable texts from Project Gutenberg.

Asteroid (14941) Tomswift is named in honor of this fictional inventor.

External links

• Tom Swift discussion group [1]
• eTexts of Garis's works, under the pseudonym of Victor Appleton, at Project Gutenberg