Jack Bohn wrote:
Don wrote:
A couple of earlier threads are resurrected herein due to renewed
interest in _Edison's Conquest of Mars_.
<whew> I had thought Nicoll had reread the whold thing and dashed a
column out at inhuman speed.
Someone, Jack Bohn perhaps, previously pigeonholed _Conquest of Mars_ as
an Edisonade.
To me, it sounds like like somethng I could possibly say, but would be unlikely to. (I knew of a "Robinsonade" as in _Robinson Crusoe_ and
that Swiss Family.)
I see above I ascribe to Ray Cummings an honor I recently gave to Ray
Palmer. How ChatGPT of me. I'm going to assume the earlier me had the
book to hand.
Indeed. How ChatGPT of me to assume you said it. (And how human of
ChatGPT in turn (as Christian more-or-less noted elsewhere) to "fake it
til you make it." BTW, ChatGPT's core competency seems to be in its role
as a conversation piece of s...oftware.)
Enough BS - it's time for genuine effort. A search of my private
usenet spool (find . | xargs grep 'Edisonade') ultimately reveals this interesting (to me), rasw provenance:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20091203 Robert Carnegie wrote:
I know I recently mentioned _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ - on casual
inquiry it's one of a genre of "Edisonades", just as there were
"Robinsonades" based on _Robinson Crusoe_, of which _The Swiss Family
Robinson_ is conspicuous. I think /that/ term is German. I don't
know whether "Edisonades" always featured Thomas Edison himself, or
whether e.g. the original Tom Swift counts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20150715 Sea Wasp wrote:
Lawrence Watt-Evans does mostly fantasy, but he recently self-published an absolutely lovely YA Edisonade titled _Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20150827 Sea Wasp wrote:
Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of my favorite authors, and he nails this one perfectly.
The initial, spoiler-free review: _Tom Derringer and the Aluminum
Airship_ is a nigh-perfect recapturing of the spirit of pulp and,
really, pre-pulp adventure fiction. Not really steampunk, but close to
it, this is more an Edisonade or a Vernian homage in a sense. The
language and setting evoke those of the older works, while avoiding the overly-intrusive narration which sometimes will mar older works for new readers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20200517 Robert Woodward wrote:
The first Interstellar Patrol story ("Crashing Suns") appeared in Weird
Tales in the same month that _Skylark of Space_ appeared in Amazing
Stories. So, declaring _Skylark..._ as the first is a bit iffy (true,
the first draft was written almost a decade earlier). Besides,
_Skylark.._ was the first Superscience story and was in many ways an
Edisonade (as was much of the early John W. Campbell). ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20210523 dsr wrote (in regards to "Triplanetary"):
It borders on the Edisonade, in which a plucky scientist-inventor (usually accompanied
by a few more or less hardworking assistants) discovers a new thing and immediately
turns it into a pile of cool gizmos - typically a space drive, a weapon and a defense. Then they have adventures, some of which may demand further inventions.
Smith wrote more distinctive Edisonades in the Skylark series. Besides
him, there's:
Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Campbell's Arcot, Wade and Morey trilogy
Travis Taylor's Warp Speed
Kooisra's Dykstra's War
Varley's Red Thunder ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danke,
--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``.
https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
