The robber with the bank swag made a run for it as a confederate yelled: “Go on! Go on! Take to the woods! We’ll deal with these fellows!” Alas, poor thief, he was up against no common adversary. He had tangled with none other than Tom Swift.
” ‘Oh, you will, eh?’ shouted Tom, and remembering his football days he made a dive . . . for the man with the bag, which he guessed contained the stolen money. The lad made a good tackle, and grabbed Featherton about the legs. He went down in a heap with Tom on top. Our hero was feeling about for the valise, when he felt a stunning blow on the back of his head. He turned over quickly to see Morse in the act of delivering a second kick. Tom grew faint, and dimly saw the leader of the gang reach down for the valise.”
The End of Tom. Millions of men now living do not have to be told how “our hero” got out of that one, or out of a thousand similar adventures that made him the favorite of three generations of U.S. boys. When Charles A. Lindbergh hopped the Atlantic in 1927, they were the ones who cheered but were not surprised. How could they have been? Ever since 1910, smart, modest, infinitely courageous Tom Swift had been flying everything from balloons to transcontinental airline expresses, had, besides, invented his own submarine, photo-telephone, electric rifle and enough other practical wonders to make Ford and Edison seem like smalltime putterers.
In 1941, after 40 books and 15 million copies sold, Tom Swift went the way of such other grand heroes of boyhood as Frank Merriwell and the fun-loving Rover Boys. What finished the Tom Swift series was a combination of crushers which could as easily have done in Ulysses or Sir Lancelot. A world war and stranger-than-fiction real inventions had furnished competitive excitements that made Tom .seem a little archaic. The paper shortage did not help, and almost as disastrous was the decision of Author Victor Appleton, Tom’s creator, to let his hero marry sweet, pert Mary Nestor. Any ten-year-old boy could have told him that girl mush and Tom Swift just did not mix. To many a saddened fan it seemed best that Tom should go.
The Rebirth of Tom. But there are millions of strong men in whose hearts Tom has a permanent place in the corner marked nostalgia. For them, the first week of 1954 brings stirring news: Tom Swift is back. And with him is Tom Swift Jr., who the publishers hope may compete as successfully with television as old Tom did with chores. The new Tom Swift Jr. yarns have made one concession to the times that old Tom would have scorned: three scientists, all Ph.D.s, have been hired to ride herd as technical advisers. The publishers feel they are necessary, and they are probably right. Readers of the old series were content with plenty of action and took Author Appleton’s say-so for proof that Tom was an inventive genius. Today’s schoolboy savants want the incredible, but they want it backed by a patter of scientific know-how. And of course the dialogue has changed. The Tom of 1910 put real enthusiasm into “Now, dad, you’ll see me scooting around the country on a motorcycle.” Tom Jr.’s buddy ribs him with “Well, fly boy, want to sell your jet cheap and buy a windmill?”
Still, the new ones are a remarkable echo of the old. Coincidence is used just as recklessly; the old fictional virtues of pluck and luck dominate every page. But Tom Jr. has it all over his proud dad as an inventor. Where the old hero aroused the admiration of his fans by changing the gear ratio to get unheard-of speed out of his motorcycle, his son completes a revolutionary radioactivity detector overnight. In 1910, Tom had his readers chewing their nails when he ascended in a crude dirigible. In 1954’s Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, the alert hero finds the world’s greatest uranium deposits, battles international spy rings and gangsters instead of the tramps and crude thieves his father triumphed over.
Appleton to Appleton. Just as the new series features Tom Swift Jr., the new author is listed as Victor Appleton II. What the older generation of readers never knew was that there never was a Victor Appleton, nor is there one now. The old Tom series was the product of the same writing factory that also churned out The Rover Boys, today produces, in addition to the new Tom, such solid moneymakers as The Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew books. Originator of the assembly-line idea was an immigrant German organist’s son named Edward Stratemeyer, who, before his death in 1930, fed a whole stable of writers with plots, supervised their finished products, and made it a point to deal with his authors singly. One Victor Appleton, for example, was carefully kept from meeting any other. Today, Founder Stratemeyers daughters run the corporation, claim that so far the new Tom Swift Jr. series has been entrusted to a single Appleton. He has already turned out three. With thousands of new sales outlets, including Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, young Tom stands a chance of doing as well as his great dad.
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