Frank Reade

Before Jules Verne's flying machines and H. G. Wells's spaceships, there was Frank Reade, globe-trotting inventor and original steampunk hero. Frank Reade magazines were the world's first science fiction periodicals, enthralling millions of readers with tales of fantastic inventions and adventures. Now many of the spectacular images from the vintage dime novel series are being reprinted for the first time in more than a century, along with excerpts from the action-packed stories. In Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, this lost legacy of Americana is interwoven with a biography of the "real" Reade family--inventors and explorers who traveled the world with their helicopter airships, submarines, and robots, and who encountered figures like Geronimo and Houdini. This epic saga is brought to life in the multimedia style of the authors' previous volume, the critically acclaimed Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel. Frank Reade is part-science fiction, part-alternate history, and entirely exciting! Praise for Frank Reade: "A retrofuturist visual feast." --Wall Street Journal "A stunning multimedia confection of the highest order that creates a detailed and delightful world." --Publishers Weekly "The book's allure owes everything to its deadpan prose and hundreds of perfectly faked photos and graphics that replicate mass-media and commercial ephemera of the Victorian era--the result of immersive research." --TheAtlantic.com "Portland-based Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett are a husband-and-wife team of multimedia artists who have produced a variety of work. . . . Their new book, Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, is their best work yet." --io9.com