Review: A great (but partial) set
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 15, 2011
The title for this review reflects the considerable influence that the Tom Swift series has had on science and technology n America. Visionaries like Steve Wozniak and Issac Asimov have cited it as part of their inspiration, and it was certainly part of mine when I was growing up (I went into math and physics as fields).The series is regarded as "edisonade" in character, that is, using inventors like Thomas Edison as the basis for the fictional character. The books, at least in the initial series which began in 1910, featured inventions and technology that had been or was close to being realized. The later Tom Swift series became more fantastic in tone. Many of he books are now in the public domain, but the character is still continuing (owned by Simon and Schuster, I believe), and a feature film was announced in 2008.The Tom Swift books were written in four different series. The books ncluded in this collection (26 of them) were from the first series and appeared in 1910-1932 and 1939. The last two books shown appeared in 1962. Their author, Victor Appleton or Victor Appleton II, was actually the pseudonym for a variety of different authors.My rating reflects the reverence that I have for my own memories of reading these books as a boy. At the time, I enjoyed them immensely. However, that was many, many years ago.hen I perused this particular collection, it was clear that the Tom Swift series was not aging very gracefully, and the technology being described doesn't hold the interest as well as it once did. Still, the books serve as a good source for insight into the beginnings of American science fiction.Anyone purchasing this particular edition should also be prepared for some poor formatting. The text is run together without proper breaks, and headings are not centered. The overall effect was so distracting that I finally returned the content to Amazon for a refund. Please consider that many of the Tom Swift novels in this collection are available as free Kindle editions. Rather than spend your money on this edition, you might check out the free ones to make sure you really want to spend your money to get all these works at once.