{"id":3871,"date":"2015-03-11T10:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=3871"},"modified":"2022-05-21T11:40:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T15:40:25","slug":"review-steam-man-of-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2015\/03\/11\/review-steam-man-of-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;Steam Man of the West&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3886\" src=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2015\/04\/steam-man-of-the-west.jpg\" alt=\"'The Steam Man of the West'\" width=\"200\" height=\"259\" \/>A <a href=\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2014\/05\/19\/pulp-forerunners-the-edisonades\/\">prior posting<\/a> was on the various &#8220;boy inventor&#8221; adventure series that ran in the &#8220;dime novels,&#8221; the late 1800s forerunners to the pulps. Known as the &#8220;Edisonades,&#8221; these included characters like <strong>Frank Reade Jr.<\/strong>, <strong>Jack Wright<\/strong> and others who built steam- and electric-powered vehicles that went on the land and sea, under the sea and in the air. I stated that it&#8217;s sad that no one has really mined these stories for new works.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out someone has.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steamman.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joseph Lovece<\/a><\/strong> has actually written new stories inspired by these characters. He so far has four stories in his &#8220;Steam Man of the West&#8221; series.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Steam Man of the West&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Road Home&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Flying Prairie Schooner&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Transatlantic Race&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more-->The main hero of these stories is <strong>Frank Rude Jr.<\/strong>, obviously based on Reade. In the first book, which is the only one I have read yet, he has built a steam-powered robot, the &#8220;steam man of the west,&#8221; which pulls a covered cart.<\/p>\n<p>With his cousin, Rude is on a quest to find his missing father in the west. Along the way, they soon gather a group of others: <strong>Denver Doll,<\/strong> a female detective; an orphan; a photographer; a cat; and the <strong>Masked Rider<\/strong>. Some of these are based on characters from dime novels, but I&#8217;m not sure if all are. Along the way they have various wild adventures (a dragon, a head frozen in ice, and more). \u00a0Later in the story he uses a balloon to travel, and builds an Electric Man that pulls a chart.<\/p>\n<p>The characters and situations are satirical, not serious. Several of the names and situations are puns and satire, but I am sure I missed some. At first I would have liked the author to have named the main character &#8220;Reade,&#8221; but once I saw the work was more fun than serious, I decided it was a good idea. This still allows for someone else to pick up the challenge of doing more serious stories using Frank Reade and family, like a &#8220;steampunk&#8221; or dieselpunk version of <strong>Tom Swift<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>As noted, I have only read the first book. I do plan on getting the others and will review them as I read them.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the author has another series called the &#8220;Dime Novel Cover Series,&#8221; of which I&#8217;ve read one so far. Look for that review soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A prior posting was on the various &#8220;boy inventor&#8221; adventure series that ran in the &#8220;dime novels,&#8221; the late 1800s forerunners to the pulps. Known as the &#8220;Edisonades,&#8221; these included characters like Frank Reade Jr., Jack Wright and others who built steam- and electric-powered vehicles that went on the land and sea, under the sea [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan reviews 'The Steam Man of the West.' #pulpmags http:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-10r","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[63,14],"tags":[713,712],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-3871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-proto-pulp","category-review","tag-joseph-lovece","tag-steam-man"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2015\/04\/steam-man-of-the-west.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-10r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3871"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13322,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions\/13322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=3871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}