Do yourselves all a favor: click on the link below to read the utterly gripping tale of Californian adventures of long ago, complete with colorful characters and thrills to spare. Honest.
http://jessnevins.com/edisonade/edisonade.pdf
Okay, maybe this isn’t a true scorcher, but it’s a pretty big one, folks! This nickel thriller dates from August 1893 and, I got to tell ya, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Out of curiosity? Out of wonder? Out of ideas?
Nah, nothing like that.
Well, I can’t take complete credit for this find. I was trolling around io9 one afternoon reading some of the blogs posted there and I came across this. Some thoughtful contributor added it to an already existing post in the comments section – forgive me if I can’t remember who – and posted just the picture. Unable to rest upon sight of this wondrous creature, I Google-imaged matched it and came up with the story behind the picture.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to read a story about a gentleman named “Electric Bob”? That moniker brings to mind the sort of guy who came with all the drugs to the party in the 1960s and got people all charged up. Their acid hallucinations resulted in a giant shooting ostrich.
If nothing else, this certainly is creative. What must have passed through the author Robert T. Toombs to come up with such an idea? Perhaps it was the allure of electricity, still a fairly new phenomena in the home and elsewhere, yet exotic enough to warrant the attention of readers. “Electric Bob” sounds as if he’s harnessed the shocking truth behind the power, and he’s enlisted the help of a turn of the 19th Century Trojan horse to off the bad guys. Obviously there’s murder and mayhem. The story’s only about 14 pages long, though it’s tiny print. Still, I promise you’ll get a kick out of it. I did.
Moon, Stars and Beyond 