Forward into the past: "Frank Reade" authors mix fact and fiction

 

In their 100-year-old Southeast Portland home, Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention co-authors Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett leaf through an advance copy of their new book as Bowie, their Weimaraner, relaxes in Guinan’s lap.

 

Frank Reade’s science fiction escapades, first serialized in an anthology in 1876, were initially created to capitalize on the popularity of stories about steam-powered robots. The stories soon took on a life of their own. The Frank Reade Library, published in 1892-98, was the first science fiction periodical.

 

“Verne’s claims to the science fiction crown are suspect,” says Guinan of the French writer. “His novel The Steam House didn’t appear until after Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains.

 

“Verne’s fiction is closer to that of Clive Cussler: technological travel thrillers. H.G. Wells was more of a prognosticator, predicting the development of man and his technology. Frank Reade stories preferred to concentrate on the amazing mechanics over the characters themselves.”

 

A ‘vehicle for the vehicles,’ if you will.

 

 

Guinan stumbled upon the Frank Reade character a decade ago, while doing research for the original website that was the germ of the book Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel.

 

“I was doing Google searches for terms like ‘mechanical man,’ since the word ‘robot’ wasn’t coined until 1920,” he remembers, “and I found references to the Reade dime novels.”

 

Guinan initially wanted to do a book based on Reade before Boilerplate, since Reade was a public domain character and there was a risk of another author having the same idea. However, he did not yet have enough Reade source material to do the book justice at the time.

 

In collecting the dime novels, Guinan frequently found himself in eBay bidding wars with the same user. This man was Joe Rainone, who collects and traces the history of the American periodical and pulp fiction. Guinan would eventually visit Rainone in Long Island and spend days scanning rare Frank Reade engravings.

 

“I think Paul and I have read more of the original Frank Reade dime novels than anyone currently living,” says Bennett. “Except for Everett Patterson, the former Periscope Studio intern we hired to write summaries of them.”

 

In the course of preparing the scans for Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention , Guinan has cleaned and restored the images, contributing to the preservation of science fiction and periodical history.

 

“They look better now than when they were first printed,” Bennett proudly notes.

 

Excerpts from the Reade dime novels are included in the couple's new book, providing additional context. Bennett admits to minor editing of these selections, as the original stories contain a great deal of repetition and nearly unintelligible dialect from ethnic characters.

 

One of the authors' goals was to remain true to the basic concepts of the novels themselves, as neither sees much point in remakes that veer wildly from the original concept. As example, Guinan refers to the silent film version of Moby Dick, which ended with Captain Ahab returning home to his wife.

 

 

The character Frank Reade Jr. is a brilliant inventor and adventurer, but also an imperialist, racist government operative. He spends part of his career making exotic lands safe for democracy by “pacifying” the local inhabitants. Although he trusts his African-American sidekick Pompei with his life, Reade treats him “like you would a smart dog.” Bennett and Guinan are cleverly communicating the same message through both Boilerplate’s inventor, the socially progressive Archibald Campion, and the more reactionary Reade:

 

“Where Boilerplate is The Daily Show, Frank Reade is The Colbert Report,” Guinan explains.

 

Frank Reade Jr. and Campion were already established as friends in the Boilerplate book, so the robot makes a few appearances in the Frank Reade book. Bennett was excited to have the diametrically-opposed Campion and Reade Jr. argue about politics.

 

 

Guinan’s wife and co-author Bennett works with him on the plot, then she expands it into a full-blown narrative. Together they scoured Frank Reade Library for suitable text excerpts related to the settings, events, and issues they wanted to address.

 

“A lot of the things we're interested in appear somewhere in a Frank Reade story. We can talk about certain political issues in real-world terms and find dime novel material to tie into that. ”

 

For example, Reade’s fictional adventures in Africa are excerpted alongside Guinan and Bennett's new tale, which covers the history of the Congo. Guinan remembers the concern they had over the tone of that section.

 

“It was hard to put that into the book, because we didn’t want to make Reade too unsympathetic in this dark story, but this is Anina’s brilliance. Our editor encouraged us to make this a more ‘rollicking’ book, so she saved the Congo story from being depressing by centering it around Reade rescuing Henry Stanley, who got into trouble while trying to rescue a besieged colonial governor.”

 

Their research into U.S. military adventurism turned up General Smedley Butler, whose frank post-service description of his actions in Central and South America helped to underscore the work that the fictional Reade performed for his government at that time. Like Butler, Reade could also be viewed as “a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short,” as Butler put it, “I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

 

“It was perfect,” Bennett recalls. “We didn’t have to make it up.”

 

The reader obviously needs to connect in some way with the events in Frank Reade, and this was in the forefront of the authors’ minds during the writing process.

 

“That's part of why I chose to tell Frank Jr.'s story through the eyes of his daughter, Kate, who finds his secret journal after he dies,” says Bennett. “She's more fun than he is, and she has a more modern voice.”

 

“I always try to include elements that modern audiences will be able to relate to,” Guinan adds.

 

“These historical events may be forgotten stories, but the ripples from the past are still felt today. Joseph Conrad described the situation in the Congo in his novel Heart of Darkness, which inspired the film Apocalypse Now. So we referenced that in the Congo historical section. If you go into a Banana Republic and ask an employee what the name means, odds are they won’t know—but if you read our book, you'll find out it goes back to O. Henry’s description of U.S. interference in Honduras during the early 1900s.”

 

 

In creating a convincing “history” for the Reade family, Bennett not only created different “voices” for the various members, she also altered those voices as the characters aged over the course of the book. Boilerplate’s story spans a mere 25 years, but the adventures in Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention stretch from before the Civil War up until the 1930s. From Frank Sr.’s steampunk to Frank Jr.’s Teslapunk to Frank III and Kate’s dieselpunk, each character is represented by their own distinct writing style as well as technology.

 

“Anina is great at creating distinct voices for characters and also communicating information through dialogue without it sounding like exposition,” Guinan points out.

 

According to Bennett, the hardest voice to master was that of Frank Reade Jr.

 

”He's more colloquial and hard-nosed than Campion, but they both still needed to be of the same generation.”

 

She was aided in her task by reading source material from the different time periods.

 

“Thanks to Google Books, I had access to 19th- and early 20th-century publications that I would not have been able to find physically. It was a challenge to write journal and letter passages for six different family members across three generations, but it’s one I enjoyed.”

 

 

To illustrate the story, Guinan created or restored hundreds of images of the Reade family and their various  craft. He altered period photographs to illustrate the Reades’ adventures, and built three scale models of fanciful vehicles to be edited into existing scenes.

 

“This was the most labor-intensive work of my career,” he says. “We only had about 14 months to finish the book, before rewrites and other changes.”

 

Ironically much of the Photoshop work on this book is effort that, if he has done his job well, no one will notice.

 

Of the many factual events related in Frank Reade, one of Guinan’s favorites is the Venezuela Crisis of 1902, which nearly plunged us into war with Germany when its navy threatened Venezuela over payment of debts.

 

“The United States was opposed to European nations coming into what we considered our sphere of influence, and we faced them down, not unike the Cuban Missile Crisis. We ended up giving Germany a way to leave without losing face, and avoided all-out war.”

 

The lack of documentation about some aspects of this incident resulted in what historian Edmund Morris called a “gap in the historical record,” which made a perfect place for Frank Reade to be included, and even influential. Less than ten years after Reade's submarine secretly sinks a German battleship during the 1902 crisis, Germany develops a fleet of “U-boats.”

 

Bennett’s favorite character is Kate Reade, the daughter of Frank Jr. Only given a brief mention in the very last Frank Reade dime novel, the characters of Kate and Frank Reade III were created nearly from scratch for Bennett and Guinan's book. Through her desire to get to know her father, Kate became the device by which Reade Jr.’s journals see the light of day.

 

Interestingly, Kate was a part of the original Boilerplate graphic novel concept before the couple knew she existed.

 

“I wanted this character to be part of the Reade family,” explains Guinan, “and named her Kate after Star Trek: Voyager’s Kathryn Janeway. It wasn’t until later that we found out that was her actual name.”

 

If Abrams Books were to green-light a third volume of this secret history, the pair plan to write about “Kate’s Commandos” and their high-tech espionage adventures in the Pacific Theater during the run-up to WWII. Guinan gives an overview of the concept:

 

“It would be kind of like Raiders of the Lost Ark, if Indy were a woman fighting the Japanese instead of Nazis.”

 

“And with less magic,” adds Bennett.

 

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Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, due from Abrams Image on February 1, will have book release parties at three different Portland comic shops next month.