Tom Swift

A family tradition of science and engineering...

1910-1941 Stratemeyer Syndicate kids' series following the adventures of boy inventor Tom Swift. Each book began with Tom inventing some new gadget that conveniently proved essential to resolving the plot. Invented or popularized many Gadgeteer Genius tropes.

While popular in his time, Tom proved to have less staying power than his Stratemeyer stablemates Frank and Joe Hardy and Nancy Drew, perhaps because of how quickly his "cool technology" was superseded in the real world.

An Atomic-age revival of the franchise starring his son reached 30 or so volumes between 1954 and 1971, and expanded out of what was basically the Dieselpunk setting of the original series into more distinctly "Golden Age of SF" devices and stories, starting with a giant atomic-powered airplane and eventually going into space with antigravity. An intriguing thread running through the books was the continuing effort of the Swifts to establish meaningful communication with a distant race of Starfish Aliens who had contacted them.

Revived IN SPACE! in the early 1980s, in Southern California in the 1990s and in the first person in the 2000s. However, none of these series showed nearly as much staying power as the first two.

Although generally believed to be the origin of the "Tom Swifty" joke (such as "Pass me the shellfish," said Tom crabbily or "How was your colonoscopy?" asked Tom probingly), this is something of a Beam Me Up, Scotty (or "Play it again, Sam") situation. While Stratemeyer was eager to employ adverbs and reluctant to use the plain verb "said", actual "Tom Swifty" puns were rare.

The first 25 as well as the 39th Tom Swift Sr. books are in the public domain and available as downloadable texts from Project Gutenberg. Two of the "Tom Swift, Jr." books are also available there, as well, for fond fans and those who wish to compare the two series.

Home pages exist on tomswift.info for both the "Tom Swift, Sr." and "Tom Swift, Jr." series.

In 1983, an abortive attempt at a television adaptation was made. The Tom Swift/Linda Craig Mystery Hour starred Willie Aames and Lori Loughlin as the title characters. It only got as far as a Pilot Episode which was broadcast as a TV Movie to disappointing ratings.

Tom Swift is the Trope Namer for:

Tom Swifty, though, as mentioned above, actual examples are rare.

The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Tom Swift franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

Antiquated Linguistics: Inevitable, due to the time they were written.
Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Probably the Ur Example.
Cold War: The backdrop for much of the "Tom Swift, Jr." series.
Defictionalization: Thomas Swift's Electric Rifle is the source of the term "TaSER".
Dirty Communists: A frequent antagonist in the "Tom Swift, Jr." books.
Early Installment Weirdness: Tom's "invention" ability was initially fixing mundane technology for the first two books, then the third had him assisting an adult expert in creating a mundane airship, while the submarine of the fourth book is his father's invention. Only in the fifth book does Tom actually invent anything of his own.
Either or Title: All of the books in the original series, such as Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle; or, Fun and Adventure on the Road
First Contact Math: Tom Swift Jr. and his father communicate with aliens this way.
Gadgeteer Genius: Possibly the Ur Example of this trope, too.
I Love Nuclear Power: Very prominent in the "Tom Swift, Jr." series -- the younger Swift built everything from guns to airplanes that were powered by atomic reactors of varying sizes.
Kid Detective
MST: Tom Swift's War Tank is one of the more extensive MSTings available.
Old Hero, New Pals: The series uses this trope when they're not using the next Swift generation.
Parrot Exposition: Notoriously overused in the earlier novels and the source for much of the humor in the aforementioned MSTing.
Phlebotinum Du Jour: Electricity and internal combustion for Tom Swift; nuclear power for Tom Swift Jr.
Phlebotinum Handling Equipment: Tom Swift Jr. had labs with remotely-operated "waldoes".
Public Domain Character: 30 of the 40 books from the original series are public domain as of 2023. Additionally, failure to renew copyright put Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X and Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung in the public domain.
Raygun Gothic
Revival: Tom Swift Jr. in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s, and again in the 90s, and for good measure in 2006.
Recycled IN SPACE!: The adventures of Tom Swift the Somethingth, interstellar traveler.
Said Bookism
Sidekick: Mr. Damon and Ned in the original series, Bud in the 1950s, Ben in the 1980s, Rick in the 1990s. Given who they're playing the Sidekick to, they also get to be The Watson.
Starfish Aliens: Offscreen but usually referenced once every volume in the Tom Swift Jr. series.
Story Arc: The "Jr." novels had an ongoing arc about Tom's interaction with the alien "Space Friends". Since the arc never really went anywhere before the series ended, it's arguably also an Aborted Arc.
Teen Genius: Tom, of course.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Tom Swift's War Tank has examples of:

The Ditz: Ned.
Fourth Wall Breaking: Ned's stupidity becomes so severe that Joel and the bots run out of ways to riff him and are forced to ask the readers for help.
Idiot Ball: Ned and Mr Damon keep a firm grip on this at all times, but it seems that anyone who isn't Tom gets their sticky mitts on it at some point.

Servo: Ah, it all becomes clear, now. The residents of Shopton, except for the Swifts, share a collective intelligence. Someone else in town must be buttoning their coat and thereby placing a strain on the town's remaining IQ resources.

Invincible Hero: Lampshaded by Servo:

Servo: I've never read any of the books in this series, and I'll bet I know everything there is to know about him already. He's really good at everything that he does, which is everything done by any American of his age and class. Girls admire him, but he only has pure love for one. He's Roger Ramjet played straight. He is, in effect, every bit as annoying as every Mary Sue ever penned.

Obfuscating Stupidity:

Joel: Meanwhile, back on the Swift plant, Eradicate and Koku had undergone a change since their Master had been away....
Servo [as Eradicate]: I disagree -- even given Rossini's questionable reusage of material from his earlier operas, "The Barber of Seville" is one of the greatest Opera Buffas ever written; even the renowned Verdi himself said as much.
Crow [as Koku]: True, my friend, but I still think you're downplaying Mozart's "Don Giovanni" too much -- that raised the level of Opera Buffas to unknown levels which Verdi himself only matched with "Falstaff," some eighty years later.

Overly Long Gag: Crow, Servo and Joel's description of Swift's Cold-Blooded Torture. Justified in that it lasts as long as it takes for Mr Damon and Ned to realize that Tom Swift, inventor extraordinaire and tank engineer, may have possibly been kidnapped by the German spies they know full well are prowling around Shopton.
Running Gag: "I get paid by the word, you know."
Stuff Blowing Up: Crow destroys Tom's airfield as revenge for ditching him in a biplane over the no-fly zone in southern Iraq.
Too Dumb to Live: Ned. Oh boy, NED.
What the Hell, Hero?: Tom Swift has a tank to test. He wants to see how it fares when driven through a building. He spots a barn in a farmyard. Does he stop and ask the farmer's permission first? No.
Zeerust: Particularly in the Tom Swift, Jr. books, which are very much late-50s/early 60s retrofuturistic in their look and feel.