Title: The Steam Man of the Prairies
Author: Edward S. Ellis
Date of First Publication: 1868
Place of Publication: New York, NY: American Novel Publishing
Bibliographic Reference: isfdb
Type: Short story
Keywords: ANDROID; RETRO SF; RACE and POLITICS; FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
Critical Summary: Set in the prairies of mid-nineteenth century America at the dawn of the mechanical era, Ellis’s text is the first US science fiction dime novel and a famous work of the “Edisonade” subgenre, a modern term coined by John Clute and Peter Nicholls in The encyclopedia of Science Fiction to describe late-19th and early 20th-century stories of sf that presented young genius inventors. The Edisonade, as Jeff Nevins explains in his “Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Roots of Steampunk” in Steampunk, Eds. Jeff and Ann VandeMeer (Tachyon, 2011), is the precursor to the Steampunk subgenre of sf, and might be thought of as anti-Steampunk or as an instigation for it: where the Edisonade celebrates the gee-whiz boy inventor and the imperial project of marching a steam man into the American prairies to conquer, Steampunk engages with mad scientists whose schemes involve world domination and the existence of sometimes “cool” but often problematic mechanical creations or body modifications though technology. The Edisonade is a link between Steampunk and Frankenstein.
The primary plot device of Eliis’ work revolves around the “Steam-Man” and his creation by the adolescent mechanical whiz, scientist Johnny Brainerd. The Steam-Man is tasked with carting Brainerd around the countryside on various adventures. Unlike in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Steam-Man is a slave, unable to escape his master’s grasp. The Steam-Man’s eyes are full of fear, but his mouth is in defiant juxtaposition of the eyes with its grin. There is an aspect of dominance that in Shelley’s work is a more complex play between both Creator and Created asserting control. In the end, the the steam and pressure begins to overtake the Steam-Man and Brainerd runs away from his exploding creation.
Administrative Notes: Rebekah Kromm, CSUF. Edited by Molly Robertson, CSUF