From Zone to Zone with His Latest Invention: The Wonderful Trip of Frank Reade, Jr...

From Zone to Zone: It is easy to imagine that the steampunk movement - science fiction featuring steam-powered inventions and a 19th-century style - is purely a modern invention, an exercise in "what if there had been a Victorian equivalent to today's sci-fi genre?" However, early science fiction actually included much more than just the well-remembered works of literary figures like Jules Verne, and there really were a wealth of popular stories about steam-powered robots and other wild inventions before the turn of the 20th century. Many of these fictional creations were the products of boy inventor Frank Reade and later, his son, Frank Reade, Jr.