AtD-13

[Anville Azote]

On 11/21/06, the Robot Vegetable <veg at dvandva.org> wrote:
>         First impression makes me want to go see if the
> Chums of Chance books were written by Thomas Appleton [1].
> A marvelous mix of geewhizbang patter, seasoned to era,
> with an erudite mixture of tech with the preposterous.
> (Perpetual motion indeed! More like an asymptotic
> catastrophe!)
[snip]
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift
>

I had the exact same impression.  (Just to be clear, **Victor**
Appleton was the collective pseudonym of the Tom Swift writers, but
the portmanteau name works plenty well here!)  The references in the
narrative flow to other books in the Chums of Chance series are very
Swiftian.

Tom Swift references hark back to Grover the boy genius of "The Secret
Integration", who keeps finding Tom Swift books planted around his
house and can't tell whether his parents are trying to make him into
an inventor or a racist.

And while I'm listing hyperlinks to other parts of the Pynternet, I
should mention that last night I spotted a ukulele player going back
to the tonic and waiting (Takeshi in VL), plus the White City
detective chief giving the etymology of "delirium" as "unfurrowed"
(TCL49).  The Traverse family's Fourth of July skyrockets evoke
Brenschluss without doubt.  I'm sure I noticed more in the 200 pages I
devoured, but I'm sending this message during my procrastination time
at work and I don't have the book with me.

-A. A.