Chumps of Chance?

[David Morris]

http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Reade-Paul-Guinan/dp/0810996618/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328028730&sr=1-1

Before Jules Verne’s flying machines and H. G. Wells’s spaceships,
there was Frank Reade, globe-trotting inventor and original steampunk
hero. Frank Reade magazines were the world’s first science fiction
periodicals, enthralling millions of readers with tales of fantastic
inventions and adventures. Now many of the spectacular images from the
vintage dime novel series are being reprinted for the first time in
more than a century, along with excerpts from the action-packed
stories. In Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, this lost
legacy of Americana is interwoven with a biography of the "real" Reade
family—inventors and explorers who traveled the world with their
helicopter airships, submarines, and robots, and who encountered
figures like Geronimo and Houdini. This epic saga is brought to life
in the multimedia style of the authors’ previous volume, the
critically acclaimed Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel. Frank
Reade is part–science fiction, part–alternate history, and entirely
exciting!