Frank Reade, Jr., and His Electric Ice Ship or, Driven Adrift in the Frozen

Senarens, Luis, 1863-1939Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
168K words
Chapters
17

Tags

English Originals Science Fiction Invention FantasyAdventure JourneyThrilling PlotFather and SonArctic ImageryPopular FictionAmerican Dime Novel

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Frank Reade, Jr., and His Electric Ice Ship; or, Driven Adrift in the FrozenAuthor: Senarens, Luis, 1863-1939,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Apr 29, 2017

Editor's review

This is one of the Frank Reade Jr. boy inventor series written by Luis Senarens, with the electronic edition released by Project Gutenberg, belonging to early American popular science fiction and adventure fiction. The story centers on the "electric ice ship" and drifting in the frozen wastes, combining a boy inventor, technological fantasy, and polar adventure; its highlight lies in device imagination and continuous peril rather than scientific rigor. It is suitable as a sample of late nineteenth-century American popular reading and the boy science fiction tradition: technological optimism, heroic protagonists, rapid crisis resolution, with pacing clearly serving the pleasures of serial reading. Readers can focus on how the author uses invented devices to create scenes, how he arranges one escape after another, and how such works shaped young readers' imagination of technology and adventure. Because the book was written early, its technological speculations and geographical descriptions carry period limitations; it should be read as a historical text rather than modern popular science. Overall it is better suited as material for genre literature history and light reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read it as a genre sample, noting how invented devices are used to create and resolve crises.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter; after each escape sequence, review the protagonist's decision-making and the author's pacing.
  3. For research, record the book's technological imagination and period background, distinguishing literary interest from scientific accuracy.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17

FAQ

Is the scientific setting of this novel reliable? It should not be treated as a scientific reference. It belongs to early juvenile adventure fiction, where technological speculations serve plot wonder and serial interest rather than rigorous deduction. It is better to focus on how invention imagination drives the narrative and what period technological optimism these speculations reflect.
Do I need to read other works in the Frank Reade series first? Generally not. Such series novels usually take a single adventure as a unit, with relatively independent plots, so you can enter the story by reading this book directly. If you want to understand the continuity of character relationships, supplementing other works in series order would be more systematic.
Is it suitable for children? It can serve as English extensive reading material for older children, but the book contains nineteenth-century adventure narrative habits and period usage; parents or teachers are advised to guide appropriately, helping children distinguish imaginative elements in historical texts from real scientific knowledge.

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About the author

Senarens, Luis, 1863-1939 Author

Luis Senarens (1863-1939) was a prolific American writer of popular fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for adventure stories featuring young inventors. The library holds 15 of his works, most notably the Frank Reade series, including Frank Reade and His Steam Horse, Frank Reade, Jr., and His New Steam Man, The Sunken Isthmus, and Frank Reade Jr.'s Air Wonder, The Kite. These stories center on remarkable machines powered by steam or electricity and on daring expeditions to remote regions. Their fast-paced plots and bold imagination reflect the era's fascination with technological progress and geographical exploration. Public information about his life, nationality, and education is limited, so no speculation is offered here.