656. THE STEAM MAN OF THE PRAIRIES. American Novels Publishing Co.; New York, 1868. American Novels 45. A reissue as +THE HUGE HUNTER; OR, THE STEAM MAN OF THE PRAIRIES. Beadle's Pocket Library Novels 40. New York, 1876. 

The first science-fiction dime novel, the parent of a long stream of fiction that reaches up through the Tom Swift stories to the present. The story is based on a historical invention, the Newark Steam Man built by Zadoc P. Dederick, of Newark, New Jersey, in 1868. This was a humaniform steam engine that walked the streets of Newark. 

*  St. Louis, Mo., and the far west, presumably California. 

*  Fifteenyear old Johnny Brainerd, a dwarfed, humpbacked boy, is a mechanical genius of the first order. After he has run through a series of small inventions, he constructs a steam-propelled human figure. Standing about nine feet tall, it walks or runs on long, carefully tooled legs ending in spiked feet. The fire pot is in its belly; the boilers are in its chest; smoke and fumes emerge from its hat; and a piercing whistle from its nose. As completed and tried out under ideal conditions, it can run about sixty miles per hour, drawing a broad-wheeled carriage containing coal, its driver, and others, if need be. It should be emphasized, however, that this device is not, as is often claimed, an early robot, but is simply a prime-mover that happens to be constructed in human shape. 

*  As Johnny is putting the finishing touches to his invention, he becomes acquainted with Baldy Bicknell, a hunter, trapper, and prospector. As flashbacks show, Baldy, while prospecting with two comrades, Mickey McSquizzle (a comic Irishman) and Ethan Hopkins (a semicomic New England Yankee) discovered a rich gold deposit in the West. But the three miners were perpetually harassed by Indians. Baldy, leaving his comrades at the mines massacring Indians, has come to St. Louis, and on seeing the steam man decides that it will be effective in driving off the Redskins. 

*  Baldy and Johnny soon appear at the mine with the steam man, which for a time frightens the Indians until it loses its novelty. Johnny also has adventures on the prairies with the steam man chasing buffalo. On one such occasion he meets up with a grizzly bear and a gigantic outlaw (the huge hunter of the title changes). Eventually, the Indians trap the comrades and the steam man in a box canyon, which they block with boulders. Johnny's solution, since the steam man cannot climb over obstacles, is to build up steam and explode the boiler among the Indians while the white men slip away and escape. 

*  The chronology and geography are not without problems, for Ellis did not work out distance and times very well. Nor did he realize the potential in the idea of the steam man. 

*  On a rather low literary level, but historically of great importance as the first dime novel to explore the wonders of mechanical invention. In narrative it set the pattern for later works, including the more important Frank Reade stories, by offering an invention, use of the invention in geographical circumstances, assorted perils that have little or nothing to do with the main stream of the story, great danger, escape, and destruction of the device. 

*  The story has been reprinted as Baldy's Boy Partner; or, Young Brainerdfs Steam Man (1888). 

*  A 1904 text, The Huge Hunter, has been reproduced in Eight Dime Novels (Dover Publications; New York, 1974) edited by E. F. Bleiler. ELLIS, G. A. B