If you can't make the Tom Swift Convention in July, I have two things to say to you:
1. Why not? Don't you realize what great stuff you are missing?
2. How about recording a short video with you talking about Tom Swift.
We are soliciting short videos of people talking about:
a. What Tom Swift means to me
b. What start them collecting/reading
c. The best of your collection or the one that got away (tales from the collecting world)
Contact James at for more info.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Register for the Convention (and the Hotel)
Registration is open for the Tom Swift Convention in July. The current prices last until June 16th and then will go up! Registration at the door will be available (but, again, at higher prices). The Tour and Dinner will close registration about a week before the event, or when seats fill up, whichever is first.
Registration Page
Remember, the bookings for the Sheraton Mission Valley are only available until June 16. We need to fill a certain number of rooms to meet our Convention obligations so be sure to tell them you are coming to the Tom Swift Convention when you book your room (or use our link under Location on the site.
Thanks! Look forward to seeing you there!
P.S.: More merchandise has been added to our CafePress Store
Registration Page
Remember, the bookings for the Sheraton Mission Valley are only available until June 16. We need to fill a certain number of rooms to meet our Convention obligations so be sure to tell them you are coming to the Tom Swift Convention when you book your room (or use our link under Location on the site.
Thanks! Look forward to seeing you there!
P.S.: More merchandise has been added to our CafePress Store
Monday, May 10, 2010
Tom Swift Merchandise Available Now!
We have designed a number of items for the licensed Tom Swift store (available for a limited time!) and hope you will like them.
More items will go up in the next week or two but please check it out now. You support the Tom Swift 100 Convention effort with your purchases.
CafePress Store
More items will go up in the next week or two but please check it out now. You support the Tom Swift 100 Convention effort with your purchases.
CafePress Store
Thursday, February 25, 2010
RSVP today for TS100
The 100th anniversary Tom Swift Convention will be held July 16-18, 2010 at the Sheraton Mission Valley Hotel in San Diego. This is the weekend before ComicCon.
Friday events will include museum tours and possibly tours of the Hotel del Coronado (where Edward Stratemeyer stayed when he visited the 1915 Panama-California Exposition) and a trip to UCSD Geisel Library to see their exhibit of Tom Swift material which is being arranged in conjunction with TS100.
Saturday and Sunday will include sessions with presentations, time to chat, a silent auction, a dinner (Saturday) and a Tom Swift live radio show performance.
We will have space for people to sell series books and related merchandise, including some convention-specific merchandise.
Plan to bring unusual or favorite Tom Swift-related items for a show-and-tell segment which was popular last year in Hammondsport.
Actual registration for the convention will be available soon with options to pay by check or PayPal. Hotel registration is available now. We need to fill 30 room-nights to meet with our agreement to have the convention space on Saturday and Sunday.
As we have more confirmations of speakers and events we will announce them here and on the TS100 web site.
Please RSVP today to let us know you will be coming.
Friday events will include museum tours and possibly tours of the Hotel del Coronado (where Edward Stratemeyer stayed when he visited the 1915 Panama-California Exposition) and a trip to UCSD Geisel Library to see their exhibit of Tom Swift material which is being arranged in conjunction with TS100.
Saturday and Sunday will include sessions with presentations, time to chat, a silent auction, a dinner (Saturday) and a Tom Swift live radio show performance.
We will have space for people to sell series books and related merchandise, including some convention-specific merchandise.
Plan to bring unusual or favorite Tom Swift-related items for a show-and-tell segment which was popular last year in Hammondsport.
Actual registration for the convention will be available soon with options to pay by check or PayPal. Hotel registration is available now. We need to fill 30 room-nights to meet with our agreement to have the convention space on Saturday and Sunday.
As we have more confirmations of speakers and events we will announce them here and on the TS100 web site.
Please RSVP today to let us know you will be coming.
Tom Swift 100 Convention has Fan Table at ConDor SciFi Convention this weekend
ConDor, San Diego's longest running science fiction and fantasy convention, held annually at the Handlery Hotel in San Diego, runs from Feb 26-28, 2010. The Tom Swift Convention will be represented by a Fan Table displaying photos of Tom Swift covers, flyers for the event, and the steering wheel from the Airship built for the never-completed Twentieth-Century Fox Tom Swift film from the late 1960s. James and Kim Keeline will be promoting the Convention for most of the day on both Saturday and Sunday at their Table. Be sure to stop by if you are attending ConDor.
ConDor Convention
ConDor Convention
SciFi Magazine's April 2010 Issue Covers Tom Swift 100th Anniversary Convention
SciFi Magazine, available today in major bookstores, has a full-page column devoted to the Tom Swift Centennial, written by Jeff Berkwits. As Berkwits writes, "For scifi fans of a certain age, the name Tom Swift brings back fond memories of rollicking adventures, futuristic contraptions, and, believe it or not, droll adverbs." The article goes on to discuss both the original and Junior series with photos of the covers of Tom Swift and his Airship and Tom Swift and the Visitor of Planet X, plus a brief discussion of the phenomenon of Tom Swifties. Get your copy today and make sure to join us for the San Diego convention in July.
Sci Fi Magazine
100th Anniversary Tom Swift Convention
Sci Fi Magazine
100th Anniversary Tom Swift Convention
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Hammondsport Convention -- part 2
After lunch the group attending the first-ever Tom Swift convention traveled to the Glenn H. Curtiss Aviation Museum. This was greatly expanded since the time when I first saw it in 1990, possibly in another location.
A most Tom Swift fans know, the career of Glenn Hammond Curtiss has parallels to the fictional career of Tom Swift. Curtiss was a motorcycle racing and aviation pioneer who did many of his experiments in Hammondsport, New York, or on the adjacent Keuka Lake. Hence, this town and lake are thought to be the inspiration for Shopton and Lake Carlopa.
The Curtiss-Tom Swift connection was first written up in detail by Dr. John T. Dizer, Jr. and published as "Shopton: Home of the Swifts" in Dime Novel Round-Up #449 (Feb 1970). It was reprinted in a "Leo Edwards" fan magazine called the Tutter Bugle (Oct 1973) and in his book Tom Swift & Company (McFarland, 1982).
In the article Jack Dizer looked at all of the location references in the Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. series and trying to fix the location of Shopton and Lake Carlopa based on these descriptions. He included references to distances to major cities and even consulted some old railroad timetables.
The Curtiss Aviation Museum has examples of the motorcycles and aircraft that were either the versions he worked on or were similar vintage examples or recreations. When looking at some of these motorcycles and motorized bicycles it is easy to imagine one that would be similar to the machine that Tom purchased from his eccentric friend, Mr. Wakefield Damon.
There was even a store window mock up with a motorcycle in the window which resembles a photo of a 1915-vintage bookstore window with a motorcycle surrounded by Tom Swift and other Grosset & Dunlap series books. I don't know if the museum folks knew of the rare vintage photo that was published in an internal trade magazine called Grosset & Dunlap's Business Promoter but it was at least a happy coincidence. Of course the museum display did not have piles of vintage books. There was one Tom Swift book in another display.
Curtiss was contacted by people who wanted light weight yet powerful gasoline engines for use in lighter-than-air dirigibles and heavier-than-air airplanes. Although the museum could not hold a dirigible, they had one display of the portion of the gondola with a Curtiss-type engine.
Curtiss joined an aviation experimental group headed by Alexander Graham Bell. With them Curtiss built a few biplanes which forged new methods for aerial control that did not use the Wright Brothers' patented wing warping system. Most aircraft today uses a variation of Curtiss' method rather than that of the Orville and Wilbur Wright.
He took one of these planes to an air show in Rheems, France, which resembles the air show that is described in Tom Swift and His Sky Racer (Grosset & Dunlap, 1911).
Curtiss also experimented with aircraft which could land on and take off from the surface of a lake. These became some of the first seaplanes. Much later there was Tom Swift and His Flying Boat (Grosset & Dunlap, 1923).
One of the more interesting Tom Swift inventions was his House on Wheels (1929). Today we would consider this to be a motor home or recreational vehicle. There were some examples of custom vehicles like this which could have served as an inspiration to the story. Curtiss had an "Aerocar" which was a streamlined trailer with all of the comforts of home. One of these was on display in the museum.
We were given a chance to view the restoration workshop during our tour. We had a dinner catered in the museum. Afterward we had our keynote presentation by Jack Dizer called "How Tom Swift Invented Everything" which reprised a talk he first gave to a science group several years ago. This was accompanied by several dozen interesting slides.
After his presentation, Jack was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize his five decades of research and writing about series books like Tom Swift. The plaque was laser engraved on wood and represented both the natural materials that Tom Sr. would have used on some of his early inventions as well as a CO2 laser that Tom Jr. could have invented.
The next morning the group reassembled at the museum again to see my presentation called "Tom Swift on the Silver Screen" which recounted details about the history of attempts to put Tom Swift on film or television. The earliest of these goes back to 1914. The most extensive project was in the 1960s when Twentieth Century Fox was trying to make a film based on the first series. I gave a brief version of this topic about 10 years ago at the Popular Culture Association conference. However, so much new material has been uncovered over the years that it was time to revisit it.
After the presentation, attendees were given a wooden keychain fob to commemorate the convention which was laser engraved in the same manner as Jack's plaque.
Since it was Sunday, several people wanted to get on the road so we each went our separate ways. Kim and I drove around Hammondsport to take in the antique stores and otherwise enjoy the area. That evening we went to Avoca, NY, to spend the night at the Caboose Motel before we started to head back to Newark, NJ.
George Dombi and Stephen Disney did a great job organizing this Tom Swift convention on a short timeline. The people who attended all had a good time and I'm sure everyone learned something.
A most Tom Swift fans know, the career of Glenn Hammond Curtiss has parallels to the fictional career of Tom Swift. Curtiss was a motorcycle racing and aviation pioneer who did many of his experiments in Hammondsport, New York, or on the adjacent Keuka Lake. Hence, this town and lake are thought to be the inspiration for Shopton and Lake Carlopa.
The Curtiss-Tom Swift connection was first written up in detail by Dr. John T. Dizer, Jr. and published as "Shopton: Home of the Swifts" in Dime Novel Round-Up #449 (Feb 1970). It was reprinted in a "Leo Edwards" fan magazine called the Tutter Bugle (Oct 1973) and in his book Tom Swift & Company (McFarland, 1982).
In the article Jack Dizer looked at all of the location references in the Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. series and trying to fix the location of Shopton and Lake Carlopa based on these descriptions. He included references to distances to major cities and even consulted some old railroad timetables.
The Curtiss Aviation Museum has examples of the motorcycles and aircraft that were either the versions he worked on or were similar vintage examples or recreations. When looking at some of these motorcycles and motorized bicycles it is easy to imagine one that would be similar to the machine that Tom purchased from his eccentric friend, Mr. Wakefield Damon.
There was even a store window mock up with a motorcycle in the window which resembles a photo of a 1915-vintage bookstore window with a motorcycle surrounded by Tom Swift and other Grosset & Dunlap series books. I don't know if the museum folks knew of the rare vintage photo that was published in an internal trade magazine called Grosset & Dunlap's Business Promoter but it was at least a happy coincidence. Of course the museum display did not have piles of vintage books. There was one Tom Swift book in another display.
Curtiss was contacted by people who wanted light weight yet powerful gasoline engines for use in lighter-than-air dirigibles and heavier-than-air airplanes. Although the museum could not hold a dirigible, they had one display of the portion of the gondola with a Curtiss-type engine.
Curtiss joined an aviation experimental group headed by Alexander Graham Bell. With them Curtiss built a few biplanes which forged new methods for aerial control that did not use the Wright Brothers' patented wing warping system. Most aircraft today uses a variation of Curtiss' method rather than that of the Orville and Wilbur Wright.
He took one of these planes to an air show in Rheems, France, which resembles the air show that is described in Tom Swift and His Sky Racer (Grosset & Dunlap, 1911).
Curtiss also experimented with aircraft which could land on and take off from the surface of a lake. These became some of the first seaplanes. Much later there was Tom Swift and His Flying Boat (Grosset & Dunlap, 1923).
One of the more interesting Tom Swift inventions was his House on Wheels (1929). Today we would consider this to be a motor home or recreational vehicle. There were some examples of custom vehicles like this which could have served as an inspiration to the story. Curtiss had an "Aerocar" which was a streamlined trailer with all of the comforts of home. One of these was on display in the museum.
We were given a chance to view the restoration workshop during our tour. We had a dinner catered in the museum. Afterward we had our keynote presentation by Jack Dizer called "How Tom Swift Invented Everything" which reprised a talk he first gave to a science group several years ago. This was accompanied by several dozen interesting slides.
After his presentation, Jack was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize his five decades of research and writing about series books like Tom Swift. The plaque was laser engraved on wood and represented both the natural materials that Tom Sr. would have used on some of his early inventions as well as a CO2 laser that Tom Jr. could have invented.
The next morning the group reassembled at the museum again to see my presentation called "Tom Swift on the Silver Screen" which recounted details about the history of attempts to put Tom Swift on film or television. The earliest of these goes back to 1914. The most extensive project was in the 1960s when Twentieth Century Fox was trying to make a film based on the first series. I gave a brief version of this topic about 10 years ago at the Popular Culture Association conference. However, so much new material has been uncovered over the years that it was time to revisit it.
After the presentation, attendees were given a wooden keychain fob to commemorate the convention which was laser engraved in the same manner as Jack's plaque.
Since it was Sunday, several people wanted to get on the road so we each went our separate ways. Kim and I drove around Hammondsport to take in the antique stores and otherwise enjoy the area. That evening we went to Avoca, NY, to spend the night at the Caboose Motel before we started to head back to Newark, NJ.
George Dombi and Stephen Disney did a great job organizing this Tom Swift convention on a short timeline. The people who attended all had a good time and I'm sure everyone learned something.
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