Canon be damned

[andygates]

I'm just reading Edison's Conquest of Mars, a trashy and lurid faux-sequel to H G Wells's War of the Worlds written - in Edison's lifetime - as a sort of puff-piece escapade (rather like the Wild Bill Hickock stuff).  Some fantastic clichés are present in their ur-forms: thus far the dashing inventor has discovered the Martian power-source, reverse-engineered their Ships of Space, come up with a disintegrator, danced with Queen Victoria, paid a flying visit to the Moon with Lord Kelvin and the savants of the age, and been modestly brilliant while co-ordinating the gathered and insultingly-stereotyped Races of Mankind in a massive, coordinated effort to build a fleet of electrostatic Ships of Space and go to Mars and spank those bellicose boneless brains once and for all.  Science!  Science properly applied can solve all problems, especially when applied through the lever of Edison's magnificent mind and the fulcrum of American gumption, labour and resources.

Apparently there were quite a lot of these novels, such that they got a genre name: Edisonades.  This Edison-escapade would doubtless have Wells spinning in his grave, lacking any sensitivity whatsoever to the human condition, and looking a lot like Independence Day for the Age of Invention.  Back in the day, they sold like hot cakes.