News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (2017) by myrandomcomment on Thursday December 03, 2020 @10:42AM (#25289905)
So I saw the title and thought of something else. You see I own this book. It is from 1911. As a child in the 80s I read what was the third updated Tom Swift books. That lead me to the 1960s set and then to the original set from the 1910s. I have all of the 80s and 60s set and I own 9 of the ones from the 1910s and I am looking for the rest.
Re:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (2017) by jdeibele on Thursday December 03, 2020 @11:52AM (#25290992)
The most famous example of this is the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series. They've been re-written 4 or 5 times, basically updated for each generation.

Franklin W. Dixon (Hardy Boys) and Carolyn Keene were pen names for a variety of authors. So they keep the title and author and mostly the plot but change the words to avoid anachronisms.

Re:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (2017) by myrandomcomment on Thursday December 03, 2020 @12:32PM (#25291648)
I read the 1960s versions of the Hardy Boys and The Nancy Drew when I was ~9. I still own most of them. My mother read everything. The house was full of books. At some point over the years having my own family and moving around a bit the books got cut down to only the old stuff from the 1960 that are collectables, stuff from my grandfathers childhood (things with dates ~1900) and hardbacks of non-fiction type things (science, music theory, math, biographies, the classics). This still covers 3 bookshelves. Everything else is pretty much only in digital form. In this lock down I have come to realize how much I miss the physical book.
Re:Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (2017) by dang on Thursday December 03, 2020 @12:58PM (#25292083)
That outfit, the Stratemeyer Syndicate, has had some good threads on HN over the years:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18534629 ("The Secret Syndicate Behind Nancy Drew")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1705714 ("The Hardy Boys - The final chapter (1998)")