James Lehr Kennedy is an American inventor-entrepreneur currently living in Ohio. From his dining room table, he built a highly successful multinational telecommunications company. He holds more than two dozen patents, trademarks, and copyrights and is a lifelong student of science and technology. In his youth, he read Tom Swift books and, inspired, has led a life that has paralleled that of Tom Swift in many respects. A fan of the steampunk ethos, he has conceived a series of books with a British variant of Tom Swift, inventor, adventurer, entrepreneur, and captain of industry. Welcome to Victor Appleson's world, the world of James Swift.

An Author's Note: I'm a fan of steampunk. I have been for many years a student of the industrial revolution and the development of technology. I grew up on the works of Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Tom Swift Jr. books. One thing they all had in common -- they were grounded in actual or possible science. I have found myself disappointed in steampunk stories that are impossible by virtue of their technology, or those that defy the rules of the physical world: self-aware clockwork robots, steam-powered spaceships, perpetual motion machines, etc. Many have elements of the supernatural that I find strain all credibility. I wondered if it would be possible to create a series of stories based on actual technology available in the 19th century, with as few changes as possible from our timeline.

The 1800s were a time of discovery of the basic principles of how things work: in chemistry, the ability to make compounds not found in nature; in medicine, vaccines and the understanding of germs; in physics, the nature and application of electricity and magnetic fields; in manufacturing, widespread use of mechanization and mass production; in metallurgy, the ability to make low carbon steels, and so on. Most of the technology we enjoy today had its roots in the 1800s. Synthetic fibers, electricity for home use, radio, and the telephone all were inventions of the 1800s. In 1880 Alexander Graham Bell even patented the Photophone, a device for transmission of sound by light beams, predating fiber optics by 130 years. Plastics were invented in the 19th century. The steam boiler technology of the 19th century lives on today in coal, gas, and nuclear electric power plants.

So I have set out to write a new type of steampunk, a steampunk based on the reality of what is or was possible. I call it Realtechnologik. It is based on the coal, steam, chemical, electrical, and other technologies available or discovered within ten years of the timing of the story. Every invention, event, or technology mentioned in this book existed or was possible in that time frame. References in the back of each book support my use of a given technology or event. Finally, this book pays homage to the Tom Swift books of my youth. I hope you have as much pleasure reading the James Swift series as I have had writing it -- and inventing or discovering the devices of James Swift's world.

James Lehr Kennedy