View source for Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle

{{Short description|Young adult novel in the "Tom Swift" series of the early 1900's}}
{{one source|date=October 2012}}
{{Infobox book
| title_orig    = Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, or, Daring Adventures in Elephant Land
| translator    =
| image         = TomSwift10.jpg
| caption       =
| author        = [[Victor Appleton]]
| cover_artist  =
| country       = United States
| language      = English
| series        = [[Tom Swift]]
| genre         = {{hlist|[[Young adult novel]]|[[Adventure novel]]}}
| publisher     = [[Grosset & Dunlap]]
| release_date  = 1911
| media_type    = Print (hardback & paperback)
| pages         = 200+ pp
| preceded_by   = [[Tom Swift and His Sky Racer]]
| followed_by   = [[Tom Swift in the City of Gold]]
| wikisource    = Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
}}
'''''Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle; or, Daring Adventures in Elephant Land''''' is a [[young adult novel]] published in 1911, written by [[Stratemeyer Syndicate]] writers using the pen name [[Victor Appleton]]. It is Volume 10 in the original [[Tom Swift]] novel series published by [[Grosset & Dunlap]]. The novel is notable for inspiring the name of the [[Taser]].<ref name="Purpura 1996 187"/>
== Plot ==
While Tom Swift is working on his latest new invention, the electric rifle, he meets an African [[safari]] master whose stories of elephant hunting sends the group off to deepest, darkest Africa. Hunting for [[ivory]] is the least of their worries, as they find out some old friends are being held hostage by the fearsome tribes of the red pygmies.
Swift builds two major inventions in this volume. The first is a replacement airship, known as ''The Black Hawk''. This new airship is to replace ''The Red Cloud'', which was destroyed during his adventures in ''[[Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice]]''. This airship is of the same general construction as ''The Red Cloud'', but is smaller and more maneuverable.
Of foremost notice is Swift's invention of the ''electric rifle'', a gun which fires bolts of electricity. The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity, and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa. With the electric rifle, Tom and friends bring down elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, and save their lives several times in pitched battle with the red pygmies. It also can discharge a globe of light that was described as being able to maintain itself, like [[ball lightning]], making hunting at night much safer in the dark of Africa. In appearance, the rifle looked very much like contemporary conventional rifles.
== Racist content ==
The Thomas Swift series included depictions of its non-white characters now considered racist:{{Blockquote|text=In the book, the black people are rendered as either passive, simple and childlike, or animalistic and capable of unimaginable violence. They are described in the book at various points as “hideous in their savagery, wearing only the loin cloth, and with their kinky hair stuck full of sticks”, and as “wild, savage and ferocious ... like little red apes." |author=Jamiles Lartey<ref name=racism>{{cite news|last1=Lartey|first1=Jamiles|title=Where did the word 'Taser' come from? A century-old racist science fiction novel|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/history-of-word-taser-comes-from-century-old-racist-science-fiction-novel|accessdate=1 December 2015|work=The Guardian|date=1 December 2015}}</ref>|source=}}
== Homages ==
Sixty years later a [[non-lethal weapon]] delivering an electric shock was developed by [[Jack Cover]] and marketed by [[Taser International]] under the name "[[Taser]]", an acronym for ''Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle''. The middle initial 'A' is used to produce a word more pronounceable than "TSER", as no other name than "Tom Swift" is used for the book's hero.<ref name="Purpura 1996 187">{{cite book|last=Purpura|first=Philip P.|title=Criminal Justice: An Introduction |year=1996 |publisher=Butterworth-Heinemann|location=Boston |isbn=978-0-7506-9630-2 |page=187 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P8-oSPHlHXoC |accessdate=27 January 2015}}</ref>
== See also ==
*[[Tom Swift]]
*[[List of Tom Swift books]]
== References ==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3777 ''Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle'' e-text] at [[Project Gutenberg]]
[[Category:1911 American novels]]
[[Category:Tom Swift]]
[[Category:American young adult novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in Africa]]