Mentions of Inventions

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One of the ways novelists can be inventive is with…inventions.

Yes, some of their books weave stories around some of the greatest inventions in the history of humankind. That can certainly add drama and historic resonance to partly fact-based fiction.

A prime example is Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie, who tells the 15th-century story of a man who (at first reluctantly) helps the prickly, driven Johann Gutenberg develop the printing press — surely one of the most consequential inventions of all time. I’m currently in the middle of reading this absorbing 2014 novel.

Part of The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) revolves around the invention and early days of the automobile — which figures in Booth Tarkington’s absorbing exploration of progress vs. stasis, and new money vs. old money.

Stephen King’s novel Cell takes a horror-laden (and satirical?) approach to cell phones as that technology was becoming widely popular. The book — perhaps my least-favorite King effort — features a mysterious broadcast over a cell-phone network that turns a bunch of people into zombie-like beings. 🙂 Published in 2006, a year before the iPhone was introduced.

The main focus of Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) is the switching in infancy of two boys — one born into slavery and the other born to the master of the house. But a fascinating subplot features a court case in which the new technology of fingerprinting figures prominently. Interestingly, that new technology was anachronistically more current to when Twain wrote the novel than to the time period in which the novel was set.

Also anachronistic was Ayla’s much-too-early invention of the travois (a type of sled or platform, pulled by a horse, on which could be placed heavy loads) in Jean M. Auel’s circa-18,000 BC-set series that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. The incredibly resourceful Ayla’s method of starting a fire was more contemporary to her prehistoric time.

Novels with time travel can certainly make inventions fascinating. For instance, the 20th-century physician Claire of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels creates some homemade penicillin after she ends up living in the 18th century. Claire knew about that antibiotic because penicillin was discovered in 1928.

Another time travel book, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), was prescient in inventing an early version of a debit card — the modern version of which didn’t arrive until 1966.

Science fiction can of course also predict and depict inventions before they’re actually invented. One of countless examples is the spaceship from Earth in H.G. Wells’ 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon.

For younger readers, Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams took an early look at computers — which tended to be huge at the time of that novel’s 1958 publication.

Your thoughts on this topic? Other novels with a strong invention element?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a controversial project being voted on again, some overpaid municipal hires, and more — is here.

88 thoughts on “Mentions of Inventions”

  2. I thought about this, and outside of several novels you have already mentioned… I couldn’t think of another story based around an invention.

    Perhaps you could count “A Tale of Two Cities”, based around the guillotine?

    On “mentions” of inventions, more than a book around such- In “100 Years of Solitude”

    “Melquíades brings inventions to Macondo, such as magnets & a magnifying glass the size of a drum. Later, other gypsies will bring “sewing machines that reduce fevers,” and, finally, they will bring the world’s largest, most glittering, “hot” diamond: ice.”

    There’s a fab movie “Phone Booth”. The entire story takes place in a phone. I checked, but it’s not from a book. Maybe I’ll watch it again!

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  3. William Gibson, in his 1984 novel “Neuromancer”, invented something big, though but a word: ‘cyberspace’. Or was it something more?

    “In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson’s vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide Web), after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks “[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?“

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer

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  4. The Naive and Sentimental Lover”– John Le Carre’s only non-espionage novel, and not well-loved. Its chief protagonist invents a revolutionary brake for baby carriages, the large and imposing dreadnoughts favored by the mid-century British upper middle class, which allows him to dominate the pram market.  The invention seemed more far-fetched than any international intrigue the author had concocted previously or since.

    “The Assistant” by Robert Walser– a strange and engaging book told by Robert Marti, a man “drowning in obedience” who helps, such as he is able, Karl Tobler, a baselessly egotistical inventor who has squandered his inheritance on his self-image as visionary inventor.  He invents a few items that attract no interest and no buyers— the Advertising Clock, the Marksman’s Vending Machine and the Deep Drilling Machine.

    “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang” by Ian Fleming– received the book one Christmas, but was told old to take to it.  I do seem to remember that the fellow with the magic automobile/flying machine invented something I think he termed ‘whistling sweets’– hard candy with a hole in the center. As Lauren Bacall once told a fellow–“you just put your lips together and blow.”

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    • Thank you, jhNY! Interesting that John Le Carre authored a non-espionage novel! Good for him, even if the book was not widely loved. From the premise, it does sound readable, and of course he was an excellent writer.

      I remember reading Robert Walser’s “The Assistant” several years ago on your recommendation, and found it engrossing. (I also liked Bernard Malamud’s totally unrelated novel of the same name, which I read way back in high school.)

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  5. Your blog post reminds me of a book I’ve been planning to read; however, I keep setting it aside: https://krieger.jhu.edu/modern-languages-literatures/faculty-books/the-man-who-invented-fiction/ There’s also what I consider a very brilliant short story by Vonnegut re: Edison inventing the electric light. It’s from Welcome To The Monkey House and aptly titled Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog. Hope you and yours had a nice Easter. Now that my kids are grown, there were no eggs to decorate and hide or baskets to make, but alas no chocolate bunnies either. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Loved the link! Miguel de Cervantes did “invent” fiction in a way. There were of course earlier novels of a sort — such as “The Tale of Genji” — but “Don Quixote” is so good: readable and enjoyable.

      Also, I appreciate the mention of “Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog.”

      Hope you had a nice Easter, too! Even without the chocolate bunnies. 🙂

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  6. Wow, a topic that’s making the wheels turn this week Dave! 🙂 The best I could come up with was a long time ago, I read a book called “the Wright Sister” – written from the POV of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s sister who helped them along while they invented and tested out the various Flyer models. It was okay, an interesting perspective but not the best book I’ve ever read. I’ve also read a few of your mentions – including Outlander, and while I haven’ read the First Men in the Moon, I have read the Time Machine by H.G. Wells – an excellent book.

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    • Thank you, M.B.! I like the premise of “The Wright Sister”; women are often not given enough credit for inventions and other things. Sorry it wasn’t a better book. As for “The First Men in the Moon” — very good, but “The Time Machine” is a more compelling read.

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  7. HI Dave, a most interesting topic this week. The Clan of the Cavebear is a great mention. Ayla goes on to invent other things like soap. HG Wells also wrote The Time Machine which was far ahead of its time. John Wyndham featured a young female biochemist who discovered that a chemical extracted from an unusual strain of lichen could be used to slow down the ageing process, enabling people to live to around 200–300 years. That was his book Trouble with Lichen. He also featured a post-apocalyptic world after a nuclear explosion in The Chrysalids. Teagan Riordain Geneviene from our blogging community also features lots of inventors and inventions in her fabulous novels, especially the steampunk ones.

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  8. For all that science fiction is dismissed as otherworldly dreaming, it’s interesting to see how practitioners’ predictions sometimes fall short of what actually happens.
    To give one example, and probably from one of my favorite books even though it hasn’t aged well:
    Arthur C. Clarke’s “Imperial Earth,” is among other things is a travelogue of Westernized Earth in the year 2276 from the point of view of a visitor from the human colony on Saturn’s moon Titan.
    Pretty much everyone on Earth owns something called a “Minisec,” described (in 1976) as something looking very much like a graphing calculator of the 1990s-2000s. In every residence is a “comsole” with a keyboard and screen, with a description that can’t help but call to mind a desktop computer.
    Both are tied in to “Aristotle,” a name given to a computer bank with global connections. It’s a communication system and an encyclopedia, basically. You want to talk to someone, you look them up; you want information, you ask “Ari.”
    Compare that to the smartphones, laptops and decentralized, interactive, and pervasive internet and social media that exists in 2024 — wildly more so than Clarke’s information ecology of 2276.
    A little bit more of a reach, but Clarke’s “The City and the Stars,” set millions of years in the future, depicts humans living in Earth’s last city. The billions of residents of Diaspar are “stored” in memory banks except for brief periods of time when an individual may be downloaded into a human body created for them, then live for a hundred years or so among a few thousand other embodied humans in Diaspar before returning to the memory banks. While “alive,” the Diaspar residents amuse themselves in immersive, virtual-reality games called “sagas.”
    Writing in 1956, Clarke JUST misses describing the wholly-simulated society of 1999’s fictional (we hope) “The Matrix.”

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    • Thank you, Don, for those two Arthur C. Clarke mentions and the great descriptions of each fascinating book! You got me interested in reading more from that author; like many people, I’ve only read his “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Science fiction obviously can’t predict the future exactly, but many sci-fi novels have been impressively in the ballpark with their speculation.

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  11. Hello, Dave. So far I’ve only come up with one example. In a favorite novel of mine by Margaret Kennedy, NOT IN THE CALENDAR, a little girl makes friends with a neighborhood child who is considered completely unreachable because they invent a sign language for communicating with each other. This is in mid-1800s when not many people understand that being deaf has nothing to do with being stupid. The deaf girl is finally educated and becomes a painter as an adult while her friend makes a career of working with the deaf. Excellent book. I have read that twins also sometimes invent private languages for talking to each other.

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      • Thank you, Kim! “Not in the Calendar” sounds REALLY good. Now on my to-read list. Amazing how inventive humans can be when there’s a strong incentive to be inventive, in this case the incentive being friendship.

        Hope you’re enjoying your stay in Kyoto! Exciting!

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    • Thank you, Thomas! That’s a nice third-grade memory. 🙂 Gutenberg and his invention are amazing subjects; I can see why he and the printing press have inspired a number of books from various parts of the world.

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  15. The novel that immediately jumps to mind is Beautiful Invention by Margaret Porter, based on the life of Heddy Lamarr, who invented something that helped the war effect in WWII. I don’t remember what the invention actually was. (Too technical for me!)

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  16. A novel that comes to mind is the sci-fi adventure novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne. Verne’s 1872 classic novel was inspired by a French submarine, the first of its kind, launched in 1863. I believe that such stories about inventions, fictitious or real, open the minds of our youth to possibilities for future inventions. To dream big. To make the impossible possible.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! That Jules Verne book is a great example of a relatively new (at the time) invention being the focus of a novel! And your comment’s last three lines are quite eloquent. 🙂 Yes, stories like that can be very inspiring to young readers. Heck, to readers of all ages.

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    • Made me look it up! The “Plongeur”, was probably the first and last submarine designed to use compressed air for propulsion. But its need for large areas of compressed air storage made the “Plongeur” one big undersea boat– impressive for scale in itself. This early submarine never quite advanced past the testing stage, and proved unstable, its bow tending to sink faster than its stern. It could not submerge at depths lower than 10 meters.

      But a model of it was displayed in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle and Verne saw it, and was inspired

      I’d bet he was also inspired by the early submarine CSS Hunley,which sank a Union ship with its ‘spar torpedo’ off the coast of South Carolina near Charleston in 1864. And most likely was sunk itself by the compression wave of the torpedo’s explosion which sank the USS “Housatonic”.

      In gambling slang, a ‘plunger’ is a high stakes gambler willing to take large risks. I’d say any sailor in either of those early submarines qualifies.

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  17. Another interesting post, Dave. I think I’d enjoy Gutenberg’s Apprentice. I think about a lot of science fiction books and short stories that seem prescient in their ability to predict what authors may have considered a safe distance into the future.

    I’m going to go with 2001 A Space Odyssey, credited to Arthur C. Clarke but (as I checked) co-written with Stanley Kubrick. Apparently the book and the movie were developed in tandem. The reason I focus on this book is its reliance on Artificial Intelligence. Imagine a computer we address by name (Hal). Clarke and Kubrick were a little early. The book is set in 1999, but they weren’t far off. I only hope we can control AI better than they did.

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    • I am delighted that you are enjoying Gutenberg’s Apprentice, Dave. I have found that most “invention stories” are in non-fiction. For example,”The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough and “The Innovators” by Walter Isaacson

      I enjoyed Gutenberg’s Apprentice’s blend of fiction with real-life events to create a compelling narrative. I gained a deeper understanding of the historical context in which this invention emerged. I was especially excited about exploring the impact of the printing press on society, which prompted me to reflect upon the technological innovations influencing our current reality.

      “What needs has any man, besides those needs we share with beasts? And then I knew: he has to read.” Alix Christie, Gutenberg’s Apprentice

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