Credit goes to Chris Bucholz of Cracked.com

Possibly the craziest and certainly the raddest genre lost to the winds of time. In the same way that the Robinsonade genre was named after Robinson Crusoe, the Edisonade was named after Thomas Edison, whom the more astute of you will recognize is not a fictional character. In this case it refers to Thomas Edison's many, many inventions, with the typical Edisonade featuring a similar brilliant young inventor who solves problems with his brilliant young inventions. The inventor would take his invention (not explicitly a weapon, but certainly bristling with them) into "the frontier," in the process claiming it or civilizing it or just shooting a bunch of its residents a whole bunch.

Edisonades were found mainly in pulp magazines and novels around the turn of the century and featured fantastic rambling titles like "The Steam Man of the Prairies" and "Jack Wright and His New Electric Horse" and "Frank Reade, Jr's Electric Air Canoe; or, The Search for the Valley of the Diamonds" and "Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera; or, Thrilling Adventures When Taking Moving Pictures." Also, my personal favourite, "Electric Bob's Big Black Ostrich."

It's this central belief of the Edisonade, the certainty of the all-civilizing, all-conquering power of technology, that looks so dated now. Although fascination with new technology still exists and can be regularly seen in science fiction, that genre is just as likely to focus on the negative aspects of new technology as well. And for good reason. After a century of witnessing the sometimes negative impacts new technology can bring, from pollution, to societal upheaval, to nuclear winter, we've rightfully adopted a slightly more sceptical view of it.