YASID: girl with artificial leg, and other stuff
William December Starr
> I have been trying to figure out the name of the title or the
> author of a book my mom got me back when I was in school in the
> 80's. She was a librarian and always fed my sci fi book habit. I
> think it was part of a series, but all I remember is it had 3
> teenagers, 2 boys and one girl. The girl had an artificial leg,
> and there was something about an alien brain and they were able to
> get away or hide something inside the circuitry of the leg. I
> would ask my mom because she had a freaky card catalog for a
> brain, but she died and I lost my best resource.
>
> Not much to go on and when I try and Google that I get the
> weirdest articles, including a poor woman in LA who keeps getting
> her artificial leg stolen.
-- wds
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Sounds like the third Tom Swift series. In that one, they decided
that the previous versions of Tom weren't sensitive and diverse
enough and teamed Tom with a American Indian and handicapped (artificial
legs) woman.
They also re-wrote a lot of the series background. Whereas the Tom Swift, Jr.
series still had Tom Senior and his inventions around, the third series
moved Shopton to the Southwest and more or less ignored any characters from
the first two series.
Ted
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------
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What's not in Columbia anymore..
Andy Cooke
Was it one of the Tom Swift books? IIRC, in the third series (from the
early eighties), the girl (there were two boys and one girl) had an
artificial leg.
-Googles-
Yep, looks right from here. Author apparently "Victor Appleton" (may be
a pen name). Details on the sereis at:
http://tomswift.bobfinnan.com/ts3.htm
--
Andy Cooke
Quadibloc
> Another one that MITSFS got in our ya...@mit.edu mailbox:
>
> > and there was something about an alien brain and they were able to
> > get away or hide something inside the circuitry of the leg.
While it's already been identified, this reminded me of one of the
stories in Frederick Pohl's _Gateway_ series, where the universe-
changers the Heechee were hiding from hid inside a young girl's
companion computer - and she had a condition which made her bones
fragile.
John Savard
Kurt Busiek
> Was it one of the Tom Swift books? IIRC, in the third series (from the
> early eighties), the girl (there were two boys and one girl) had an
> artificial leg.
>
> -Googles-
>
> Yep, looks right from here. Author apparently "Victor Appleton" (may
> be a pen name). Details on the sereis at:
> http://tomswift.bobfinnan.com/ts3.htm
Very much a pen name.
Victor Appleton and his "son" Victor Appleton II, are from the same
authorial stew as Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, Laura Lee Hope and
many others.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<an...@andycooke.adsl24.co.uk> wrote:
>Was it one of the Tom Swift books? IIRC, in the third series (from the
>early eighties), the girl (there were two boys and one girl) had an
>artificial leg.
>
>-Googles-
>
>Yep, looks right from here. Author apparently "Victor Appleton" (may be
>a pen name). Details on the sereis at:
>http://tomswift.bobfinnan.com/ts3.htm
I was going to say I know one of the authors, but upon checking I see
my guy actually worked on the FOURTH series.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Joseph Nebus
Not at all the story in question, but there was a pair of books
by David Bischoff in the early 80s ... I want to say _Star Spring_ and
_Star Fall_, though they might have been published in the other order ...
featuring a hyperdimensional alien that manifests itself in our reality
as the spare leg of an android. Calls itself Cog, as in Cogito. Just
to mention that there's kind of a microgenre of aliens-in-limbs out there.
--
Joseph Nebus
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William December Starr
Andy Cooke <an...@andycooke.adsl24.co.uk> said:
> Was it one of the Tom Swift books? IIRC, in the third series (from
> the early eighties), the girl (there were two boys and one girl)
> had an artificial leg.
>
> -Googles-
>
> Yep, looks right from here. Author apparently "Victor Appleton"
> (may be a pen name). Details on the sereis at:
> http://tomswift.bobfinnan.com/ts3.htm
I (finally) passed on your and Ted Nolan's suggestions and just got
a reply saying "Yes, it looks like it was a Tom Swift book from the
third series!"
Yay, rasfw. I think this can be classified as "solved" even though
technically it's only been narrowed down to "one of the eleven books
in the series."
-- wds
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
From what I recall, I wouldn't recommend reading those 11 to narrow it
down..
Of course, I was a fan of the first two series, and was going into college.
Perhaps if I had encountered series 3 earlier and with no knowledge of
(and expectations from ) the other books, I would have liked it better.