The exploits of Tom Swift Jr., boy genius and inventor of nearly everything, were required reading for every starry- eyed lad of the \'50s. There\'s a zillion of them, all printed with full- color covers directly on the hardbacks, as with The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, Nancy Drew, and a host of other teen series books of the era. The author, Victor Appleton II, was the name for a syndicate of uncredited writers, which I think no one would now deny, so the Tom Swift Jr. stories are vastly uneven.