From Zone to Zone: Or, The Wonderful Trip of Frank Reade, Jr., with His Latest Air-Ship

Luis Senarens

He grew up in a Cuban-American family in Brooklyn. Around 1882, Senarens began writing new stories in the Frank Reade adventure story series begun by Harry Enton in 1868. Senarens introduced Frank Reade, Jr. as the new main character. Scenarios added elements such as electricity, airships, and helicopters which resulted in him being called “the American Jules Verne.” The stories were very successful, and by the 1890s Senarens was asked by publisher Frank Tousey to write a similar series featuring Jack Wright, the “Boy Inventor”. Later in the decade, Tousey created the Frank Reade Library, a periodical devoted to “invention” stories, largely (or wholly) composed by Senarens using the pseudonym Noname. Mike Ashley calls him “the first prolific writer of science fiction”. He would eventually write more than 300 dime novels.”