heroic Thomas Edison types. The coming of the "space opera," what Brian Stapleford describes as "colourful action-adventure stories of interplanetary or interstellar conflict," brought the figure of the Edisonade into a new context, that of outer space. In each case The Man With The Machine, the Edisonade, made use of machines whose workings were only lightly justified, if at all, by actual science. The hard science fiction Man With The Machine began with Captain Nemo, whose ship, the Nautilus, was described in great detail and at great length, with Verne ascribing its marvels to electricity in very realistic and plausible terms. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea was published in France in 1870; the first British translation was published in 1872, with an American translation following in 1873. Its influence was marked; Luis Senarens, the creator of Frank Reade, Jr. and one of the most influential dime novel authors, read Verne's work and praised him for it, in turn receiving a letter of praise from Verne himself. (This led to both authors using concepts that first appeared in the other's work.) Many of the protagonists of Verne's later works, including Robur the Conqueror from The Clipper of the Clouds (1887), are Men With The Machine variations on Nemo. Thinly veiled copies of Nemo proliferated following the British publication of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, with two of the most blatant being Bracebridge Hemyng's "Captain Nemo," in "Dick Lightheart; or, the Scapegrace at Sea," published in Young Men of Great Britain in 1873, and Edward Stratemeyer's "Captain Vindex," in "The Wizard of the Deep; or, the Search for the Million Dollar Pearl," in 1895. Captain Mors, a character who appeared in 165 issues of a German dime novel, Der Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff (1908-1911) and who is mentioned in League, was another Man With The Machine whose adventures took him into space, anticipating the space opera genre. Captain Nemo is the archetypal Man With The Machine. FU MANCHU The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu was the creation of "Sax Rohmer" [continues]