Victor Appleton

Tom and his friends enter a new dimension where ruthless Molvaarians rule an alien universe with an iron hand.

From the book:Tense, excited men gazed spaceward from the ships and planes of the South Atlantic task force. Other watchers waited breath-lessly in the control room of the ship Recoverer. Among these was Tom Swift Jr. "How close to earth is our Jupiter probe missile?" Bud Barclay asked Tom excitedly. The lanky blond youth beside him, in T shirt and slacks, shot a glance at the dials of the tracking equipment. "Eight thousand miles from this spot, Bud. It should land here in fifteen minutes!" Tom Jr., his father, Bud, and a host of scientists, Navy officers, and newsmen were crowded aboard a U.S. Navy missile launching ship. "Just think!" Bud exulted. "You'll have data from the planet Jupiter that no one on earth has yet been able to get!" "If we recover the missile safely," Mr. Swift spoke up hopefully. The elder scientist's voice was quiet but taut with the strain of waiting. The two Swifts resembled each other closely - each had deep-set blue eyes and clean-cut features - although Tom was somewhat taller and rangier.

From the book:Come on now, ready with those smoke bombs! Where's the Confederate army, anyhow? And you Unionists, don't look as though you were going to rob an apple orchard! Suffering snakes, you're going into battle and you're going to lick the boots off the Johnnie Rebs! Look the part! Look the part! Now, then, what about the cannon? Got plenty of powder in 'em so there'll be lots of smoke? A stout man, with perspiration running down his face, one drop trickling from his nose, was hurrying up and down the field. On one side of him was a small army composed of what seemed to be Civil War Union soldiers. A little farther back was a motley array of Confederates. Farther off was an apple orchard, and close beside that stood a ramshackle farmhouse which was soon to be the center of a desperate moving-picture battle in the course of which the house would be the refuge of the Confederates. "The old man is sort of on his ear this morning, isn't he, Blake?"

A $10,000 prize lures Tom into competing at a local aviation meet at Eagle Park. Tom is determined to build the fastest plane around, but his plans mysteriously disappear, which means Tom must redesign his new airplane from the beginning. A side-plot through the story is Mr. Swift's failing health. Every boy possesses some form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the most interesting kind of reading. These spirited tales convey in a realistic way, the wonderful advances in land and sea locomotion and other successful inventions. Stories like these are impressed upon the memory and their reading is productive only of good. This series of adventure novels starring the genius boy inventor Tom Swift falls into the genre of "invention fiction" or "Edisonade".--LibraryThing

Mr. Swift takes several guests, Tom, and his friends, to a mining planet owned by his company, but what begins as a vacation becomes a nightmare.

When a terrible plague descends upon Earth, Tom Swift and his friends have to find a cure in time to save the human race.

Tom Swift, aboard the science survey ship "Hawking," discovers unusual sunspot activity indicating the sun will soon explode, destroying all life in the solar system.

Tom Swift and his crew are instrumental in delivering the planet Verita from a nuclear holocaust.