The Robot Olympics (Tom Swift Young Inventor) Review

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(More customer reviews)When I was young, I feasted on the Tom Swift Jr. books written in the sixties. The U. S. space program was in its' heyday and I constantly imagined myself as a real-life Tom Swift. My fantasy was to create a lab on a tropical island in the Pacific called Tropica and invent things that would change the world. I have also read a few of the books in the original Tom Swift series of the early twentieth century and the contrast between the series is as much cultural as it is technological. This is the first book in the latest series that I have read.
Being an old-timer, I found the style of the writing a bit difficult to handle, the modern nature is significantly unlike what was used in the earlier series. Bud Barclay returns as a character, only now he is black, a reporter for the high school paper and a bit of a technophobe. I found his lack of technical prowess disturbing, in the sixties series, Bud was an excellent sidekick that could pilot a plane and fight when needed.
However, like everyone else, I must accept the changes that take place, so I understand that prose, like technology, must change with the times. As a story about a young inventor, this one works. Tom's relationship with his parents and invention are modern, the villain in this case is a fellow teen in a robotics contest and a violent group that is very anti-robot. Tom has entered his robot "Swiftbot" into a robot Olympics and it is competing against robots developed by fellow teens. Tom's robot struggles in some aspects of the competition; it is not an easy victory. There is also no fighting or other similar violence, the situation is resolved relatively peaceably.
If you read this book in the context of the older stories, you may find it difficult to accept. However, if you accept the social changes that require a change in writing style, then you can read and enjoy a story that still fits within the centuries old Tom Swift genre.


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ROBOTS + TERRORISTS = TROUBLE FOR TOM Tom's been training his entry, SwiftBot, for the upcoming Robot Olympics -- a major event being sponsored by the White House's Office of Science and Technology. Teenage inventors from around the country will be bringing their homemade robots to compete in a series of athletic competitions. The Road Back, an antiscience terrorist group, has issued a statement condemning the event, and Tom hopes that the tight security at the Robot Olympics will keep TRB from causing trouble. But no such luck. Someone is playing dirty . . . and things are going to get dangerous.

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