And finally we come to the Edisonade, possibly the craziest and certainly the raddest genre lost to the winds of time. In the same way that the Robinsonade genre was named after Robinson Crusoe, the Edisonade was named after Thomas Edison, whom the more astute of you will recognize is not a fictional character. In this case it refers to Thomas Edison's many, many inventions, with the typical Edisonade featuring a similar brilliant young inventor who solves problems with his brilliant young inventions. The inventor would take his invention (not explicitly a weapon, but certainly bristling with them) into "the frontier," in the process claiming it or civilizing it or just shooting a bunch of its residents a whole bunch.
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Somewhere out there a proud and noble people is waiting to be civilized by a man atop a giant mechanical spider.