Thomas Edison in popular culture

Fantasy and science fiction

• Edisonade is a category of fantastic fiction with young inventors travelling to distant parts and having adventures. Not only did the genre use his name, but a number of Thomas/Tom Edisons appeared in the early adventures.
• The Future Eve (L'Ève Future), an 1886 novel by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam that popularized the term "android", portrays Edison creating what he argues is the perfect woman, the android Hadaly, in order to cure his friend Lord Ewald's infatuation with a singer named Alicia, who is represented as shallow and immoral.
• Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss (1898) is an unofficial sequel to The War of the Worlds in which Edison finds and reverse engineers Martian technology.
• "Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog" in Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (1953) is a short story about Edison's accidental discovery that dogs have superhuman intelligence (and can talk) while working on an intelligence analyzer invention. Edison's dog "Sparky" reveals that dogs keep their intelligence a closely guarded secret. The story also divulges that it was Sparky who suggested to Edison the crucial component of the first incandescent light bulb.
• Secretary of War William Howard Taft in 1908. He wins and becomes the 27th president. Prior to becoming president, the four aliens invent an effective hearing aid to help Edison with his poor hearing. The following year in 1909, Edison has the aliens placed under house arrest in New York so that he can pry technological secrets from them. They escape (thanks to former president Theodore Roosevelt), however, and head to Europe, and Edison is obliged to dispatch Marines to go after them. When he finally has them in his clutches again, Edison realizes that the amount of technology the aliens possess would, if widely distributed, cause widespread upheaval. In 1912
  , Edison decides not to run for a second term as he would rather go back to inventing. He is succeeded by former president Theodore Roosevelt, who also preceded him.
• In the Japanese tokusatsu Kamen Rider Ghost, the ghost of Thomas Edison helps the main character Takeru Tenkuji/Kamen Rider Ghost to unite the 15 Heroic Spirits and to access his electricity/gun-wielding Edison Damashii form.
• In the
  The Knights Templar and one of the founders of the Abstergo Industries, attempting to discredit Nikola Tesla, an ally of the Assassins Order
  .
• A Voyagers! episode involving Edison shows, in an instance of history "going wrong", Edison and his team trying to make a light bulb filament by rolling lamp black; they all fail, and when Jeffrey tears his shirt, Edison offers to repair it, then studies the thread as a potential filament.
• Back in Time With Thomas Edison a 2001 book by Dan Gutman, wherein a thirteen-year-old boy named "Qwerty" Stevens discovers a secret machine built by Edison himself.
• JLA: Age of Wonder (2003) was a two-issue mini-series from DC's Elseworlds line, in which Superman landed in Kansas in the 1850s and emerged on the world stage at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. He teams up with Edison but ends up working with Tesla.
• Tales From the Bully Pulpit (2004) by Benito Cereno is a graphic novel containing the time travel adventures of Thomas Edison and Theodore Roosevelt
  .
• The Five Fists of Science is a 2006 graphic novel in which Edison is the villain, whose evil plans are thwarted by Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain.
• The role-playing game Fate/Grand Order has Edison appear as a Caster class Servant summoned by the Holy Grail in the E Pluribus Unum chapter, set in 1783. He works with Helena Blavatsky and Karna in fighting the Celtic takeover of the eastern United States, and is an antagonist of Geronimo's faction before becoming an ally. His feud with Tesla, who appeared earlier as an Archer class Servant, is a running joke throughout the game.
• The
  series 12 fourth episode "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" featured Thomas Edison as portrayed by Robert Glenister.^[2]