The subgenre of farm worker science fiction has a long history, arguably beginning in 1868, with the publication of Edward S. Elliss’ dime novel, The Steam Man of the Prairies. Frequently cited as one of the first US science-fiction novels, it tells of an ingenious young white boy who invents a giant steam-powered iron man that he uses to travel west, terrorize and kill Indians, and search for gold. The Steam Man of the Prairies was published at the dawn of the late-nineteenth-century wheat boom and the mass mechanization of agriculture, and it recalls the easy movements of giant harvesting combines across the flat planes of Kansas and California when the narrator emphasizes how readily the eponymous steam man strides across the prairies. Indeed, the machine seems to anticipate the subsequent invention of a steam-powered harvester in the San Joaquin Valley, as well as the fantasy of replacing intractable workers with mechanical ones. It influenced a host of imitators, most famously the dime novel Frank Reade, Jr. and His New Steam Man.