Gears and God

A revealing study of the connections between nineteenth-century technological fiction and American religious faith.   In Gears and God: Technocratic Fiction, Faith, and Empire in Mark Twain’s America , Nathaniel Williams analyzes the genre of technology-themed exploration novels—dime novel adventure stories featuring steam-powered and electrified robots, airships, and submersibles. This genre proliferated during the same cultural moment when evolutionary science was dismantling Americans’ p