Nikola Tesla in popular culture

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Nikola Tesla has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, films, comics and video games. The lack of recognition received by Tesla during his own lifetime has made him a tragic and inspirational character well suited to dramatic fiction. Tesla has particularly been seen in science fiction where his inventions are well suited. The impact of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla are a recurring theme in the steampunk genre of alternate technology science-fiction.

1 Appearances
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Appearances

Cover of The Five Fists of Science, a graphic novel by Matt Fraction and Steve Sanders, showing (l-r) the fictional Timothy Boone, Tesla and Twain

Tesla's achievements and personality have inspired many authors to include him as character in their works or create characters inspired by him.

[edit] Books and comics

To Mars With Tesla; or, the Mystery of the Hidden World by J. Weldon Cobb (1901) is an adventure where Tesla, aided by Young Edison (Thomas Edison's fictional nephew) and a couple of scientists, has a number of encounters with fake Martians.

Tesla is mentioned in H.G. Wells' 1901 book The First Men in the Moon as being the inspiration to the character of Julius Wendigee, who picks up the broadcasts of the main character's exploits on the Moon.

Some researchers have suggested that the character of Nyarlathotep in H P Lovecraft's 1920 short story of the same name was inspired by Tesla. ^[1]

Nikola Tesla is a recurring character in Spider Robinson's "Callahan's" book series (1977-1997).

Tesla appears in the 1989 novel Moon Palace by Paul Auster.

Tesla, alongside Professor Challenger, plays a major role in Ralph Vaughan's four Sherlock Holmes/H. P. Lovecraft crossovers, The Adventure of the Ancient Gods (1990) The Adventure of the Dreaming Detective (1992), "The Adventure of the Laughing Moonbeast" (1992) and Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time (2001). ^[2] ^[3]

Generation Tesla (1995), published in Serbia. Tesla evades his own death by transferring himself to another plane of existence. In 2020. he resurrected a number of humans slain by the evil Kobalt, transforming them into superhumans who could counter the threats of such villains. He is founder and mentor of super-hero team Generation Tesla.^[4]

Broadcast power, Tesla's main focus in his later years, is the primary plot device of F. Paul Wilson's novel Legacies, and a fictional device credited to him figures prominently in Conspiracies (1999), part of the Repairman Jack series of novels.

"JLA: Age of Wonder" (2003) was a two-issue mini-series from DC Comics' Elseworlds line, in which Superman lands in Kansas in the 1850s and emerges on the world stage at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. He teams up with Edison but ends up working with Tesla, who eventually deploys a death ray during World War I. ^[5]

Barnum!: In Secret Service to the USA, (2003) by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman, shows P. T. Barnum battling Tesla's sinister plans.

In the book The Witches of Chiswick (2003) Nikola Tesla (in an alternate timeline) meets Charles Babbage and creates wireless energy and steampunk supercomputers.

In Wonder of the Worlds a novel by geomorphologist and author Sesh Heri published in 2005 by Lost Continent Library, Tesla journeys to Mars with Mark Twain and Harry Houdini to retrieve a stolen crystal and confront Kel, the emperor of the Red Planet, on the eve of the Martian invasion of Earth.

In The Five Fists of Science (2006) a graphic novel by Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders, Tesla teams up with Mark Twain to battle Thomas Edison.

Tesla is briefly mentioned in Book 2 of Southland Tales (2006) in which a large group of neo-Marxists achieve his dream of wireless electricity. An outdated version of the Wikipedia article on Tesla is also featured at the end of the book.

Brian Clevinger's Atomic Robo ^[6] is a fictional work about a robot that was invented by Nikola Tesla.

Tesla is one of the main characters in The Tesla Legacy, a novel by Australian author Robert G. Barrett (2006). ^[7] In the novel, Tesla builds a 'doomsday machine' hidden in the New South Wales area of Hunter Valley that could disrupt all wireless communication on Earth.

Tesla has a major role in Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day (2006).

Tesla appears in the webcomic Thinkin' Lincoln ^[8] by Miles Grover.

An improvised Tesla machine, as well as a few Tesla references, are used in Jack Henderson's novel Circumference of Darkness.

Cory Doctorow's Collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More includes the short story "Home Again, Home Again" where a main character in a future insane asylum community run by benevolent aliens believes that he is possessed by the spirit of Tesla. In the story, the character relates that Tesla escaped his body and survived over eons in the electrical grid. The full story is available for free under an open source license on the author's web page.

Tesla is one of the major characters of Jacek Dukaj's novel Ice.

In the Area 51 novels Tesla is said to have used his Death Ray to knock down a hostile alien space craft.

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt (2008), a novel blending fact with fiction; centers on the relationship of Nikola Tesla with a maid at the New Yorker Hotel - ISBN-13: 978-0618801121.

[edit] Film, radio and TV

In 1941 the first of Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons depicted Superman fighting a mad scientist named Tesla. They are now in the public domain and can be viewed in various locations, including the Internet Archive. ^[9]

"Tajna Nikole Tesle" (aka "Tesla","The Secret Life of Nikola Tesla","The Secret of Nikola Tesla") (1980) a Yugoslavian movie, notable for its inclusion of Orson Welles as robber baron J.P. Morgan, touches on Tesla's psychic powers and lost vision of the future. ^[10]

In the broadcast radio series Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe, by the ZBS Foundation, Nikola Tesla is hailed as the patron saint of the Digital Circus.

In Hot Wheels Highway 35 World Race (2003) Dr. Tesla discovers inter-dimensional racetracks named Highway 35. ^[11]

An amusement park is named after Nikola Tesla in the Saturday morning cartoon series The Weekenders, when it briefly mentions the debate over credit for inventing radio..

On the Steven Spielberg cartoon Histeria!, Nikola Tesla is featured in an animated piece where he looks and sounds like Christopher Walken.

In Craig Baldwin's agitprop film Spectres of the Spectrum (1999), a group of media revolutionaries broadcast underground transmissions under the moniker "TV Tesla." The film also interpolates Tesla's story into its plot.

Nikola Tesla's work is referred to in the sketch "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil", featuring Jack White and Meg White of The White Stripes, from Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes. The White Stripes had previously mentioned Tesla in their song "Astro" on their self-titled first album.

Tesla is a supporting character in Christopher Nolan's 2006 film The Prestige, portrayed by David Bowie. In the film, he gives Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) access to his wireless transfer machine.

On the NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), Matt Albie and Danny Tripp plan to make a film about the life of Nikola Tesla. However, they are unable to make the movie because Danny tests positive for cocaine and could not clear the insurance.

In the film, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, there is a painting/mural of Tesla shown at least twice during the Tucker trial. ^[12]

On the series House Episode 2 season 4 : "Tesla was robbed" is written on the board

Tesla was a crucial character in the pilot episode, Power, of Murdoch Mysteries.

The background of the character Janos Bartok in the TV series Legend was heavily inspired by Tesla. The picture of Tesla sitting and reading underneath the Magnifying Transmitter was portrayed in the first episode.

[edit] Music

Cover of Tesla's album The Great Radio Controversy

Laurie Anderson makes several references to Tesla in her works, particularly on United States Live I-IV (1983).

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark included a song titled "Tesla Girls" on their album Junk Culture (1984).

The rock band Tesla is named after him. They referenced his life and works a number of times, such as in the song "Edison's Medicine" (and accompanying music video, from the 1991 album Psychotic Supper) and the album The Great Radio Controversy (1989).

Guitar group Acoustic Alchemy's 1998 album Positive Thinking... uses a colored version of the photograph of the “Magnifying Transmitter” taken at Tesla’s Colorado Springs laboratory c1900 for the album cover.

Australian Composer Constantine Koukias wrote his two-act opera TESLA - Lightning in his Hand about the life and times of Nikola Tesla. It premiered at the 10 Days on the Island Festival in Hobart, Tasmania in 2003.

Recent performances of "National Grid" and "Circuit Blasting" by Disinformation vs Strange Attractor - see Disinformation (art and music project), use small Tesla coils as live performance tools (aka "instruments") for sound art and electronic music. Earlier versions of "National Grid" by Disinformation (solo) use amplified VLF radio noise from AC electricity and line-outputs from AC mains transformers as the basis of sound-art installations and live music performances.

Joy Electric's 2004 album Hello, Mannequin contains a song that shares Tesla's name, in which singer Ronnie Martin laments, "Genius, scientist, inventor / Penniless at death, yet ignored / Nikola Tesla / Who remembers?".

Nerdcore hip hop artist Jaylyn Coffin, references Tesla and his work numerous times in her song "Mad Science".

The Handsome Family features Tesla in the song "Tesla's Hotel Room". The song is featured on the album Last Days of Wonder.

The White Stripes song "Astro" mentions Tesla in the line "Maybe Tesla does the Astro".

Grindcore band Discordance Axis have a song on their "Jouhou" album titled "Nikola Tesla". The track is an experiment in extreme harsh electrical noise, perhaps the sort of music Nikola would have made.

[edit] Video games

Tesla's proposal of teleforce weapons and the destructive possibilities of massive electric arcs created by tesla coils have inspired many video game designers to create Tesla weapons and armors.

The Tesla Gun in the computer game Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a weapon that projects lightning-like electrical arcs.
The Tesla Cannon in the computer game Blood fires bursts of electrical energy.
In the Command & Conquer Red Alert series of video games, Nikola Tesla is a scientist working for the USSR, and "Tesla" is the name of the technology the Soviets use to generate power and for their lightning-based weapons. Perhaps the most widely known example is the Tesla Coil defense structure, capable of sending short electric arcs towards oncoming units, also in their arsenal are Tesla troopers, who carry portable tesla coil based weaponry and tesla tanks, which have a large glowing blue sphere that ejects great bolts of electricity.
Quake II Mission Pack: Ground Zero has landmines called Tesla that can be set on the ground, and enemies nearby get attacked by electric discharges.
Two weapons in the Ratchet & Clank video game series, the Tesla Claw and Tesla Barrier (the upgraded version of the Shield Charger), use electricity discharges to attack enemies.
In Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara Croft has to investigate Tesla's (fictional) research facility in Kazakhstan in order to uncover an ancient artifact which is powering the Tesla plant's main weapons array.
Nikola Tesla is also one of the characters in the game Martian Dreams, by Origin, which is part of the Worlds of Ultima series.
Nikola Tesla is mentioned in several accounts throughout the world of Crimson Skies.
In the Destroy All Humans series, Tesla coils are used to shoot waves of electricity that disrupts the player's powers.
In the popular Massive Multi-player Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) City of Heroes, the hero class Blaster has an ability under its power set "Electrical Blast" called Tesla Cage, in which the player creates a cage of electricity to surround an enemy and shock him.
The Tesla Armor in the Fallout series of computer games has high resistance to laser and plasma weapons.
The Tesla Coil in the game "Goblin Commander: Unleash the Horde" shoots lightning bolts at approaching enemies.
In the MMORPG Asheron's Call the most powerful lightning bolt spell is named "Alset's Coil", which is merely Tesla backwards.
In the Xbox game Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, one of the planes is equipped with a Tesla Gun, which shoots an arc of energy at other planes.
Troika Games' Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura includes a Tesla Rod as the most technologically-advanced pure electrical weapon achievable in-game.
In Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation and Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2, the Tesla Drive is an enhanced engine which makes personal troopers flight capable.
In the webgames Strategy Defense 3 and Strategy Defense 4, the Tesla Cannon, Tesla Helicopter, and Tesla Tower are powerful assets that can be purchased.
Nikolaj Taslow in ParaWorld seems to have been based on Tesla.

[edit] Live Theatre

A number of live theatrical plays based on Tesla's life have been produced and staged worldwide.

The Canadian theatrical company Electric Company Theatre took its stage production Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla on tour first starting in 1996. In August 2007, their production was again listed on their current performance schedule.
The Austin, Texas based theatrical collective Rude Mechanicals created and then produced Kirk Lynn's Requiem For Tesla in January/Feb of 2001, and then presented again at the Fresh Terrain Festival in February 2003
Duncan Pflaster's play Sleeping in Tomorrow takes place in several alternative universes, one of which is a universe where Tesla's ideas were celebrated and implemented.