Looks interesting, Bosda. You can start a thread about those books.
One thing that’s always puzzled me – it seems like if you ever find a random Danny Dunn book at a library or used book store, it’s almost always Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint. Am I for crazy, or has anyone else observed this? It’s like how the one Daniel Pinkwater in a given place will invariably The Last Guru. Did they just print a lot of these?
Oh, man, I loved Danny Dunn books as a kid. (And Three Investigators and Encyclopedia Brown, too.) I also got my best friend hooked on the Danny Dunn books, and every time one of us would sleep over at the other person’s house, we would tell Danny Dunn stories before falling asleep. Boys being boys, they would often devolve into Danny-does-Irene sex romps (which is odd, looking back, because it turns out my friend is gay), but there were some quality tales that I think would work as real Danny Dunn books. “Danny Dunn and Superfuel” was a commonly explored theme.
Oh, and they would always start the same way: “Danny was out in his backyard, working on his latest invention … (pause several seconds to try and think of something) … the <insert name of invention here>.”
We even ended up writing a few stories down, although I changed the name of the main character to “Ricky Runn” to avoid copyright problems.
Ah, the good ol’ days…
Well, that was the first one; maybe they printed up a lot of that one. I have noticed that, too. And very few people have Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space or Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor.
Oh, and I should add that I wondered more than once how it would have played out if Irene had been on that island with the guys. Except I would have kept it strictly to a threesome, not an orgy. Bullfinch? Grimes? EWWWWWWWWW!
chorpler wrote:
Until this thread came up, I thought I was surely the only person in the world who owned a copy of the Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine LP.
Danny Dunn and the Atomic-Powered Five-Speed Vibrating Buttplug! 
For fiction of that kind, see Indistinguishable from Magic by Robert L. Forward (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671876864/qid=1113956604/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2793536-9622364?v=glance&s=books) – essays about amazing future technological marvels, paired with short stories about each. (Nothing about nanotech, though, nor AI, gene-engineering, neural-electronic interfaces, or virtual reality.) But the stories aren’t really that good, and if course they’re not kids’ adventures.
Re: “Indistinguishable From Magic”
That’s like saying Battlefield: Earth was “slightly flawed”… 
Me too! I love the SDMB.
I can totally sing the melody of the Homework Machine song, but the only lyrics I remember are the chorus:
“The Homework Machine,
The Homework Machine,
Minnie, you’re a real cool gal…
You work, while we rest in the shade
We wish we’d met you in second gra-aade!”
Of course, the main problem with the homework machine is that it automatically inserted “Copyright The Homework Machine” in the margins.
I don’t believe it. I’ve just finished a Google search about this, and … why would they create such a thing? HOW could God allow such a thing to be created and then not let me know about it until now?
Isn’t that the one with the giant electric eel? I didn’t check the links, I just wanted to make sure my geek senses were still working.
Thanks for the OP. I thought I was the only one who remembered Danny Dunn. I think I had all the books.
For the record: Harry Potter has nothing on Danny.
That’s the one.
Danny Dunn figures in the “Wold Newton” mythos, as a decendent of William Dunn, the Ultra-Humanite.
http://www.pjfarmer.com/chronicles/supermen.htm
More on the Wold Newton family
Since that record will never, EVER, be reissued does it qualify under the proposed abandonware exception to the copyright laws?
On the question of the ethics of computer-assisted homework: Am I the only one who remembers that the computer was not the titular Homework Machine? That name is only actually given to an invention of Danny’s, involving two pens joined together by a series of levers and pulleys. One pen would (almost) mimic the movements of the other, enabling Danny to do his and Joe’s science and math homework (with different handwriting, owing to the slack in the machine), while Joe does English for both of them.
I think it’s safe to say that Danny was not any sort of patron saint of academic integrity, and was not intended to be.
Mmmmm, I’m not sure. I mean, yeah, that’s what Danny’s invention was, in the first few pages of the book, but I thought that they quickly abandoned it once Minnie became available and that she was the “Homework Machine” that the title spoke of.
He wasn’t bad … just headstrong! <loud guffaws>
And as we saw in Invisible Boy, he had a lot more integrity than Snitcher Phillips, the spelling bee cheater.
Did anyone else read The Magic Grandfather, by the same author as the DD books?
I remember liking it a lot.