Full record for gadget story n.

Definition	a story where the primary focus is on inventions or the process of inventing
OED requirements	antedating 1942
Earliest cite	'H.H. Holmes', 'Rocket to the Morgue'
Comment	Fred Galvin submitted a 1959 cite from Robert A. Heinlein in "The Science Fiction Novel". Fred Galvin submitted a 1948 cite from a letter by Marion "Astra" Zimmer in Startling Stories. Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1975 reprint of "H. H. Holmes's" "Rocket to the Morgue"; Steve & Denise Hight verified this in the 1942 first edition (H.H Holmes was a pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White aka 'Anthony Boucher') Fred Galvin submitted a 1982 cite from Jack Vance's "Lost Moons". Fred Galvin submitted a 1953 cite from L. Sprague de Camp's "Science-Fiction Handbook". Fred Galvin submitted a 1951 cite from a review by Groff Conklin in Galaxy. In addition to antedatings, we would like cites from after 1982.
Last modified	10 December, 2008

Citations for gadget story n.

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1948 M. Zimmer letter in Startling Stories Sept. 126/1	May I leave you with a plea for more fantasy, more space-and-interplanetary tales, more humor and less ‘gadget’ and ‘surprise twist’ stories.
1951 G. Conklin Galaxy's Five Star Shelf in Galaxy Sci. Fiction July 119/1	Ted Sturgeon's well-done but minor Memory, very much a gadget story of a sort I did not know T. S. ever wrote; Sam Merwin's Exiled from Earth, dug from his earliest literary strata; Leigh Brackett's Retreat to the Stars, one of those Adam and Eve re-creations that I find unconvincing whenever they turn up; and Henry Kutner's funny but drastically unimportant and non-science fiction Voice of the Lobster.
1953 L. S. de Camp Sci.-Fiction Handbook 225	Several people have undertaken to classify imaginative stories. Heinlein did so on the basis of the story's interest into gadget-stories and human-interest stories, and then further subdivided the latter into three plot-types: Boy-meets-Girl, the Little Tailor, and the Man Who Learned Better.