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A mind as open as Tesla’s — with room to imagine a device for photographing thought or an engine powered by June beetles (let alone radio and AC electricity) — collects a lot of other freethinking geniuses and oddballs. I met a number of them while researching my
novel.

Helena Bulaja from Zagreb is making an epic film about artists inspired by Tesla. She has trekked the world interviewing Tesla-loving fans and fanatics: Laurie Anderson, Terry Gilliam, Marina Abramovic, me! Bulaja travels with a crew including the identical twins Josipa & Marijana Bronic, women who somehow resemble Tesla. They are wildly gorgeous, tall and black-haired. They make their own space-like clothes. They wisely advised me to lift my chin some when being photographed and I listened, in stereo.

Then there is John Wagner, a retired schoolteacher from Michigan who has spent the past 25 years campaigning to preserve Tesla’s legacy in America. He raises money to have Tesla busts casts and then donates the busts to museums and universities. Wagner would photograph his elementary school students holding up one letter each to cover a hillside with a message, “OUR HISTORY BOOKS ARE WRONG – NIKOLA TESLA IS THE KING OF ELECTRICITY!” He taught his students letter-writing by having them draft pleas to the Smithsonian, urging its curators to correct the exhibit there which is weighted heavily toward Edison, barely mentioning Tesla. It’s not difficult to see why the Smithsonian maintains such inaccuracies. General Electric sponsors the exhibit.

There are legions of free-spirited Tesla coil builders. My brother sent me a link to this one: