Philip Francis Nowlan 1 hr 43 min read

A veteran wakes from a 500-year sleep into a conquered 25th-century America, the story that created Buck Rogers.

Philip Francis Nowlan's 1928 novella introduces Anthony 'Buck' Rogers, who emerges from suspended animation to find a fallen United States under alien-backed Han rule and joins the resistance of gang-organized survivors. The foundational text of the space-hero tradition, spawning the comic strip that named an era. Read it for the genuine origin of Buck Rogers and one of pulp SF's most influential debuts.

In its time

Published in 1928, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

1 hr 43 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Frank R. Paul