Raymond Z. Gallun 23 min read

The discovery of a strange new ray with deadly, unexpected powers sets off a stirring adventure, for in the coming century, mastery of unknown rays will remake the world.

Raymond Z. Gallun's 1929 story is a rousing hard-SF adventure. Vivid, speculative golden-age pulp. Read it for an early yarn from a beloved golden-age craftsman, built on the era's excitement about X-rays, radium, and cosmic rays, a marvelous, fast-moving tale of a wondrous and dangerous new ray, in classic Air Wonder Stories style.

In its time

Published in 1929, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

23 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

S. Strother