Ray Cummings 4 hr 21 min read

A strange light in the sky heralds invaders from Mercury, the Fire People, landing on Earth to conquer, and among their captives, a Mercutian woman named Miela who holds the key to saving the world.

Ray Cummings's 1922 novel is a rousing first-contact and hard-SF invasion adventure. Vivid, imaginative, of its era. Read it for classic early Cummings, a war between worlds waged with deadly light-rays, a voyage to fiery Mercury, and a romance across the gulf of space, from a founding pulp master.

In its time

Published in 1922, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

4 hr 21 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).