S. P. Meek 39 min read

Six hundred and seventy-two planes, the entire First Air Division, stretch in a forty-mile line below the transport as Dr. Bird watches: the greatest air force this country has ever massed.

S. P. Meek's 1932 story is a rousing hard-SF and post-apocalyptic tale of a mysterious catastrophe. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a Dr. Bird scientific-detective adventure, where a world-threatening drought demands the full might of the Air Corps and the wits of its most famous investigator.

In its time

Published in 1932, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

39 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).