Ray Cummings 42 min read

In the year 2003, wealthy young Arthur Frane is unexpectedly plunged into world-shaking events when fate throws him together with the mysterious Venta, and he insists he is no hero.

Ray Cummings's 1942 novel is a rousing dystopian space opera. Vivid, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful yarn from a pulp pioneer, where an ordinary man is swept into a cosmic struggle for the fate of humankind, told in the breathless, adventurous style that made Cummings a genre favorite.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Frank R. Paul