ARMAGEDDON – 2419 A.D.
Philip Francis Nowlan
Anthony "Buck" Rogers is one of the most celebrated characters in the long history of science fiction. In his own field, he is almost as well-known as Sherlock Holmes is to mystery fans. Buck Rogers first saw the light of day in Armageddon – 2419 A.D ., in the August 1928 issue of the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories . Buck's creator, an unknown young author named Philip Francis Nowlan, would write one other Buck Rogers novel, The Airlords of Han , a few months later ( Amazing Stories , March 1929), and then transfer his hero's adventures to the far more lucrative medium of the daily comic strip, where it became an instant hit – and he apparently never looked back. Buck Rogers' success in the comics led to a proliferation of serials, movies, radio, and television shows.
Philip Francis Nowlan
ARMAGEDDON – 2419 A.D.
CONTENTS
Introduction
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1. FLOATING MEN
CHAPTER 2. THE FOREST GANGS
CHAPTER 3. LIFE IN THE 25TH CENTURY
CHAPTER 4. A HAN AIR RAID
CHAPTER 5. SETTING THE TRAP
CHAPTER 6. A WYOMING MASSACRE
CHAPTER 7. INCREDIBLE TREASON
CHAPTER 8. THE HAN CITY
CHAPTER 9. THE FIGHT IN THE TOWER
CHAPTER 10. THE WALLS OF HELL
CHAPTER 11. THE NEW BOSS
CHAPTER 12. THE FINGER OF DOOM
EPILOGUE
INTRODUCTION
Anthony "Buck" Rogers is one of the most celebrated characters in the long history of science fiction. In his own field, he is almost as well-known as Sherlock Holmes is to mystery fans. Buck Rogers first saw the light of day in Armageddon – 2419 A.D., in the August 1928 issue of the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. Buck's creator, an unknown young author named Philip Francis Nowlan, would write one other Buck Rogers novel, The Airlords of Han, a few months later ( Amazing Stories, March 1929), and then transfer his hero's adventures to the far more lucrative medium of the daily comic strip, where it became an instant hit – and he apparently never looked back.
Buck Rogers' success in the comics led to a proliferation of serials, movies, radio, and television shows. The first was a twelve-chapter 1939 movie serial, starring strongman Buster Crabbe; and its massive merchandising campaign made the science fiction hero a household name. Later came a radio series, two early 1950s television series, one imported from Germany, and a 1979 television movie starring Gil Gerard, which spawned its own television series. And, the show goes on... with plans for new Buck Rogers' adventures with 21st century special effects currently underway.
In this first story, Armageddon – 2419 A.D., Buck, a victim of accidental suspended animation, awakens five hundred years later to discover America groaning under the tyranny of the villainous Han, ruling from the safety of their armored machine-cities. Falling in love with one of America's new warrior-women, Wilma Deering, Rogers soon become a central figure in using newly-developed scientific weapons in a revolt against the Han. Although the Han at first appear to be a stereotype of the Yellow Peril, Nowlan apparently became worried that they might be seen as racist, and in the second Buck Rogers story identifies them as descendents of a race of space aliens, interbred with some Mongol women they captured.
In The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Myth of Transcendence, Alexei and Cory Panshin argue that Anthony "Buck" Rogers, like Richard Seaton in The Skylark of Space, which appeared in the same issue, embodies the values of the "new Twentieth Century man of science... eager to look forward, not back. He might even be thought of as something of a barbarian – a barbarian with a slide rule dwelling in the ruins of a former high civilization, but completely indifferent to its fall because he had urgent new business to attend to. This new man was practical and filled with determination. He had utter confidence in his mastery of scientific power, and no fear at all of encounter with the unknown scientific universe."
When the editors of Amazing Storiesdecided to publish a "Giant 35th Anniversary Issue" in April 1961, they devoted it to reprints of some of the most famous stories from the magazine's history. Foremost among the reprints was this first Buck Rogers tale, Armageddon – 2419 A.D. Here is what they had to say about the story in an foreword to the reprint:
"The August, 1928, issue of Amazing Storieswas beyond question one of the most important not only in its history but in the history of science fiction. That would have been the case if it had only presented to the science fiction public a new author named Edward Elmer Smith with the first installment of The Skylark of Space. But its immortality was assured by introducing Anthony "Buck" Rogers to the world in a complete novel titled Armageddon – 2419 A.D., by Philip Francis Nowlan.
"Few people, either in or out of science fiction, know that "Buck" Rogers was born in Amazing Stories. Fewer still are aware that the first artist to cartoon the famous future Americans and soldiers of Han was Frank R. Paul. Breaking its policy Amazing Storiesran, in addition to two full-size illustrations, three cartoon panels which may even have given Nowlan the idea of submitting the entire package to a comic strip syndicate.
"When 'Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century' appeared as a comic strip in the daily newspapers in 1929 it created a sensation and added a new phrase to the language. Phil Nowlan wrote the continuity about the famous characters of Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer, and Killer Kane, along with their disintegrators, jumping belts, inertron, and paralysis rays, and made them familiar to millions of people in this country and abroad. The daily adventures on radio thrilled many more. The popularity of the strip began to decline in the late thirties under the competition of Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford and other imitators. When Phil Nowlan severed his connection with the strip there was a steady loss of leadership. Today, though the strip still appears in some papers, few people are aware it still exists. When Nowlan left the strip in 1939 he resumed his writing of magazine science fiction; but he died in early 1940.
"Buck Rogers" is a synonym for the world of tomorrow, future invention and the spirit of science fiction. In past years the phrase 'that Buck Rogers stuff' had a derisive ring to it, but more recently atom bombs and earth satellites have changed all that.
"The strangest part about this entire story is that the original Buck Rogers' stories in Amazing Storieswere in no sense juveniles. They were serious, adult works based on the most plausible science of the time. They have an aura of accurate prophecy about them that cannot be erased. Armageddon – 2419 A.D. precisely described the bazooka, the jet plane, walkie-talkie for warfare, the infra-red ray gun for fighting at night, as well as dozens of other advances that are not here yet but are on their way.
"The perceptive Hugo Gernsback, then editor and publisher of Amazing Storiescalled his shots as accurately on the quality of his stories as he did on future invention. Of Armageddon – 2419 A.D. he said: 'We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for scientific interest as well as suspense could hold its own with this particular story. We prophesy that this story will become more valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a number of interesting prophecies, many of which, no doubt, will come true. For wealth of science it will be hard to beat for some time to come. It is one of those rare stories that will bear reading and re-reading many times.'"
We at Futures-Past Classics think you will feel the same.
Jean Marie Stine
06/12/2003
PROLOGUE
Elsewhere I have set down, for whatever interest they have in this, the 25th Century, my personal recollections of the 20th Century.
Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of the 25th Century
may have an equal interest 500 years from now – particularly in view of that unique perspective from which I have seen the 25th Century, entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492 years.
This statement requires elucidation. There are still many in the world who are not familiar with my unique experience. I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know the only man alive whose normal span of life has been spread over a period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927; the rest since 2419. The gap between these two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of catabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical or mental faculties.
When I began my long sleep, man had just begun his real conquest of the air in a sudden series of transoceanic flights in airplanes driven by internal combustion motors. He had barely begun to speculate on the possibilities of harnessing sub-atomic forces, and had made no further practical penetration into the field of ethereal pulsations than the primitive radio and television of that day. The United States of America was the most powerful nation in the world, its political, financial, industrial and scientific influence being supreme.
I awoke to find the America I knew a total wreck – to find Americans a hunted race in their own land, hiding in the dense forests that covered the shattered and leveled ruins of their once magnificent cities, desperately preserving, and struggling to develop in their secret retreats, the remnants of their culture and science – and their independence.
World domination was in the hands of Mongolians, and the center of world power lay in inland China, with Americans one of the few races of mankind unsubdued – and it must be admitted in fairness to the truth, not worth the trouble of subduing in the eyes of the Han Airlords who ruled North America as titular tributaries of the Most Magnificent.
For they needed not the forests in which the Americans lived, nor the resources of the vast territories these forests covered. With the perfection to which they had reduced the synthetic production of necessities and luxuries, their development of scientific processes and mechanical accomplishments of work, they had no economic need for the forests, and no economic desire for the enslaved labor of an unruly race.
They had all they needed for their magnificently luxurious scheme of civilization within the walls of the fifteen cities of sparkling glass they had flung skyward on the sites of ancient American centers, into the bowels of the earth underneath them, and with relatively small surrounding areas of agriculture.
Complete domination of the air rendered communication between these centers a matter of ease and safety. Occasional destructive raids on the wastelands were considered all that was necessary to keep the "wild" Americans on the run within the shelter of their forests, and prevent their becoming a menace to the Han civilization.
But nearly three hundred years of easily maintained security, the last century of which had been nearly sterile in scientific, social and economic progress, had softened them.
It had likewise developed, beneath the protecting foliage of the forest, the growth of a vigorous new American civilization, remarkable in the mobility and flexibility of its organization, in its conquest of almost insuperable obstacles, and in the development and guarding of its industrial and scientific resources. All this was in anticipation of that "Day of Hope" to which Americans had been looking forward for generations, when they would be strong enough to burst from the green chrysalis of the forests, soar into the upper air lanes and destroy the Hans.
At the time I awoke, the "Day of Hope" was almost at hand. I shall not attempt to set forth a detailed history of the Second War of Independence, for that has been recorded already by better historians than I am. Instead I shall confine myself largely to the part I was fortunate enough to play in this struggle and in the events leading up to it.
It all resulted from my interest in radioactive gases. During the latter part of 1927 my company, the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, had been keeping me busy investigating reports of unusual phenomena observed in certain abandoned coal mines near the Wyoming Valley, in Pennsylvania.
With two assistants and a complete equipment of scientific instruments, I began the exploration of a deserted working in a mountainous district, where several weeks before, a number of mining engineers had reported traces of carnotite and what they believed to be radioactive gases. Their report was not without foundation, it was apparent from the outset, for in our examination of the upper levels of the mine, our instruments indicated a vigorous radio activity.
On the morning of December 15th, we descended to one of the lowest levels. To our surprise, we found no water there. Obviously it had drained off through some break in the strata. We noticed too that the rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evidently due to the radioactivity, and pieces crumbled under foot rather easily. We made our way cautiously down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers above us gave way.
I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of coal and soft rock; my companions, who were several paces behind me, were buried under it, and undoubtedly met instant death.
I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my electric torch I explored the shaft to its end, but could find no other way out. The air became increasingly difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumulation of the radioactive gas. In a little while my senses reeled and I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, there was a cool and refreshing circulation of air in the shaft. I had not thought that I had been unconscious more than a few hours, although it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state of suspended animation for something like 500 years. My awakening, I figured out later, had been due to some shifting of the strata which reopened the shaft and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up the shaft over a pile of debris, and stagger up the long incline to the mouth of the mine, where an entirely different world, overgrown with a vast forest and no visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes.
I shall pass over the days of mental agony that followed in my attempt to grasp the meaning of it all. There were times when I felt that I was on the verge of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost soul. Had it not been for the necessity of improvising traps and crude clubs with which to slay my food, I believe I should have gone mad.
Suffice it to say, however, that I survived this psychic crisis. I shall begin my narrative proper with my first contact with Americans of the year 2419 AD.
CHAPTER 1
FLOATING MEN
My first glimpse of a human being of the 25th Century was obtained through a portion of woodland where the trees were thinly scattered, with a dense forest beyond.
I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly, musing over my strange fate, when I noticed a figure that cautiously backed out of the dense growth across the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, but there was something furtive about the figure that prevented me. The boy's attention (for it seemed to be a lad of fifteen or sixteen) was centered tensely on the heavy growth of the trees from which he had just emerged.
He was clad in rather tight-fitting garments entirely of green, and wore a helmet-like cap of the same color. High around his waist he wore a broad thick belt, which bulked up in the back across the shoulders into something of the proportions of a knapsack.
As I was taking in these details, there came a vivid flash and heavy detonation, like that of a hand grenade, not far to the left of him. He threw up an arm and staggered a bit in a queer, gliding way; then he recovered himself and slipped cautiously away from the place of the explosion, crouching slightly, and still facing the denser part of the forest. Every few steps he would raise his arm, and point into the forest with something he held in his hand. Wherever he pointed there was a terrific explosion, deeper in among the trees. It came to me then that he was shooting with some form of pistol, though t
here was neither flash nor detonation from the muzzle of the weapon itself.
After firing several times, he seemed to come to a sudden resolution, and turning in my general direction, leaped – to my amazement sailing through the air between the sparsely scattered trees in such a jump as I had never in my life seen before. That leap must have carried him a full fifty feet, although at the height of his arc, he was not more than ten or twelve feet from the ground.
When he alighted, his foot caught in a projecting root, and he sprawled gently forward. I say "gently" for he did not crash down as I expected him to do. The only thing I could compare it with was a slow-motion cinema, although I have never seen one in which horizontal motions were registered at normal speed and only the vertical movements were slowed down.
Due to my surprise, I suppose my brain did not function with its normal quickness, for I gazed at the prone figure for several seconds before I saw the blood that oozed out from under the tight green cap. Regaining my power of action, I dragged him out of sight back of the big tree. For a few moments I busied myself in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. The wound was not a deep one. My companion was more dazed than hurt. But what of the pursuers?
I took the weapon from his grasp and examined it hurriedly. It was not unlike the automatic pistol to which I was accustomed, except that it apparently fired with a button instead of a trigger. I inserted several fresh rounds of ammunition into its magazine from my companion's belt as rapidly as I could, for I soon heard near us, the suppressed conversation of his pursuers.
There followed a series of explosions round about us, but none very close. They evidently had not spotted our hiding place, and were firing at random.
I waited tensely, balancing the gun in my hand, to accustom myself to its weight and probable throw.
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