Armageddon 2419 A.D.

Buck Rogers

by Philip Francis Nowlan

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. Five centuries from now there may be many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure any worse convulsions than those which have occurred between 1975 A.D. and the present time. I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years 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 other fifty-two 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 katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical or mental faculties.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Classics, Adventure, Pulp, Time Travel, Fantasy

195 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Used These Alternate Names: Frank Phillips , Phil Nowlan , Philip F. Nowlan

Philip Francis Nowlan was an American science fiction author, best known as the creator of Buck Rogers

Reviews

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

OH GOOD GRIEF!!!!!

Okay, in order. I read this book many, many, many years ago sometime in the 1970s. However the novella itself was written in 1928 so it's not like I was one of the first to read it or anything. That all said it's a good read.

This is "basically" the proto-Buck Rogers. Buck has gone on to great fame in movies, TV and popular culture since this book...just thought I'd mention it.

Let me point out up front that it was (as I said) written in 1928, it's far from politically correct. The enemy (as in Robert Heinlein's Sixth Column) are "the Asians". Here the Mongolians are named but it's implied that it's a sort of "East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" involving many countries who are the enemy. "Words" are used that could cause some offense. Racial attitudes are on display that are very dated. Know that going in.

But what you get then is a fairly fast moving story of a "fantasy future" war. And the way things are imagined for the 25th century from the viewpoint of the 1920s is interesting.

Now that said, in a fit of nostalgia I "bought" the audio version of this from Audible.

I just returned the audio version of this to Audible. The reader is so poor as to (for me at least) make the book "un-listen-to-able". That is the reason for my opening "Good Grief". I can't emphasize enough how bad the narration on the audio book is....

Really, don't try that audio book. Run, save yourself. I'm sure the reader is giving it his shot (but was it his "best" shot????) . And I don't have anything against the guy...but the narration is unbearable...truly. For me at least. Read...that is "READ" the print book.

Really...I recommend this...the print version.

[Benji's Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

A classic scifi tale full of so many ideas that pop culture still uses today.

Admittedly, I thought this book was a bit of a slog through Acts I and II, and thought to myself, "there's no way it can get worse". I had spent many minutes fighting off sleep, reading the endless descriptions of technology and warfare, 500 years into the future. That's probably on me, though, since I went into this, expecting cheesy, swashbuckling, pulpy action sequences.

Alas, I was proven correct, as Act III was really fun, actually and did NOT, in fact, get worse than Acts I and II. It was full of (mostly) action as we got closer towards the end to see what everything that came before was leading towards.

I would have liked for the book to be a bit more exciting before the third act, but at least I didn't go away, hating the book. Instead, I think I've found a sort of middle-ground, where I'm happy to have read this classic, though probably won't find myself reading it again.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would imagine, at this point, that you have previously heard of the fictional character named Buck Rogers. And indeed, dating from his initial comic strip appearance in January 1929, and proceeding on to radio shows (starting in 1932, Buck Rogers was radio's very first sci-fi hero), a 12-part film serial (starring the former Olympic swimming medalist Buster Crabbe), several TV adaptations, video games, and comics, the character has been fairly ubiquitous for almost 90 years now. To be sure, Buck's comic strip was so very popular in the early '30s that it spawned, in January 1934, a rival sci-fi strip starring Flash Gordon, a character that Crabbe would also portray in three fondly remembered film serials. But unlike Flash, Buck had, as his actual provenance, a literary background. That predecessor, you see, was one Anthony Rogers, who initially appeared in Philadelphia-born Philip Francis Nowlan's August 1928 novella "Armageddon 2419 A.D." This short piece was originally published in the pages of Hugo Gernsback's "Amazing Stories," the very first science fiction magazine, when Nowlan was already 40. On the strength of this novella, the author was convinced to begin work on that comic strip, and to come out with a novella-length sequel. That sequel, "The Airlords of Han," initially appeared in the March '29 issue of "Amazing Stories," and the two have usually been published in a single volume ever since, to make for one perfectly matched collection.

Both novellas are narrated by Anthony Rogers himself, now an old man. In the first novella, "Armageddon 2419 A.D.," Buck--I mean, Anthony--tells us how he, a WW1 vet, in the year 1927, had been investigating a cave system near Scranton, PA, as part of his duties working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation. After being trapped in a cave-in, Rogers had succumbed to the underground gases...but had not died. Rather, he had been put into a state of suspended metabolism and had awoken 492 years later...in the year 2419! (And I suppose that this setup is not more or less plausible than the one I just encountered in another book, Stanley G. Weinbaum's "The Black Flame," in which an electrocuted convict is similarly suspended and wakes up almost 1,000 years later!) Rogers had awoken to an America that was completely changed. The country had been conquered, in the year 2109, by the hordes of the Mongolian Hans, a degenerate race now complacently ruling from their 15 megacities scattered across the former U.S. The surviving Americans now live as forest-dwelling rebels, waiting for the day when they will finally be able to regain their centuries-lost freedom. In this first novella, Rogers joins a group of these forest dwellers, the Wyomings (in what was formerly Wyoming County, PA); figures out a way to destroy the Han airships (which float thousands of feet above the ground, supported on their repulsor beams while emitting lethal disintegrator rays); goes on a daring mission into the Han Intelligence HQ in Nu-Yok, along with his new wife, Wilma, and four others, to obtain information regarding traitors in their midst; and finally, enters into battle with those renegade turncoats, the Sinsings of upstate NY. But as the first novella ends, the Han empire is still very much in control of North America and most of the globe....

In the even more exciting second novella, "The Airlords of Han," Rogers is captured after his one-man "swooper" craft is wrecked in battle, and he is brought to one of those 15 Han cities, Lo-Tan, somewhere in the Rockies. There, he meets the "Heaven-Born" Han ruler San-Lan, undergoes two months of mental torture, and slowly earns his captors' grudging admiration. But with the assistance of his fellow Wyomings, Rogers does ultimately effect an escape, as the book culminates with an all-out battle royale between the forces of Lo-Tan and several thousand desperate Americans....

OK, let's deal with the good news first. Nowlan's two novellas were unqualified successes back when, and it is easy to see why. The author, for one thing, fills his stories with the superscience gizmos that were so very popular with the readers in sci-fi's early days. Thus, the 25th century Americans have devised two new synthetic elements, ultron and inertron, the latter of which makes possible the antigravity belts that Rogers and his cohorts wear. And then there are those airships, and the disintegrator rays, and the flip phones that very much resemble the cell phones that we all carried 20 years ago, and the remote-controlled, exploding "air balls" that Rogers' allies use to decimate the Han stronghold. Nowlan also accurately predicts army helmets with built-in earbuds for long-distance communication, while televisions seem fairly ubiquitous in Lo-Tan. The author also proves adept at forcefully depicting complex battle engagements, meticulously describing the conflicts between Han airships and ground units, with their disintegrator rays and numerical advantage, and the American forces, with their tiny swooper ships, antigrav-assisted foot soldiers, and ax-handled rocket guns. It is all exciting, vividly described and colorful spectacle, and the author serves it up well, his imaginative conceit dished out, for the most part (with one major exception, which I'll get into momentarily), at a fairly breathless pace.

On the downside, those readers who value, in their sci-fi, such niceties as characterization and beautifully crafted prose will surely be disappointed by Nowlan's work here. Characterizations in "Armageddon 2419 A.D." are virtually nil, while the prose is strictly utilitarian. Basically, this is Rogers explaining his role during an historic time period, and nothing more, almost as if he were a soldier reporting to his CO. Nowlan's/Rogers' chronicle is also guilty of the occasional ungrammatical phrase (such as "...the practical application of ultronics ARE well understood...."). And then there is the matter of political correctness. The two novellas here are just as much guilty of buying into the so-called "yellow menace" of the era as any of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels; thus, the Han conquerors are blithely referred to as the "yellow incubus" and "yellow blight" any number of times. Nowlan, to be fair, does redeem himself a bit by revealing, near the book's end, that the Hans just might have extraterrestrial blood mixed in with their own (!); when he mentions the Japanese and Chinese with some approbation; and when he reveals that, in the late 25th century, the blacks of Africa were "one of the leading races of the world, although in the Twentieth Century we regarded them as inferior...." Disappointingly, Rogers and his allies are shown using both poison gas and germ warfare in their fight against the Hans; very surprising, actually, as these stories were written after the 1925 signing of the Geneva Protocol, outlawing the use of such during wartime. Their employment, even against such dastardly villains as the Hans, will likely compel most readers to cry "Foul!"

As I mentioned a little earlier, the author makes his novellas gallop by at a respectable pace, with the exception of one extended bit that grinds his story to an absolute standstill. This egregious section pops up in the otherwise thrilling second novella, in which Nowlan apparently felt the necessity of adding veracity to his story by explaining some of those technical marvels, in passages of exceedingly recondite mumbo jumbo. To wit, this section, in which we learn how the Hans use broadcast power to work their airship repeller rays:

"...It went out at a frequency of about 1,000 kilocycles, had an amperage of approximately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly amplified by the use of inductostatic batteries (a development of the principle underlying the earth induction compass applied to the control of static) this current energized the 'A' ionomagnetic coils on the airships, large and sturdy affairs, which operated the Attractoreflex Receivers, which in turn 'pulled in' the second broadcast power known as the 'pullee,' absorbing it from every direction, literally exhausting it from surrounding space. The 'pullee' came in at about a half-billion volts, but in very heavy amperage, proportional to the capacity of the receiver, and on a long wave--at audio frequency in fact. About half of this power reception ultimately actuated the repeller ray generators. The other half was used to energize the 'B' ionomagnetic coils, peculiarly wound affairs, whose magnetic fields constituted the only means of insulating and controlling the circuits of the three 'powers.'

"The repeller ray generators, operating on this current, and in conjunction with 'twin synchronizers' in the power broadcast plant, developed two rhythmically variable ether-ground circuits of opposite polarity. In the 'X' circuit, the negative was grounded along an ultraviolet beam from the ship's repeller-ray generator. The positive connection was through the ether to the 'X' synchronizer in the power plant, whose opposite pole was grounded. The 'Y' circuit traveled the same course, but in the opposite direction.

"The rhythmic variables of these two opposing circuits, as nearly as I can understand it, in heterodyning, created a powerful material 'push' from the earth, up along the violet ray beam against the rep ray generator and against the two synchronizers at the power plant.

"This push developed molecularly from the earth-mass-resultant to the generator; and at the same fractional distance from the rep ray generator to the power plant...."

Got all that? Techno dummy that I am, I had to reread this section several times to try to ascertain if it is sheer gobbledygook or if it might actually contain a kernel of genuine science. And to be honest, I’m still not sure. And this extended quote here represents less than one page of a section that goes on for eight! As I say, it stopped the book, for this reader, at least, dead in its tracks. And I happen to know someone who felt the same exact way about the chapter in which the author describes life in Lo-Tan, with an emphasis on the Hans' morals and customs. That section, for me, however, was pretty darn interesting, and at least understandable!

Anyway, that one eight-page chunk, dry-as-dust writing style, un-P.C. elements and un-kosher battle tactics aside, these two novellas, taken together in "Armageddon 2419 A.D.," still proved to be pretty good fun, and of course should be of interest to all readers who are desirous of exploring the historical roots of modern science fiction. It gets a marginal recommendation from yours truly. Don't disintegrate me for saying so, but I suppose that I am here, uh, passing the Buck....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Philip Francis Nowlan....)

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, is the original Buck Rodgers story. Later incarnations of Buck Rodgers popularized swashbuckling, space operas in the 1930’s. However, this is the original time travel genre story. In it, a 20th Century, American, WWI veteran is transported 500 years into an Earth-bound, dystopian future through suspended animation. Anthony Rodgers (the protagonist's real name) gets to his feet in a strange new world, and by using his skillz he becomes a hero of the revolution that frees America from the Han (Chinese) hegemony ruling the world. (I kid you not about the Chinese.) From a historical standpoint, this is an early example of the genre. I found the authenticity of the period narration, the Phlebotinum, and its anthropological whiteness to make this story an entertaining read. I laughed-out-loud several times over the story’s built-in values dissonance.

This book is a compilation of two (2) novellas, Armageddon 2419 A.D. published in 1928 and The Airlords of Han published in 1929. The stories are more than ninety (90) years old. The combined stories were published together in paperback for the first time in 1962. The "seam" between the two sections is noticeable. There was no attempt to homogenize the two parts. This book was short. My copy was about 215-pages. That’s about the size of a modern novella. The separate stories are also in the public domain. Free copies are available on Project Gutenberg.

I’ve taken an interest in reading science fiction and fantasy stories from the early 20th Century. They’re historically more interesting to me than contemporary historical fiction. In particular, with this story the author’s vision of the future comes from the period between the two World Wars and before the Great Depression. In the story he addresses the issues of: industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption during the economic prosperity and rapid cultural change of The Roaring Twenties. (Sound familiar?) In particular the then current psycho-cultural, belief in the Yellow Peril is a major plot element. Unlike contemporary historical fiction there is no built-in edutainment on the 1920’s. If you don’t’ have some knowledge of that period of American history, you’re likely to miss a lot of subtext in the story. For example, none of the characters consume alcohol. That's because America is under Prohibition when the stories were written. Also unlike contemporary historical fiction there is an unapologetic Values Dissonance. That’s when the morality of the characters and culture in the story written almost 100-years ago are different from the morality of the contemporary audience. For example, adult women are consistently referred to as “girls” in the story. I frankly couldn’t figure-out if that was a cultural artifact or a stylistic flourish of the author. I could also see the influence of the author’s more famous contemporary Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost World genre stories on the author.

Prose was a mixed bag. Dialog was better than descriptive prose. I thought the Armageddon 2419 A.D. section to be more polished than the following The Airlords of Han section. The dialog was in 1920’s vernacular, but did not use a lot of period slang. In general, the dialog was too melodramatic by contemporary standards. For example, the last paragraph from the first section has Tony Rodgers telling his warrior wife (Wilma):

”Nevertheless,” I prophesized, “the Finger of Doom points squarely at them today, and unless you and I are killed in the struggle, we shall live to see America blast the Yellow Blight from the face of the Earth.”

Descriptive prose could be either very sweeping and general or incredibly detailed. For example there is no description of Tony’s wife, other than she was very slender and pretty. No hair, eye color or complexion are noted. On the other hand the futuristic small arms were described in minute detail. I received the greatest enjoyment from the expository passages. The technical obfuscation was particularly endearing, but I found the casual racism to also be interesting. It never occurred to me that there might be an American Race?

It should be noted that this story was written for a popular audience during the 1920’s. It’s been sanitized, although some readers may find some parts the 1920’s culture objectionable. There are no profanities or vulgarities used. It’s devoid of sex, which may only occur in the context of marriage. There is also no substance abuse, not even tobacco usage for the Americans, although the Hans’ do indulge in numerous, unspecified decadent pastimes. Violence is moderate, but not graphic. Oddly there is no blood for major physical trauma, but its there for “flesh wounds”. In general, this might be considered a YA read.

Characters are limited and quiet simple. Frankly, none of the characters receive a lot of work. Tony Rodgers is the protagonist. He’s very much the Action Hero. He has skills that have been lost to society during his period of suspension. Wilma Deering is his Action Girl and love interest. She’s a Ranger/Rosie the Riveter. That’s a half-time Recon commando and half-time skilled manufacturing technician in the Western Pennsylvania American underground political subdivision (“gang”). Tony and Wilma get married within the first three chapters so they can “mate”. They have a “lovely honeymoon” camping. There are a number supporting American characters. They’re also all soldier/technicians. They have very white names: Gerdi Mann, Bill Hearn, and Bert Gaunt. If an American character is named, they don’t die. In the first section, there are no individual Han characters, the antagonists are just the Yellow Peril in-general. In the second section, a few get named. The primary antagonist is San-Lan, the “Heaven-Born”, Emperor of the Hans in America. San-Lan actually didn’t seem too evil to me. Ngo-Lan is San-Lan’s concubine. She's full of exotic charms and deceit. The only child in the book is Princess Lu-Yan, San-Lan’s daughter. I don’t know why she was even added to the story. There are many other Hans, with names like Lui-Lok and Lip-Hung (both male). All the Han names are the most unlikely Chinese names I’ve ever come across. Hans named and unnamed are all highly likely to be killed.

The story is written in a semi-epistolary form. It cuts back and forth between first-person narration, and Rodger’s journal entries. Action scenes are in Rodger’s first-person POV, with the journal artifice being used for exposition-type narration, the forwards and conclusions of the two sections.

Plot has Rodgers transported 500 years into the future through an amazing feat of suspended animation. In the future, he copes with the strangeness of a new world, which only has traces of his own 1920’s one remaining. The world is under the hegemony of the oriental [sic] Han. The Han are rumored to have bred with space aliens to acquire the technology that allowed them to conquer the world. Rodgers finds Deering and the American underground. The Americans are living in a completely reforested North America disbursed and hidden. They're all militarily trained. They have a completely underground, industrial infrastructure and an advance technology. Oddly, there are no children or old folks mentioned in American life. Meanwhile, the Han think the Americans are near-extinct primitives. The Han live in Emerald city-like urban confabs built over the ruins of American cities like New York (Nu-Yok), Boston (Bos-Tan), Buffalo (Bah-Flo), etc. Han city names are just as peculiar as their given name’s. Rodgers has skills that have been lost to Americans during his period of suspension, mostly what he learned fighting in WWI. That turns him into a heroic, leader of the uprising which just happens to start when he arrives. With Rodger’s help the Americans ethnically cleanse North America.

As an adventure, a modern reader has seen this tale many times. It’s a rehash of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , but with genocide. There are numerous plot holes, discontinuities and many pages of needless exposition that adversely effect the pacing. This story would never be commercially published today.

World building remains one of the more interesting parts of this story. The anthropological whiteness of the story is appalling, but historically interesting. There were no Americans of colour 500 years in the future. Politically and socially, the American’s reminded me of the Chinese Communists in the 1920's before The Long March. I suspect the author was a closet Socialist. The Han on the other hand were more like the 1920’s western Progressives. The author's notion of Chinese culture appears to come from a Chinatown Chinese restaurant menu. Also, both the Han and the American's had a technological, post-scarcity economy. I couldn’t understand that with there being: no competition for resources; with both sides having small, high tech populations; and the North American continent being empty, except for a few Han cities with small footprints, why was there a war of extinction between the Americans and the Han? The weak plot line of the Han being hybrid Chinese/space aliens was unconvincing. Plot devices that involve technology, were either inspired for 1928 or sheer gobbledygook. For example, the American tech included a 6-inch by 6-inch, book-like mobile phone and drones, although elevators in the high tech Han capitol (which was an Arcology) don’t have automatically closing doors. The high-tech soldiers of both sides carry swords and knives as well as having ray guns or recoilless, automatic pistols with explosive rounds. Then there were long sentences of nonsensical, technical terms, strung together to explain “how things work”. Anti-gravity is an example. I found any explanation that included the word ”Heterodyne” signaled complete rubbish. The author also had some problems with his "speeds and feeds". To him, five Hundred (500) miles per hour (800 Km/hr) is a leisurely pace for manual, tree-top-level flying. (That's really fast.) Finally, anything technologically “modern” had an ‘o’ in its name. For example, ultro or Concentro (Power Bars(tm)). Today, it would be called ultra or Concentra by Marketing. An ‘a’ is more high-tech than an ‘o’, which sounds Italian?

This story wasn't what I expected. The popular impression is that Buck Rodgers is a space opera. (It eventually became one.) However, the Buck Rodgers origin story is a very different dystopian future story. It was more like a PG-rated, military science fiction, version of the conflict in Kosovo than a Star Wars-like space opera. I enjoyed reading this book. It was short, had airships, gun-play and swordplay. A suspension of belief akin to reading steampunk was needed to appreciate it. The prose, particularly the descriptions were interesting to read despite their faults. The alt-1920’s, dystopian, future world building was fascinating in both its prescience and for its incompleteness. Unfortunately, in places I found the social commentary disturbing to my modern sensibilities. For example, the nonnegotiable, racial enmity between the American-race and the Asian Han in a post-scarcity world really wasn’t explainable to me. In summary, this was an interesting read, if you have a historical interest in pre-modern science fiction. Otherwise, you’ll likely find it crude, baffling and possibly offensive.

Readers interested in the 20's might look at Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties . A more polished example of science fiction from this period is a A Princess of Mars .

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Second read – 1 July 2025 - Rating 2/5.

“Armageddon 2419 A.D.” was the original title of a novella that appeared in Hugo Gernsbeck’s Amazing Stories in 1928. A sequel, entitled “The Airlords of Han”, appeared in that magazine a year later. Both have been integrated into this novel. When Nowlan revised the story into comic form, the main character was renamed from Anthony Rogers to Buck Rogers, because it sounded more macho to his editor. And that is the name most often associated with it now.

This was about 20 years after Edgar Rice Burroughs, and represents a new generation of writers made popular through the introduction of pulp magazines. Like ERB’s John Carter, Nowlan’s Tony Rogers passes out in a cave and awakens in a strange and exciting new world. There, they exemplify heroic fighting abilities and strategies that they brought with them from their lives in America. In Armageddon 2419 A.D., it is a future America occupied by the Han, technologically advanced and effete descendants of a Chinese occupation of North America. In the wilderness, renegade Americans have developed two powerful new substances – inertron and ultron – both of which seem to be unknown to the Han. With those, the Americans craft devious weapons and surveillance technology to overthrow the Han. However, only Tony seems to know how to use them effectively against the Han, born out of his knowledge of tactics of World War 1. Like John Carter, he marries a local girl and quickly rises to command. The battle descriptions are dry and academic, with the characters being not much more than place-holders in the narrative.

I was disturbed by the glorification of the actions of Tony and the Americans in casually exterminating the millions of the Han population of North America. He leads the Americans in driving their “air balls” at high speeds right through the bodies of fleeing crowds of civilians from Han cities, and then going back and forth until all are dead. In the end, the thousands of surrendering Han soldiers are disintegrated and made to vanish. Did the readership of the 1920s consider genocide to be the American Way? It was not so in Edgar Rice Burroughs, where surviving civilian populations were integrated into the planetary civilization.

I re-read this novel because it is covered in Lecture 6 “The Rise of the Science Fiction Pulps” in The Great Course’s How Great Science Fiction Works. Writers such as Philip Nowlan and Doc Smith were among Gernsbeck’s stable, who collectively established the subgenre known as Space Opera.

First read – 01 October 1972 – Rating 2/5. I read this book while in high school, because it was the original basis of the well-known Buck Rogers comics, radio show, films, and television. I was disappointed with the implausible scientific explanations.

[Leothefox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book comes very close to being the futuristic adventure it's supposed to be, it's got a good portion of the recipe... but the ingredient's that are missing are vital ones, so it fizzles. The odd thing is, much of what's missing is well represented in the Buck Rogers comic strips right from the beginning.

Anthony Rogers survives World War 1 only to end up caved-in in a mine and preserved by gas for 500 years. We receive this information first person, but with so little emotional investment that it might as well be an indifferent book report. The prologue front-loads the bit about the 500 year sleep, so our narrator doesn't really bother talking about his surprise on discovering the fact.

Much like in the comic, the focus is largely on depicting future inventions and weapons (and yeah yeah some of these have really come to pass, so what?). The weapons get a lot of play since the besieged forest-dwelling Americans are at war with the technologically superior Hans who occupy America. This setup has dramatic potential but it doesn't work out too well since most of the conflict is suspense-less battles, many of which our hero observes from the safety of a control-panel.

It doesn't much help that there's no emotion or humanity to be had and the Mongol “Hans” are portrayed as soft super-intelligent morally-bankrupt monsters and the narrator has no qualms about them being killed by the busload. Hans are killed with missiles, rays, bombs, and germ warfare. Hans are even killed once they're captured, when they don't simply kill themselves.

I'm not uncomfortable reading fiction that sprang out of the “yellow peril” cycle of anti-Asian fear, it's a part of history and it gave birth to some really imaginative stories and characters. The idea of mentally superior Asian conquerors who embody evil resulted in such celebrated characters as Fu Manchu, Ming the Merciless, and Dr. No. Those classic examples sold the drama and often gave their villains their own brand of honor and scruples. Nowlan's Hans lack these essential parts, and even their technology and intelligence is eventually written off.

That's the funny thing here: this is not a story about an oppressed people who return to nature and use old fighting methods to battle a futuristic enemy, oh no. It's somehow the story of the America people hiding in the woods for centuries and building underground factories so they can emerge and take on a foreign menace with superior technology (missiles). There's no point to it, apparently, except that Americans are supposed to be awesome and pure and the Hans suck because they're not.

The fact is, the entire adventure is too easy for the plucky Anthony Rogers. One or two notions of 1920s know-how and an impassioned speech (that isn't actually included in the book) get him promoted to “boss” of the Wyoming gang. It might just be the lackluster narration, but Rogers rarely seems to be in real danger and the security blanket of the forest people and his wife Wilma is away from him only once in the entire story. He never has to fight his way out of anything, never has to trust a stranger, never converts a member of the enemy camp with his charisma, never bare-knuckle boxes, never questions himself, and mostly never raises an eyebrow.

Secret missions simply go according to plan and efforts by the enemy to seduce or brainwash him “mostly didn't work”. Rogers marries Wilma without having to win her or romance her, so she might as well be a non-love-interest or another dude. Needless to say, he's no Flash Gordon.

I say read the comic instead.

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Francis Nowlan’s novella Armageddon - 2419 A.D. appeared in the November 1928 issue of Amazing Stories and marked the first appearance in print of Buck Rogers, making it something of a pop culture landmark.

In this and in a sequel published not long afterwards he wasn’t yet called Buck Rogers. He was Anthony Rogers. The character acquired the nickname Buck when he made the transition to a comic strip in 1929.

If you’re only familiar with Buck Rogers through the 1939 movie serial (as I was) the novella will come as something of a surprise. The character is recognisably the same and the tone is very similar - very breathless and pulpy - but the background is very different.

In Armageddon - 2419 A.D. Rogers is a First World War veteran working for a company searching for radioactive gases in the late 1920s. He finds rather too much radioactive gas, in fact so much that it puts him into a state of suspended animation for 492 years. When he is revived he finds the world dramatically changed, but not in the way it was changed in the movie serial. China now rules the globe. The Chinese have destroyed their only serious remaining rival, the Soviet Union, and what was once the United States is now ruled by the Han Airlords. The powers that had dominated the world in the early 20th century had been disposed of after a series of lengthy wars.

But American civilisation has not vanished entirely. Their Han masters have such advanced machinery that they no longer have any need for slaves so they no more or less ignore the very small remaining American population which lives a scattered existence. The Americans have however been developing their own technologies. While the Han have airships powered by repeller rays and armed with disintegrator rays, the Americans have anti-gravity belts and rocket guns and advanced communications (by means of the
ether).

The Americans have developed an odd social system, a kind of blend of rugged pioneer individualism and informal collectivism but also bearing a strong resemblance to early 20th century US urban political machines. The leaders of the various American settlements are known as bosses and the settlements themselves are known as gangs.

The Americans have long-range plans to reconquer their country. These plans are accelerated when Rogers arrives among them from the distant past. Rogers has the type of 20th century military expertise that has been lost by the 25th century. He knows how to lay down a proper artillery barrage, and this proves to be a devastating advantage.

Rogers soon becomes a key figure in the American resistance. He also acquires a wife, the brave and resourceful Wilma, who proves to be a doughty fighter as well.

Armageddon - 2419 A.D. tells the story of Rogers’ first successful large-scale military campaigns, the first great American successes against the Han airships and a vicious war against traitorous American gangs. The ruthless violence of these wars is somewhat startling.

Thee is great entertainment to be had from the intricate descriptions of such technical marvels as the disintegrator rays, the anti-gravity belts and invisible and weightless metals! This is classic technobabble done with panache. Nowlan has a passion for lengthy and detailed info-dumps.

The literary style is pulpy in the extreme but enjoyably brisk.

It’s all outrageously ludicrous and outlandishly unlikely but it’s great fun.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is actually the two original novellas, Armageddon 2419 A.D. and Airlords of the Han mashed together with a little accommodation for the modern reader (who apparently can't be relied on to know what "The Great War" meant to someone from 1927).

Turner Classic Movies started showing episodes from the 1939 "Buck Rogers" serial (starring Buster Crabbe) a few weeks ago and I got so enthusiastic about watching that confection that I dug out the root of the material. They don't have much to do with each other, but what the hey.

It was more fun than it had any right to be. Nowlan is obsessed with the sociological and technological details of this future America. He burns an entire chapter describing "Ultronic" technology and later another one on the cities and society of the Han. It should be dry and dull, but these sections are the pauses between the racing action of merciless weird-science war that borrows from the likes of "Doc" Smith.

I went into it a little nervous about the "Yellow Peril" aspects of the generically and blandly Asian adversaries, the Han. It's curious that for the serials and comics the enemies became the "super-racketeers" of Killer Kane. Were the writers squeamish, or is this indicative of the zeitgeist of the time, that the fears of Middle America moved from the unknown menace of the Far East to the homegrown menace of gangsters? Either way, the Han themselves don't make a face-to-face appearance until the Airlords material. Even then, the racist overtones seem to be an overcompensation for the reality: the Han themselves don't really gel as a creditable threat, so Anthony Rogers as narrator has to describe their evil and decadence as justification for slaughtering them so utterly. Even then he-slash-the-author backs away at the very end (literally, the last two pages) with a lame assertion that the Han are the hybridized descendents of extraterrestrials. Its as though the author himself was sickened by the results of the characters' unrelenting hatred of their foes.

In any case, the "Killer Kane" angle of the later media is both less disturbing and more interesting a foe.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Buck Rogers fan since I was 5, I must unfortunately admit that the first two novels that introduced arguably the most influential and famous character of science fiction are a bit of a slog to get through, though I can understand their appeal to a generation between World Wars. "Armageddon" and its sequel "Airlords of Han" are written almost in their entirety as a military history text--dry analysis of individual battles, weapons technology, strategy, and so forth. I was actually surprised at the level of detail in the author's descriptions of conflict between the oppressed American rebels and the Mongolian-alien hybrids, but it got to be injurious to the overall enjoyment of the stories. The deadpan delivery of statistics and facts of war excluded the reader from being invested in those very battles, and so very little seemed at stake. There was absolutely no emotional investment in any character or why we should care about any of their struggles. There was little hint of how war slices, burns, and maims the fragile bodies of those fighting the war. The books are all about a great big final showdown between an evil Empire and the noble Rebels, but for the most part, it all plays out like a game of "Stratego" or "Civilization."

But the bones are all there for great epic scifi, and it was these stories and their later expansions that inspired decades of space operas and ultimately the Star Wars franchise that we know today. And don't get me wrong, there are enough interesting points to make these original novels worth reading for the curious fan.

For example, it is often cited that these novels are some of the more prophetic of the actual future, introducing 1920s audiences to technology that we take for granted today. And this is very true. My particular favorite among these prophecies are the drones, remote-controlled metal spheres of flying death that brutally bowl over enemies, blast strategic points of sabotage, and spy through their eye lenses that transmit live video to their operators. Their appearance in "Airlords" is an eerie and refreshing addition to the plot.

And though Tony Rogers is a classic hero archetype, his paramour Wilma Deering is one of the earliest examples of feminine badassery. She is more intelligent, and also more brutal and savage than any of the rebel gang resistance fighters--Princess Leia on steroids!

I also was stunned by the discussion of the Han Empire culture. Though they are the only threat in both novels, it is not until the sequel that we learn anything about them. They are a fitting mirror of what we see happening to human societies today as technology evolves our psyche--people rarely leaving their apartments and living out their lives through streaming entertainment, teleconferences, online shopping, home delivery, virtual chat, and social media to the point where their minds have become autistic to normal and intimate human interaction.

Many readers criticize these novels for their racist depiction of Asians, but this is not entirely a fair assessment. The author certainly based his antagonists on the "Yellow Peril" popular at the time, so that these novels tend to blend in with so many other Radium Age scifi stories that use the "Orient" as the embodiment of everything alien and counterintuitive to Western understanding. In this sense, the reader may lump the Buck Rogers baddies with Fu Manchu, or the Singaporeans of "The Golden Book of Springfield," or the Empire of the Tal Majod in "The Earth-Tube," or the Chinese from Jack London's "The Unparalleled Invasion." But the Han are not "Asian." They are simply modern. They are all of us staring at our smartphones on Goodreads. Nowlan throws in the face of "whites," who are hysterical over the dangers of the "yellow race," the idea that the 20th Century is just the beginning of an even greater "peril" that lies within the heart of the "progress" that Westerners embrace.

The author presents the Hans as what happens when a mysterious "something" gets into the human brain and DNA, evolving them to another level. Though he cleverly insinuates that some unknown extraterrestrial virus or breeding blended with the inhabitants of a Mongolian tribe in the prehistoric Himalayas to make them smarter and gravitate to industrialization and Imperialism, the Han are everything the author feared in Western Europe and 20th Century America. The battle between the rebels and the Hans are allegorical to the American Revolution against the British Empire, to the Native Americans against the New World settlers, and to the general struggle of agrarian ideals against the new mechanized culture of industrial nations. These books are about the struggles of any nations or ethnicity across the world for identity and basic humanity when, as Kurzweil would say, "the singularity is near."

So there is a lot to recommend the first entries into the Buck Rogers mythos to curious readers. It's just that they only carry the basic and bland building blocks of epic scifi drama that Buck Rogers and its successors would become. It would not be until the 1929 comic, also by Nowlan, that Anthony Rogers would go by the nickname "Buck," his arch enemy Killer Kane would be introduced as a treacherous resistance fighter who turns to crime, and technologies would advance to have the rebel forces begin off-earth exploration to encounter the Tigermen and other fantastic alien foes and allies. The movie serials, radio and TV shows, and later reboot with Gil Gerard, all evolve from there into the cultural phenomena we know today.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original Buck Rogers tale. Holds up about as well as contemporary pulp fiction because that's what it was. The science is pretty fantastic, but it's like Star Wars or Star Trek: who cares?

A good read.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original Buck Rogers story. Great SiFi from the pulp era. Recommended

[Charles Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I go any further, yes, I've seen the short-lived BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY TV series...it's the way most of us in this age were introduced to the first science fiction hero. It was campy, bright, full of disco-era flash, and at every opportunity it couldn't take itself seriously. How else to explain how Gary Coleman from DIFF'RENT STROKES appeared in an episode as the kid leader of another planet? It was shameless novelty and a guilty pleasure I'm not ashamed to say I honestly enjoyed. By its own merits, if only for nostalgia reasons, it's still popular even today. But how many of us out there don't realize that this incarnation of Buck Rogers, outside of a five-century sleep, has virtually nothing in common with the *original* hero Philip Francis Nowlan created back in the late 1920's?

If you're in any way a fan of science fiction, you owe it to yourself to see where it all began for the very first science fiction hero by reading ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. Yes, if it wasn't for good old Buck, we might never have had Flash Gordon...or Robby the Robot...or James T. Kirk and his crew...or Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and all of the iconic tropes and characters of the genre that have become beloved and part of popular culture over the past several decades. Sure, science fiction itself had already been around for a long time in literature. H.G. Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and Edgar Rice Burroughs' A PRINCESS OF MARS came beforehand and were significant influences on sci-fi in their own right. But the premise of ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. and its hero, in the original story named Anthony Rogers, were unique -- especially in the hugely popular newspaper comic strips that partly adapted the story and changed Rogers' first name to Buck -- in the sense they gave us the genre's first leading man of a fantastic future with marvels like rocket ships and disintegrator beams. He'd also become the first to have serialized adventures, and the makers of the strips took great pains to research real life rocket technology to give those adventures that added gravitas. Readers were given a glimpse into a future that, at least according to what was known at the time, could very well have happened!

It might surprise you to know that the space travel aspects of Buck's best known adventures in the strips (and then movies, a certain TV show, etc!) were virtually absent in the adventure that started it all in ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D., which was first published in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in 1928. The roots of the story, however, are still very much inspired by the classic fairy tale RUMPLESTILSKIN. The story opens with us being introduced to Anthony Rogers, a veteran of World War I, working as an investigator seeking out ususual phenomena coming from abandoned coal mines. As he checks the lower levels of one mine, he's trapped by a cave-in. Rogers subequently falls unconscious to a freak combination of gasses, natural and radioactive, that put him in perfect suspended animation for 492 years.

When he finally wakes up, Rogers manages to get out of the mine, but has no idea how much time has passed. As he tries to find some way back to the nearest civilization, he sees a person in strange green clothes making literally impossible leaps of height and distance being chased and attacked by a gang of men. The person is brought to earth harshly, but before the gang can do anything worse, Rogers gets ahold of a strange weapon he's later informed is a disintegrator weapon and kills one of the gang; the rest are scared off. The hero quickly realizes the person he saved is a beautiful young woman, Wilma Deering, who was on air patrol using her anti-gravity belt! As he realizes he's been gone for 500 years, the patient and open-minded Wilma believes Rogers and enlightens him to the history that passed him by. America along with the rest of the civilized world was virtually destroyed and conquered hundreds of years ago by the superior technology of the Chinese Airlords of Han; the defeated were forced to retreat to the wild forests and mountains as the civilization they once knew was destroyed. The Han don't see America as a real threat -- its people rebuilt their society into gangs (better to call them clans) as they used the country's great forests as their homes -- as they watch over the world from their floating cities in the air. The Han don't realize, however, that the Americans have been slowly, quietly rebuilding their strength and developing new technologies with the intent of starting a Second American Revolution against the Han to reclaim their freedom and everything they lost! It seems like fate that this revolution has found a hero who might have been born five centuries ahead of his time...

I know, the story is virtually unrecognizable from what most fans know of Buck Rogers, right? Still, the story holds fantastic technologies like airships and powerful 'dis beams', and actually predicted a few things that are known today, like remote drones and telecommuting! The pacing of the story is brisk, yet it's packed with detail to give us the sense that we're in a very different America from the one known in the 1920's, and even the country we know now. There isn't too much character development outside of Anthony's gradual change from a man out of his time to revolutionary hero, and it doesn't hit any wrong notes. I thought the love story between the hero and Wilma could have been handled better, or maybe I just wanted to see more happen between them. The action in the story is a mix between super-science zaps and zooms and (in close quarters) swordplay of the swashbuckling variety, and it gets surprisingly bloody. Nowlan treats the violence and its consequnces realistically, colorful yet not virtually bloodless like STAR WARS. The story is inevitably politically incorrect in some ways for our day and age...there's no racism here (nothing like you'd hear from taped conversations, ahem!), but in only a few isolated moments it reflects our society when a lot of hearts and minds needed to be changed. The unfortunate anachronisms are few and isolated, referring to the Chinese as Mongolian and things like that, but it doesn't drag down the story and its spirit. That is just fair warning for more sensitive readers...overall, ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. is a rightfully classic read and perfect for those who want to know more about how science fiction as we know it today got its start!

[Vincent Darlage · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2109, the Mongolians took over the world and the Americans of the 25th century are living a nomadic and frightened existence - until Tony (Buck) Rogers shows up in 2419 and shows them WWI fighting tactics that are useful.

I am honestly not sure how to rate this book. On the one hand, it is the origin of the character that would become Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. On the other hand, it is a pretty dry book filled with technical data and strategic analysis and even cultural analysis. The delivery of all the stats and figures is almost... deadpan? Mostly, the way the information is delivered is so off-handed and analytical that it distances the reader from the action. The author spends so much time telling us stuff instead of showing us stuff. There is almost no character arc or character development. No one really has much character at all. Wilma Deering is present but has no real personality beyond that which is described (but not shown); however, she is no damsel in distress and is quite capable of commanding armies, shooting bad guys, and being heroic.

However, as sci-fi it is amazing how prescient it was in regards to technology. The use of drones in warfare is a great example, as is the use of viewscreens. These two stories were written in the 1920s, between the two World Wars, so the author spends a lot of time describing technologies that we fully use and understand today. Of course, in 1928 and 1929 (the years the two stories in this volume were written), these technologies didn't exist. Television had just barely existed as a technology (invented in 1927, but not really commercially viable until the 1940s). The Han society (the bad guys) almost sounds like our modern society, a world where no one really needs to leave their houses anymore - stuff can just be delivered to them, and most of their work can be done from home, and life is filled mostly with entertainment.

While the Hans are described as a "yellow" race who have conquered the White Americans (yes, the book is a bit racist in that regard), reading it today mostly feels like what it would be like if Modern Americans conquered 1920s Americans. Us, today, with our cell phones and TVs and video games and internet porn and social media and work-from-home teleconferencing vs. 1928 people.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is, considering its age and the expression of commonly held beliefs and prejudices of that era, a pretty well-written piece fiction that is still able to provide a fair amount of excitement and entertainment. Some of it reads like a throwback to Burroughs' John Carter who goes to sleep in a cave and awakes in a new world. Nowlan, however, tries a more scientific approach, instead of shrouding the narrative in mystical crap. As far as the quality of his "science", it is probably better than most of the pseudo-science that was used in the comic books of the sixties and seventies and echoed contemporary understanding quite well.

The protagonist is not a wide-eyed idealist or a physically or mentally superior being. He has some advantages, due to his experiences, on the other hand he has much to learn about this future society. Even his female counterpart and wife is quite emancipated for the time this text was written. She rarely faints and is even allowed to successfully take part in combat.

The story is, despite its preoccupation with war and racial conflict, surprisingly positive, especially in its future expectations of technical mastery. Some elements reminded me strongly of Star Trek, for example the handheld communication device or a technology reminiscent of synthesizers/replicators, it might have even inspired Roddenberry. A much better story than the cheesy Buck Rogers serial with its comical special effects or the famous comic strip which are both based on this book.

Definitely one of the best examples of pulp-fiction.

[Ellana Thornton-Wheybrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is racist and sexist. A man skips forward a few centuries into the future only to sleep with and marry the first woman he came across. From there he leads a war. That's it really. It is so obviously written by an American straight white man in the 1920s. I felt so uncomfortable reading this at times.

[Q. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pot boiler science fiction with racist overtones. Very disappointing for the 1st Buck Rogers novel.
0.5/5

[Iluzija O. Istini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugodno me iznenadila knjiga. Vrlo je maštovita i razrađena. Da nema toliko nacionalnog ponosa i više bi mi se svidjela..

[Love of Hopeless Causes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cave fart gas expert Buck Rogers becomes trapped in some particularly hospitable--and apparently breathable--fart gas, that leaves him in suspended animation for about 500 years. In your face Steve Rogers!

With tales this old, I listen in the way children once read Sunday funnies, hoping for the best while not expecting much. How is it a fart gas expert is so good at waging war on the Han, who have been at it for so long? You just have to let that stuff go and enjoy the author's enthusiasm. I'm jealous of living in a time when people could enjoy such things without my modern skepticism.

I listened to this based on the title. No mention was made of Buck on the cover, so I had the pleasure of listening to it as a blank slate, and only realized later it was Buck Rodgers of later fame.

The front of the story is a planetary discovery piece and the latter half is triumphs over sparsely detailed enemies. If I understood correctly, Buck encountered a lesbian who wasn't interested in his potential affection, I though this somewhat unusual for the age this was printed in.

You can listen to it free on Youtube and probably Gutenburg.

[Tom Britz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the premise of this, Anthony Rogers, a scientist from 1928 is investigating a radioactive gas in a mine shaft, when a cave in blocks him in and the gas somehow puts him into a sort of suspended animation, until 500 years later when an earthquake nearby causes the blockage to fall away and the fresh air revives him. He wanders around until he meets and saves a woman's life from people flying around and throwing bombs. The woman is Wilma Deering. From there he's drawn into a war against a race of Hans (at the end it is discovered this is a hybrid of Chinese and an alien race that crashed somewhere in China.) who had conquered the world while he was sleeping.
This could have been a solid four star, but for a forty or fifty page section where the author felt he needed to describe the future science and the mores of the Han. The author diverted from a straight forward telling of the story then diverts into this.

[Randy Harmelink · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. I should cut it quite a bit of slack since it's nearly 90 years old, but still...

I'd rather have spent the time re-watching some old episodes of the Buck Rogers TV series. Cheesy as they were, they were still more entertaining.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Nothing about the story or characters made me want to finish this. Just not for me.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very strange book, even when compared to other early science fiction books. It is very brutal—much as a civil war would be—featuring battles and military actions where a lot of people die in battle and a lot of people die in cold-blooded suppressive actions to stop counter-revolutionary tribes.

Anthony Rogers glories in his wife’s ruthlessness in battle. His wife is Wilma Deering, which will be familiar to anyone who enjoys old science fiction serials. I didn’t realize when I bought this that it was literally a Buck Rogers novel; and in fact it sort of isn’t.

Though the cover said The Original “Buck Rogers” Novel, I read that as a Buck Rogers-like novel from before Buck Rogers. I have no idea why; but I was surprised, then, to discover that the first person he met was Wilma Deering. This reads nothing like the Buck Rogers I’m familiar with, which is the 1980s television show and a handful of the old serials. Armageddon: 2419 A.D. is a lot like a more catastrophic version of The Time Machine.

The difference is because this is a collection of the two novellas Philip Francis Nowlan wrote before the comic strip. The comic strip was initially based on these stories but quickly transformed into something completely different with far greater appeal. Something with more episodic adventure rather than a long grueling bloody war to free America from occupation.

The nickname “Buck” never appears in this novel. My reading of the cover blurb was almost correct.

Long ago I wrote that in the real world, “Should any of us crawl into a cave of strange gasses and awaken a century later, we will not be the heroes of our own movie serials. We will be helpless and confused, and completely unable to cope without extensive help from the people of that time.” No Wilma Deering will fall in love with us. But that’s not true in this book, where Wilma and the rest of America outside the occupied cities live very primitive lives.

Only Earth’s conquerors (it is unclear even to the protagonist at the end whether the conquerors are from the Earth) live in the futuristic splendor that would later be associated with Buck Rogers.

Anthony Rogers wasn’t a hero because he was a throwback to a more energetic era. He was a hero because he was a throwback to a more civilized era. Despite the advanced weaponry in these stories, the technology in general and the social structures among the humans are very primitive. This is a 25th century in which all technological advancement except that useful for fighting has been lost in the destruction of humanity.

It’s a 25th century in which democracy has given way to boss rule, sometimes enlightened as in the Wyoming gang that Rogers finds himself in, and sometimes not as in the gang that Rogers saved Deering from in the first few pages, who were trying to start a war between the other gangs.

Technology-wise, this is also fascinating, almost a proto-steampunk, with airships and jumper belts all based on some seriously deeply-constructed and preposterous technological backing. There’s an incredible section describing the technology toward the end in chapter 9.

It may be of interest at this point to give the reader a layman’s explanation of the electronic or ionic machinery of these ships, and of their general construction. The reader who is not interested in technical details can skip this chapter.

And yes, the reader who is not interested in technical details can definitely skip that chapter. But while they’ll still understand the story just as much as those of us who did read that chapter, they will have missed out on some seriously authentic frontier gibberish.

One of the other interesting things is that the conquerors and the conquered live completely apart, to the point that even their technology is different. The Americans (and the rest of the world) haven’t been so much conquered as sidelined. The conquerors live in their marvelous cities without any need or desire for slave labor; their technology handles all of the work except repairing their technology. And Nowlan does recognize that this makes the repairmen very important.

The conquerors literally completely ignore the humans who remain outside their cities, not even believing them human. They’re pests, viewed the way a suburbanite today might view gophers or cockroaches.

It’s just fascinatingly weird.

[Nola Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sci-fi novella was originally published in 'Amazing Stories' magazine in 1928. The Anthony (Tony) Rogers from this story became Buck Rogers in the later comic strip. Tony is investigating strange radiation readings underground when there's a rock slide. The unique combination of gases keeps him in a state of suspended animation and he 'awakens' 500 years later to discover a world in which the Han are the superior race who now control America. The Americans are living in forest gangs, but have been developing technology in their underground labs. They can 'float' and jump using their amazing inertron belts, among other things. But can Tony and lady-love Wilma help the Americans to gain an advantage over the Han?

I always like reading these classic sci-fi stories in the context of the times in which they were written. This one was written between WWI and WWII, and it's interesting to see the predictions that the author makes. China, rather than Russia, is the main superpower and enemy. However, their communication system 500 years in the future isn't as good as our current iPhones.

The world-building was really interesting. With today's eyes, there are some things we would see as politically incorrect, but it's an interesting story from the times. If you like classic sci-fi, this is one to add to your list. You can find free copies in public domain sources.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Buck Rogers fan since I was 5, I must unfortunately admit that the first two novels that introduced arguably the most influential and famous character of science fiction are a bit of a slog to get through, though I can understand their appeal to a generation between World Wars. "Armageddon" and its sequel "Airlords of Han" are written almost in their entirety as a military history text--dry analysis of individual battles, weapons technology, strategy, and so forth. I was actually surprised at the level of detail in the author's descriptions of conflict between the oppressed American rebels and the Mongolian-alien hybrids, but it got to be injurious to the overall enjoyment of the stories. The deadpan delivery of statistics and facts of war excluded the reader from being invested in those very battles, and so very little seemed at stake. There was absolutely no emotional investment in any character or why we should care about any of their struggles. There was little hint of how war slices, burns, and maims the fragile bodies of those fighting the war. The books are all about a great big final showdown between an evil Empire and the noble Rebels, but for the most part, it all plays out like a game of "Stratego" or "Civilization."

But the bones are all there for great epic scifi, and it was these stories and their later expansions that inspired decades of space operas and ultimately the Star Wars franchise that we know today. And don't get me wrong, there are enough interesting points to make these original novels worth reading for the curious fan.

For example, it is often cited that these novels are some of the more prophetic of the actual future, introducing 1920s audiences to technology that we take for granted today. And this is very true. My particular favorite among these prophecies are the drones, remote-controlled metal spheres of flying death that brutally bowl over enemies, blast strategic points of sabotage, and spy through their eye lenses that transmit live video to their operators. Their appearance in "Airlords" is an eerie and refreshing addition to the plot.

And though Tony Rogers is a classic hero archetype, his paramour Wilma Deering is one of the earliest examples of feminine badassery. She is more intelligent, and also more brutal and savage than any of the rebel gang resistance fighters--Princess Leia on steroids!

I also was stunned by the discussion of the Han Empire culture. Though they are the only threat in both novels, it is not until the sequel that we learn anything about them. They are a fitting mirror of what we see happening to human societies today as technology evolves our psyche--people rarely leaving their apartments and living out their lives through streaming entertainment, teleconferences, online shopping, home delivery, virtual chat, and social media to the point where their minds have become autistic to normal and intimate human interaction.

Many readers criticize these novels for their racist depiction of Asians, but this is not entirely a fair assessment. The author certainly based his antagonists on the "Yellow Peril" popular at the time, so that these novels tend to blend in with so many other Radium Age scifi stories that use the "Orient" as the embodiment of everything alien and counterintuitive to Western understanding. In this sense, the reader may lump the Buck Rogers baddies with Fu Manchu, or the Singaporeans of "The Golden Book of Springfield," or the Empire of the Tal Majod in "The Earth-Tube," or the Chinese from Jack London's "The Unparalleled Invasion." But the Han are not "Asian." They are simply modern. They are all of us staring at our smartphones on Goodreads. Nowlan throws in the face of "whites," who are hysterical over the dangers of the "yellow race," the idea that the 20th Century is just the beginning of an even greater "peril" that lies within the heart of the "progress" that Westerners embrace.

The author presents the Hans as what happens when a mysterious "something" gets into the human brain and DNA, evolving them to another level. Though he cleverly insinuates that some unknown extraterrestrial virus or breeding blended with the inhabitants of a Mongolian tribe in the prehistoric Himalayas to make them smarter and gravitate to industrialization and Imperialism, the Han are everything the author feared in Western Europe and 20th Century America. The battle between the rebels and the Hans are allegorical to the American Revolution against the British Empire, to the Native Americans against the New World settlers, and to the general struggle of agrarian ideals against the new mechanized culture of industrial nations. These books are about the struggles of any nations or ethnicity across the world for identity and basic humanity when, as Kurzweil would say, "the singularity is near."

So there is a lot to recommend the first entries into the Buck Rogers mythos to curious readers. It's just that they only carry the basic and bland building blocks of epic scifi drama that Buck Rogers and its successors would become. It would not be until the 1929 comic, also by Nowlan, that Anthony Rogers would go by the nickname "Buck," his arch enemy Killer Kane would be introduced as a treacherous resistance fighter who turns to crime, and technologies would advance to have the rebel forces begin off-earth exploration to encounter the Tigermen and other fantastic alien foes and allies. The movie serials, radio and TV shows, and later reboot with Gil Gerard, all evolve from there into the cultural phenomena we know today.

[Abbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1928, and refers to the First World War.

This ages better than I'd expected, but not perfectly.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story that introducted the character of Buck Rogers to the world.

Before giving my review, I'd like to clarify a few details about the specific edition that I read. I read the 1962 Ace paperback edition of "Armageddon 2419 A.D." This edition contains both the 1928 novella of that title and Nowlan's 1929 sequel, "Airlords of Han"-- and it presents them as if they were a single novel (with sequential chapter titles), rather than distinguishing them as two separate tales. (That said, it's pretty clear, plot-wise, that this really is two separate stories run together.) I also discovered, by comparing the text with that to the original magazine versions of the stories (which can be found online), that this edition also includes quite a few changes. For example, chapter divisions are located in different places— and there are fewer chapters than in the original novellas. Also, as I note below, some of the most racist lines from the original versions of the stories were softened or edited out of this edition.

Anyway, since this edition contained both the original "Armageddon 2419 A.D." and the "Airlords of Han" sequel, I will reference both stories below.

"Armageddon 2419 AD” was lively enough as a straightforward pulp-action tale, but "Airlords of Han" tried my patience-- especially the two back-to-back chapters consisting entirely of technological explication. Also, the jingoism and racism (which had been present in the first novella, but not nearly to the same degree) got pretty grating.

My interest ended up being sustained more by historical curiosity than aesthetic enjoyment. It was neat how different the original Buck Rogers character (who wasn’t even nicknamed “Buck”) was from the incarnations I was familiar with. It was also fun to realize that so many technological gadgets that would later become sci-fi clichés— disintegrator rays, anti-gravity belts, levitating vehicles, wireless communicators, hypno-interrogation—originated here. Also, I found myself wondering whether this was the first iteration of that sci-fi trope that would get used again and again and again: a conflict between a ragtag band of rebels against a tyrannical ruthless Empire. (Hmmm… “Star Wars,” anyone?)

I also was intrigued by the way Nowlan constructed the setting as an inverted account of the European conquest of the Americas. At the beginning of the first tale, the “Americans” are superficially analogous to native Americans (at least in certain traditions of frontier literature): they live in small tribe-like communities in the woods, they’re good at fast hit and run fighting but don’t have the technology to match their enemies in open combat, they fight with each other in ways that prevents them from forming a unified front against the invaders-- and they have even adopted the names of former Indian tribes (like the Wyoming, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, etc.) But— instead of fighting against Europeans, these future Americans are the descendants of those European conquerors fighting to expel newer Asian ones.

The racism of the two stories wasn’t a complete surprise (I’d seen some early Buck Rogers serial comics and had also read some comments about this online). I was, however, struck by how candid it was— at least in the original publications. (I did some checking and later reprintings made edits to soften this.) Nowlan drew heavily on early 20th-century “Yellow Peril” fears in crafting a tale of the future dominated by the Mongolians, aka the Han, aka the Asiatics, aka “The Yellow Race” aka “yellow devils”. At the same time, he also reassured his (presumably white) readers, that like the characters in the story: “we shall live to see America blast the Yellow Blight from the face of the Earth”.

At times, the racism— and the double-standard following from it— produce some strange and jarring ironies. For instance, towards the end of “Airlords of Han,” Rogers recounts how the Americans launched “disease-germs” into the Han city they were besieging. The character has no ethical qualms about this. However, he condemns the Han reaction to this biological attack (quarantining infected areas) as "heartless". Apparently, using germs to infect Mongolians with fatal diseases is good ol’ American ingenuity, but enforcing quarantines to prevent those plagues from spreading is Asiatic cruelty.

Ultimately, I’m not entirely that I’d consider this book a classic. A work of historical importance, yes. But is it a classic—a work that I could see reading again and again either for enjoyment— or because it raises interesting questions? I’m not so sure…

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun little jaunt through very VERY old school science fiction, and the introduction to Buck (then Tony) Rogers. It's a fast read, and enjoyable as a sample of the early genre.

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

With my interest in classic adventure characters, it is a little weird that I hadn't bothered with this book sooner. Honestly, I'm ashamed of the reason . . . television. Before learning of this novel, my only real knowledge of Buck Rogers came from an old TV version that was so campy, I couldn't even get into it as a novelty. Of course, even then I knew that the character had already been a fixture in comic strips, which I never had the opportunity to read. Later, I learned that the character first appeared in this novel; but having seen the TV show, I didn't even think of picking up the book. Given all of the bad movie and TV versions of a lot of my favorite books and comics, I really should have known better.
For reasons even I'm not sure of, I changed my mind and read it. Am I ever glad I did! Nowlan's book is more than just great adventure fiction. It's a surprisingly gritty war story with some speculations on the future that made my head snap back with how close to accurate they were. Ever think that a novel from the 1920s could predict online shopping? Believe it. Nowlan even speculated where so many futurists don't bother: language. Where most future stories have characters that simply speak the language of the time the story was written or seem to practically spout the King's English, Armageddon looks into how language can change over the centuries. Nothing terribly detailed, but enough to really give the reader the feeling of a truly different time.
Nowlan even takes a stab at the topic of race relations. Where so many future stories written in his time still had the world dominated by white Anglo-Saxons, Armageddon (near the end) acknowledges that there are other races of people in the world. Though the presentation might still seem somewhat segregationist today, it was no doubt progressive in Nowlan's time.
If you're not a fan of Buck Rogers, reading this book just might change that.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a child I loved the Buck Rogers TV series. But it's not something I've revisited at all and it had never even occurred to me that it might be (however loosely) based on something as old as Nowlan's stories about accidental American time traveler Anthony Rogers.

Rogers (never referred to here as 'Buck') narrates his adventures almost five hundred years in the future after being trapped underground and preserved by "radioactive gas." Waking up, he finds the "yellow peril" (settle down there, Social Justice Warriors, it was written in the late-1920s) of the Mongolian-based 'Han' have taken over the world and his American successors are living underground and in the wilds.

Things play out a bit like an unfunny (not really a criticism - it's not meant to be a comedy) reversal of Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankeee at King Arthur's Court'. Using his First World War battle experience and all around 1920s' American confidence and superiority, Rogers quickly becomes one of the resistance leaders as he helps his 'gan' (a gang or community) fight back against their oppressors.

Surprisingly brutal at times, heavy on the futuristic exposition and explanation and scattered with jingoistic twaddle that grates a little even when accepting the era in which it was written, Armageddon 2419, AD is an important, influential sci-fi novella.

One last note - I didn't actually read it. I stumbled across it while browsing the catalogue at www.librivox.org and listened to a collaborative audiobook with several different readers. Librivox is a great way to find and listen to public domain classics. Give it a try.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a strange book that at times seems to be calling for a race war between the US and China and at others a civil war between the US Left and Right. In the end, it tries to pass itself off as a pulpy account of a human rebellion against alien overlords. Along the way, it provides a deeply condescending depiction of women. It is actually an awful book, while still being remarkable for having spawned 90+ years of science fiction shlock - Buck Rogers.