The Airlords of Han

The second half of the short pulp science fiction novel that introduced the hero of Buck Rogers to the world, is about the same quality wise to the first half, even if the yellow peril elements are much more pronounced in this volume! Overall I would say if you like pulp adventure type science fictio......more

I read this as a palate-cleanser, so it's ironic that the very first page left a sour taste in the mouth - the airlords are "fierce Mongolians, who, as scientists now contend, had in their blood a taint not of the earth". There are two extremely dull chapters that are essentially essays describing t......more

Ah, Golden Age SF! If you love it, you'll probably enjoy this book (and its very necessary prequel, Armageddon 2419 A.D.). If you've never read/enjoyed any pulp SF--and particularly if you don't cope well with literature from more "backward" eras (in this case, the 1920s)--you'll probably find all k......more

Just because it is visionary speculative fiction doesn't make it actually interesting... I was rather amused at the very last "really I'm not a racist" chapter in which it is revealed [not really much of a spoiler to everything else in the plot, as if you didn't know how the plot would end up anyway]......more

A note of warning: there are statements which may spoil the end of the book, though they are not specific to any particular events. A quarter of the way into this sequel to Armageddon 2419 A.D., Nowlan gives an info dump on the science of the Han empire and then the American gangs. It turns out the f......more