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    Twilight of the Tenth World
    Twilight of the Tenth World
    Twilight of the Tenth World
    Ebook55 pages47 minutes

    Twilight of the Tenth World

    By John Russel Fearn

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    On the silent wings of thought flashed the monstrous message that panicked an already doomed and crumbling world—“Earthlings! We, your masters have failed!”


    John Russell Fearn (1908–1960) was a British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp science fiction magazines. Always a highly prolific author, he published not only under his own name, but also as Vargo Statten and other pseudonyms including Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong, John Cotton, Dennis Clive, Ephriam Winiki, Astron Del Martia (and others). He remains best known for his long-running Golden Amazon saga. At times these drew on the pulp traditions of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Fearn also wrote Westerns and crime fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateApr 30, 2021
    ISBN9781479469727
    Twilight of the Tenth World

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      Book preview

      Twilight of the Tenth World - John Russel Fearn

      Table of Contents

      TWILIGHT OF THE TENTH WORLD

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      INTRODUCTION

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      TWILIGHT OF THE TENTH WORLD

      JOHN RUSSELL FEARN

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1940 by John Russell Fearn.

      First published in Planet Stories, Winter 1940, under the pseudonym Thronton Ayre.

      Reprinted with the permission of the Cosmos Literary Agency.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

      INTRODUCTION

      I owe this entire plot to an article in a leading English daily paper of a year ago, headed Sixth Sense Tested! I have tried for a long time to work out something both possible and adventurous to fit the theory expounded in the article—and Twilight of the Tenth World is the result.

      After all, I’m no new explorer into dreams: men have tried to get to the root of them for ages. I’ve simply tried to work out another way, which—though I say it myself—I don’t consider to be so very unlikely. The hardest part about this story was knitting up the essentially scientific statements of the theory to the fast pace I tried to maintain throughout the yarn itself. I hope I have managed it without any undue sagging. . . .

      The conception of polarizing gravity is, I hope, one that has the rudiments of possibility. If light can be polarized—and we certainly know it can—why not gravity? And if such a thing were to come about I think we’d find ourselves facing something pretty similar to what I’ve depicted in the story.

      Maybe some readers will be surprised to find that not a single feminine character appears in the yarn—which is, I suppose, something of a departure after the murky ladies who have pervaded my last few novelettes. Reason? To get a fresh angle; to see if it were possible to change the system and achieve the same effects. Don’t imagine I’m going to drop my mystery females entirely. No: I don’t think a story is properly balanced without them—a story relying entirely on character, that is. This one does not rely on that, but on new theories and action.

      That, for this time, covers what little I have to say of the background of ‘Twilight of the Tenth World.’ I hope you will enjoy it.

      John Russell Fearn

      Lancs, England.

      CHAPTER 1

      They came without warning from a place no man could discover. People in different parts of the earth sent through hurried reports that they had seen the invaders floating ten miles above them, stationary and presumably watching. Watching for what?

      Was it war? War by interplanetary invaders? Possibly. Different countries bristled at the ready, but nothing happened. Giant telescopes were turned on the interlopers but the mirror-screens merely reflected back tapering gray ovoids catching the light of the sun. No sign of any living things aboard them—no sign of anything, in fact. Damned mysterious!

      Bookworms took to reading Wars of the Worlds again; the leading dailies came over all Martian and went the limit of their imaginations depicting glorified bugs descending on earth. Funny how they always thought of bugs.

      Stratomen braved the greatest reaches of the atmosphere, but came nowhere near the interlopers because they rose out of range. There was something indescribably irritating about the way they floated there, a dozen of them. London saw them first, then Paris. Report came in from Vienna, Ceylon, Leningrad, Antwerp, Toronto—and at length, New York.

      It was as though the twelve gray vessels were conducting a very minute examination.

      New Yorkers were exasperated, but not frightened any more. No damage had happened anywhere else, so why here? Mount Wilson verified the European astronomers’ reports as the things had passed high over California.

      To Walt Danning of the New York Transcontinental Airways, the things were just a pain in the neck. Twice he had been up to get near

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