The Airlords of Han
IN a previous record of my adventures in the early part of the Second War of Independence I explained how I, Anthony Rogers, was overcome by radioactive gases in an abandoned mine near Scranton in the year 1927, where I existed in a state of suspended animation for nearly five hundred years; and awakened to find that the America I knew had been crushed under the cruel tyranny of the Airlords of Han, fierce Mongolians, who, as scientists now contend, had in their blood a taint not of this earth, and who with science and resources far in advance of those of a United States, economically prostrate at the end of a long series of wars with a Bolshevik Europe, in the year 2270 A.D., had swept down from the skies in their great airships that rode “repeller rays” as a ball rides the stream of a fountain, and with their terrible “disintegrator rays” had destroyed more than four-fifths of the American race, and driven the other fifth to cover in the vast forests which grew up over the remains of the once mighty civilization of the United States.
I explained the part I played in the fall of the year 2419, when the rugged Americans, with science, secretly developed to terrific efficiency in their forest fastness, turned fiercely and assumed the aggressive against a now effete Han population, which for generations had shut itself up in the fifteen great Mongolian cities of America, having abandoned cultivation of the soil and the operation of mines; for these Hans produced all they needed in the way of food, clothing, shelter and machinery through electronic-synthetic processes.
I explained how I was adopted into the Wyoming Gang, or clan, descendants of the original populations of Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania; how quite by accident I stumbled upon a method of destroying Han aircraft by shooting explosive rockets, not directly at the heavily armored ships, but at the repeller ray columns, which automatically drew the rockets upward where they exploded in the generators of the aircraft; how Wyoming threw the first thrill of terror into the Airlords by bringing an entire squadron crashing to earth; how a handful of us in a rocketship successfully raided the Han city of Nu-Yok; and how by the application of military principles I remembered from the First World War, I was able to lead Wyoming to victory over the Sinsings, a Hudson River tribe which had formed a traitorous alliance with the hereditary enemies and oppressors of the White Race in America.
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Philip Francis Nowlan
Philip Francis Nowlan (November 13, 1888 – February 1, 1940) was an American science fiction writer, best known as the creator of Buck Rogers.
Biography
Nowlan was born on November 13, 1888. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Nowlan was a member of The Mask and Wig Club, holding significant roles in the annual productions between 1907 and 1909. After attending the University of Pennsylvania he worked as a newspaper columnist. Nowlan was married to Theresa Junker, and they had ten children.
He moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd and created and wrote the Buck Rogers comic strip, illustrated by Dick Calkins. He remained a writer on the strip until 1939. The comic strip ran from 1929-1967. Spin-offs included a radio-serial series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (sporadically aired from 1932-1947), a 1939 movie serial Buck Rogers, a brief 1950-51 television series, and a 1979-1981 television series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Nowlan also wrote several other novellas for science fiction magazines as well as the posthumously published mystery, The Girl from Nowhere. He died from a stroke at his home in Bala in 1940.
Works
Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1928)
The Girl from Nowhere (1928)
The Airlords of Han (1929)
The Airlords of Han by Philip Francis Nowlan at Project Gutenberg on Project Gutenberg
The Onslaught from Venus (1929)
The Time Jumpers (1934)
The Prince of Mars Returns (1940)
Space Guards (1940)
Wings Over Tomorrow: The Collected Science Fiction of Philip Francis Nowlan