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Man in the 25th Century: Armageddon 2419 and Airlords of Han
Armageddon 2419 and Airlords of Han.
The original works that inspired Buck Rogers
A man by the name of Anthony Rogers finds himself by strange circumstances hurled through time and trapped in the 25th century. A dystopian future where the American people have fallen and find themselves under the boot of a tyrannical menace from the far east. As the tribes of future America scurry among camouflaged forest hideouts, Rogers quickly becomes part of a last stand resistance against the dreaded Han as they seek to hunt and exterminate the last American survivors. First published in a 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, this classic by prolific pulpster Philip Francis Nowlan was considered to be both prophetic and visionary. The Bizarchives is proud to bring this thrilling tale of survival and strange science through the centuries to once again give readers a chilling glimpse into what could be their future.
The original works that inspired Buck Rogers
A man by the name of Anthony Rogers finds himself by strange circumstances hurled through time and trapped in the 25th century. A dystopian future where the American people have fallen and find themselves under the boot of a tyrannical menace from the far east. As the tribes of future America scurry among camouflaged forest hideouts, Rogers quickly becomes part of a last stand resistance against the dreaded Han as they seek to hunt and exterminate the last American survivors. First published in a 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, this classic by prolific pulpster Philip Francis Nowlan was considered to be both prophetic and visionary. The Bizarchives is proud to bring this thrilling tale of survival and strange science through the centuries to once again give readers a chilling glimpse into what could be their future.
179 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1928
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About the author
Philip Francis Nowlan
88 books18 followersUsed 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
Philip Francis Nowlan was an American science fiction author, best known as the creator of Buck Rogers
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 6, 2025
The "Man in the 25th Century" who we're talking about here is the fantastic Anthony "Buck" Rogers. Phillip Nowlan first created Rogers with a short story "Armageddon - 2419 A.D" published in "Amazing Stories" magazine in 1928 and that story is the first half of this book. The second half is Nowlan's second Buck Rogers Story, "Airlords of the Han." Bizarchives has collected these two original Rogers stories in this 2022-published volume.
Where these two short stories set up Rogers as a warrior and leader in a future war-torn, dystopian America, the subsequent comic strip character was more of a sci-fi adventure and romance protagonist.
Here are my reviews of both stories:
Armageddon - 2419 A.D:
An American soldier named Anthony "Buck" Rogers, who served in WWI and is familiar with the horrors of trench warfare and artillery barrages, was working in a radioactive mine in 1929 when he was trapped in a cave-in and rendered unconscious by the gases he was mining, only to awaken now in 2419 to discover a new world. The Chinese now rule the Earth and America has been reduced to a forested wasteland under the rule of the Chinese-affiliated Han regime. Surviving generations of Americans lived only by fragmenting culture and industry into smaller, tight-knit "gangs" that are now striving to re-form and find an opportunity to throw off the shackles of their technologically-dependent Han overlords.
"Armageddon-2419 AD" (1928) is my first attempt at a Buck Rogers story and it is a lot of fun. Mixing an HG Wells-style vision of the technological future from his 1928 perspective with a pulp-adventure-style mix of daring and ingenuity, Nowlan crafted a hero for the ages in Buck Rogers who is relatable and fun to read.
This story is also included in the Otto Penzler-edited "Big Book of Adventure Stories" that I recently read.
Verdict: A fun adventure set in the 25th century with a classic sci-fi protagonist. Nowlan bogs it down a bit with technological explanations and organizational descriptions that don't really flush out the vision of the future he might be trying to illustrate, but they do leave enough to the imagination that the reader's minds-eye works for what he's got going. The fact he wrote this before WWII is a bit jarring because it seems influenced by what he'd see from that conflict.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
Airlords of the Han:
Anthony "Buck" Rogers continues his story, six months after the events in "Armageddon-2419 A.D." The Second War of Independence is now in full swing with Americans in a position of strength against their former Han overlords who are now struggling to defend their fifteen monstrous North American cities from attack. "Airlords of the Han" (1928) has a much bleaker dystopian, though still with a surface lens of pulp action story, vision than its predecessor, which I'll get to shortly.
The Hans find they can't just eliminate Americans from the air anymore because the American attackers have their roving Gangs always on the move in the forests and mountains with personal inertron shields and the mobile rockets Rogers taught them to bring down Han ships.
While the two sides seem to be in a stalemate of sorts, the Hans unable to destroy the mobile American attackers but the Americans likewise unable to penetrate the Han strongholds, both sides are also making technological and tactical advances that will shape the war further.
Rogers ends up captured and, while meeting the Han supreme leader San-Lan, we get a better description of the Hans themselves and an eyewitness view of the beautiful Han capital city of Lo-Tan, way up in the Rocky Mountains. Nowlan's description of Han society reminded me of Huxley's vision from "Brave New World" and it is likely both were influenced by HG Wells' work just prior to both writings. Dystopian visions in the face of such recent technological advances, WWI, the new global threats rising in Asia, socialist political upheavals in Russia and fascist ones in Europe, and the eugenics movement in the western world created a bubbling cauldron for writers across the genre spectrum.
Then things really get nuts.
Verdict: An interesting science fiction tale, tougher to read pacing-wise than its predecessor and with an ending that is quite abrupt, but whatever. Buck Rogers is awesome.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
Final Verdict: All told, a short and fun old-fashioned but future-focused science fiction adventure paperback, 172 pages of immersive, dystopian, technologically-advanced and sinister heart and heroism. "Man in the 25th Century" as a book of its own, though, has a few odd formatting issues, with random all-caps words that I believe were unintended, and also a table of contents with page numbers that aren't right (it shows book 2 starting on page 47, for example, but it actually starts on page 83) and might be a result of translating one version of a digital/kindle collection to print format gone unnoticed by the publishers. Still, kudos to the folks at Bizarchives for its introductory notes and for putting this legacy collection available in print for readers such as myself; more, please.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
Where these two short stories set up Rogers as a warrior and leader in a future war-torn, dystopian America, the subsequent comic strip character was more of a sci-fi adventure and romance protagonist.
Here are my reviews of both stories:
Armageddon - 2419 A.D:
An American soldier named Anthony "Buck" Rogers, who served in WWI and is familiar with the horrors of trench warfare and artillery barrages, was working in a radioactive mine in 1929 when he was trapped in a cave-in and rendered unconscious by the gases he was mining, only to awaken now in 2419 to discover a new world. The Chinese now rule the Earth and America has been reduced to a forested wasteland under the rule of the Chinese-affiliated Han regime. Surviving generations of Americans lived only by fragmenting culture and industry into smaller, tight-knit "gangs" that are now striving to re-form and find an opportunity to throw off the shackles of their technologically-dependent Han overlords.
"Armageddon-2419 AD" (1928) is my first attempt at a Buck Rogers story and it is a lot of fun. Mixing an HG Wells-style vision of the technological future from his 1928 perspective with a pulp-adventure-style mix of daring and ingenuity, Nowlan crafted a hero for the ages in Buck Rogers who is relatable and fun to read.
This story is also included in the Otto Penzler-edited "Big Book of Adventure Stories" that I recently read.
Verdict: A fun adventure set in the 25th century with a classic sci-fi protagonist. Nowlan bogs it down a bit with technological explanations and organizational descriptions that don't really flush out the vision of the future he might be trying to illustrate, but they do leave enough to the imagination that the reader's minds-eye works for what he's got going. The fact he wrote this before WWII is a bit jarring because it seems influenced by what he'd see from that conflict.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
Airlords of the Han:
Anthony "Buck" Rogers continues his story, six months after the events in "Armageddon-2419 A.D." The Second War of Independence is now in full swing with Americans in a position of strength against their former Han overlords who are now struggling to defend their fifteen monstrous North American cities from attack. "Airlords of the Han" (1928) has a much bleaker dystopian, though still with a surface lens of pulp action story, vision than its predecessor, which I'll get to shortly.
The Hans find they can't just eliminate Americans from the air anymore because the American attackers have their roving Gangs always on the move in the forests and mountains with personal inertron shields and the mobile rockets Rogers taught them to bring down Han ships.
While the two sides seem to be in a stalemate of sorts, the Hans unable to destroy the mobile American attackers but the Americans likewise unable to penetrate the Han strongholds, both sides are also making technological and tactical advances that will shape the war further.
Rogers ends up captured and, while meeting the Han supreme leader San-Lan, we get a better description of the Hans themselves and an eyewitness view of the beautiful Han capital city of Lo-Tan, way up in the Rocky Mountains. Nowlan's description of Han society reminded me of Huxley's vision from "Brave New World" and it is likely both were influenced by HG Wells' work just prior to both writings. Dystopian visions in the face of such recent technological advances, WWI, the new global threats rising in Asia, socialist political upheavals in Russia and fascist ones in Europe, and the eugenics movement in the western world created a bubbling cauldron for writers across the genre spectrum.
Then things really get nuts.
Verdict: An interesting science fiction tale, tougher to read pacing-wise than its predecessor and with an ending that is quite abrupt, but whatever. Buck Rogers is awesome.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
Final Verdict: All told, a short and fun old-fashioned but future-focused science fiction adventure paperback, 172 pages of immersive, dystopian, technologically-advanced and sinister heart and heroism. "Man in the 25th Century" as a book of its own, though, has a few odd formatting issues, with random all-caps words that I believe were unintended, and also a table of contents with page numbers that aren't right (it shows book 2 starting on page 47, for example, but it actually starts on page 83) and might be a result of translating one version of a digital/kindle collection to print format gone unnoticed by the publishers. Still, kudos to the folks at Bizarchives for its introductory notes and for putting this legacy collection available in print for readers such as myself; more, please.
Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG
July 26, 2019
Everyone that knows me knows that I enjoy a good pulp yarn from way back in the early days. I had always heard that one of the definitive pulp science fiction adventures was Philip Francis Nowlan’s “Buck Rogers Duology,’ composed of the novels “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” and “The Airlords of Han.” When I saw this was available on Kindle in a special collected edition packaged together with the novel “The Prince of Mars Returns,” I snatched it up.
I had always heard that the Buck Rogers franchise helped to inspire George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise, so naturally, I was a bit interested in it. The only Buck Rogers I had heard of initially was the comic strip series from the ’30s, and the old serials starring Buster Crabbe. Of course, I also grew up with the Looney Tunes spoof “Duck Dodgers in the 24 th and 1/2 Century,” and more recently came across the disco-rific bout of Star Wars worship that was the Buck Rogers reboot of the late ’70s. But the original “Buck Rogers Duology” was none of these things.
To start out with, the main character isn’t even nicknamed Buck. That didn’t come about until the comic strip and its movie serial adaptation which was, in fact, a 1930s reboot of the original duology, which was published in the ’20s. At its heart, this tale is a time-travel story about a man named Anthony Rogers, who gets caught/konked out in a cave-in of a mine shaft and exposed to a strange gas that preserves his body for 500 years. Upon awakening, Anthony finds himself in a post-apocalyptic yet futuristic world where the once-great superpower of the United States has been wiped out and is covered in forest and divided up amongst rival gangs. The main threat, besides these rival gangs fighting amongst themselves, is the Han Empire, a tyrannical dynasty descended from the Asians that dominates the skies of the known world. It’s the Hans that were responsible for the destruction of America in a previous war.
Rogers joins a particular gang he stumbles across, falls in love with their lieutenant in command, Wilma Dearing, and becomes their leader in the fight to rid the remnants of the U.S. and the rest of the world from the Han. Both books in this duology are essentially one book, but are marketed as two. It’s not the space opera it would later become, but there are tropes practically created here that late become staples of the space opera subgenre, including jumping belts/jetpacks, communication/bluetooth-like devices, ray/disentegration guns, rocket launchers, hovercraft, and vertical cities, among other things.
The action/swashbuckling scenes are enjoyable, but it seems there’s too little of them and the story tends to get bogged down with sociological rhetoric and particularly obsessive details of tech that makes you want to bang your skull up against the wall. The technology, I suppose, would be considered a bit dated these days, but the story fits into the atompunk/raypunk/raygun gothic subset style of what we now call “retrofuturism.” The Buck Rogers Duology is a nice, enjoyable romp if you want to explore golden age pulp sci-fi.
The accompanying novel, “The Prince of Mars Returns,” however I cannot recommend with a clear conscience. It’s a tale about a man in the first manned spaceship from Earth that crashlands on Mars and explores the civilizations and peoples there, trying to rescue the daughter of a chieftain of desert-dwelling nomads from a power-mad tyrant. Nowlan tried too hard to make this a planetary romance/sword and planet tale in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett. Instead, it ends up being rather drab, lackluster, and frankly confusing with all the military castes. You can hardly tell who’s who and no one seems to be clearly defined.
The result of reading this ebook was a somewhat enjoyable experience with the Buck Rogers Duology, and then an ultimately disappointing one with “The Prince of Mars Returns”
I give “Buck Rogers In the 25th Century and The Prince of Mars Returns” by Philip Francis Nowlan a 2.5 out of 5.
I had always heard that the Buck Rogers franchise helped to inspire George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise, so naturally, I was a bit interested in it. The only Buck Rogers I had heard of initially was the comic strip series from the ’30s, and the old serials starring Buster Crabbe. Of course, I also grew up with the Looney Tunes spoof “Duck Dodgers in the 24 th and 1/2 Century,” and more recently came across the disco-rific bout of Star Wars worship that was the Buck Rogers reboot of the late ’70s. But the original “Buck Rogers Duology” was none of these things.
To start out with, the main character isn’t even nicknamed Buck. That didn’t come about until the comic strip and its movie serial adaptation which was, in fact, a 1930s reboot of the original duology, which was published in the ’20s. At its heart, this tale is a time-travel story about a man named Anthony Rogers, who gets caught/konked out in a cave-in of a mine shaft and exposed to a strange gas that preserves his body for 500 years. Upon awakening, Anthony finds himself in a post-apocalyptic yet futuristic world where the once-great superpower of the United States has been wiped out and is covered in forest and divided up amongst rival gangs. The main threat, besides these rival gangs fighting amongst themselves, is the Han Empire, a tyrannical dynasty descended from the Asians that dominates the skies of the known world. It’s the Hans that were responsible for the destruction of America in a previous war.
Rogers joins a particular gang he stumbles across, falls in love with their lieutenant in command, Wilma Dearing, and becomes their leader in the fight to rid the remnants of the U.S. and the rest of the world from the Han. Both books in this duology are essentially one book, but are marketed as two. It’s not the space opera it would later become, but there are tropes practically created here that late become staples of the space opera subgenre, including jumping belts/jetpacks, communication/bluetooth-like devices, ray/disentegration guns, rocket launchers, hovercraft, and vertical cities, among other things.
The action/swashbuckling scenes are enjoyable, but it seems there’s too little of them and the story tends to get bogged down with sociological rhetoric and particularly obsessive details of tech that makes you want to bang your skull up against the wall. The technology, I suppose, would be considered a bit dated these days, but the story fits into the atompunk/raypunk/raygun gothic subset style of what we now call “retrofuturism.” The Buck Rogers Duology is a nice, enjoyable romp if you want to explore golden age pulp sci-fi.
The accompanying novel, “The Prince of Mars Returns,” however I cannot recommend with a clear conscience. It’s a tale about a man in the first manned spaceship from Earth that crashlands on Mars and explores the civilizations and peoples there, trying to rescue the daughter of a chieftain of desert-dwelling nomads from a power-mad tyrant. Nowlan tried too hard to make this a planetary romance/sword and planet tale in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett. Instead, it ends up being rather drab, lackluster, and frankly confusing with all the military castes. You can hardly tell who’s who and no one seems to be clearly defined.
The result of reading this ebook was a somewhat enjoyable experience with the Buck Rogers Duology, and then an ultimately disappointing one with “The Prince of Mars Returns”
I give “Buck Rogers In the 25th Century and The Prince of Mars Returns” by Philip Francis Nowlan a 2.5 out of 5.
August 30, 2021
Really enjoyed the further adventures of Buck and Nowlan's other sci fi stories.
August 7, 2015
Not bad for 1920s sci-fi.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews