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Armageddon 2419 A.D.

(Buck Rogers)

Philip Francis Nowlan

3.36 · Rating details · 847 ratings · 112 reviews

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 4 ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 195 pages

Published August 1st 1978 by Ace (first published 1928)

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Jul 21, 2014 Mike (the Paladin) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, military-fantasy, military-science-fiction, military-fiction, science-fantasy

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. ...more

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Dec 30, 2018 Charles rated it liked it

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 f ...more

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Mar 21, 2012 Dfordoom rated it liked it

Shelves: sf-fantasy

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) ...more

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Mar 06, 2016 Leothefox rated it it was ok

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 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. ...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Derek rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulp, post-apocalyptic

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 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. ...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Ron rated it liked it

Shelves: ebook, apochalypse-or-post, science-fiction

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. ...more

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Nov 17, 2015 Timothy Boyd rated it liked it

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

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May 03, 2014 Charles Spencer rated it it was amazing

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 enjoy 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!
...more

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Aug 12, 2016 Ron rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

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 ...more

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Jan 21, 2017 Love of Hopeless Causes rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Edgar Rice Burroughs fans

Shelves: apocalyptic, science-fantasy, public-domain

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 ...more

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Dec 27, 2017 Tom Britz rated it liked it · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 Yibbie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This is a wild pulp fiction tale just full of inventions and patriotism. The characters don't really have any personality, but the surrounding 'world' makes up for it. It's old sci-fi, good for a few laughs, and a few head shakes. If you're looking for a quick diverting read, please let me recommend it. ...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Randy Harmelink rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

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. ...more

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Dec 31, 2018 Abbie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, sci-fi, dystopia, time-travel, the-established-classics

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

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

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Oct 25, 2015 Jim rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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' 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… ...more

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Jan 03, 2018 Ellana Thornton-Wheybrew rated it it was ok

Shelves: serial-reader

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. ...more

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Jun 19, 2010 Jean-Pierre Vidrine rated it it was amazing

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 f ...more

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May 29, 2016 Andrew Garvey rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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, Soc ...more

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Aug 06, 2017 David rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 02, 2016 Marts (Thinker) rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

Buck Rogers wakes up in the 25th century to an America ruled by the Han and existing on varied technologies...

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Jul 13, 2017 Q. rated it did not like it · review of another edition

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

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Sep 03, 2017 Richard rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: vintage-sff, trash

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

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May 06, 2017 Douglas Debner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Librivox Prologue: I listened to this book off of the Librivox website. Librivox volunteers turn public domain books into audio books and make them freely available. This recording, like every recording I have listened to via Librivox, was superbly voiced.
Buck Rogers Prologue: I randomly came across the fact that some consider this to be a “Buck Rogers” book even though the main character is Anthony Rogers. This caught my attention because the book made me think of the Buck Rogers story while I Librivox Prologue: I listened to this book off of the Librivox website. Librivox volunteers turn public domain books into audio books and make them freely available. This recording, like every recording I have listened to via Librivox, was superbly voiced.
Buck Rogers Prologue: I randomly came across the fact that some consider this to be a “Buck Rogers” book even though the main character is Anthony Rogers. This caught my attention because the book made me think of the Buck Rogers story while I was reading it so I took 2 minutes and checked Wikipedia which said “The characters and setting [of Armageddon 2419 A.D. and Airlords of Han] eventually evolved into Buck Rogers”.
The Review:
This book was written in 1928 and surmises a second world war where most of the world unites against American hegemony. The USA is able to win this second world war but the price of doing so is disastrous, resulting in “the Han” taking over the world militarily. I don’t remember any specifics but I understood “the Han” to refer primarily to the Chinese and Mongolians, although the author greatly emphasizes the Mongolian side of that equation.
The main character reaches 2419 via suspended animation arising from naturally occurring underground radiation vapors. Anti-grav belts, rocket hand guns, disintegration rays rocket ship and dirigibles that travel at high speeds all appear in this fun science fiction entry from 1928. It does not hold up as “serious” science fiction but, as fun romp down memory lane it was quite enjoyable.
Again, this book should not be taken seriously because it probably cannot be enjoyed if you do for a couple of reasons including its sexism. I wonder if this book was considered progressive when it was originally published in 1928? It does have women in combat but the only woman we see regularly in combat needs rescuing every time by the main character and, of course, falls for him and marries him. The third time he rescues her she actually faints! I’ve never seen anyone faint, but it sure is a convenient way for authors to display the inherent superiority of men.
Another reason this book cannot be enjoyed if taken seriously is the assumption of the superiority of white males. If someone wanted an example of this could probably be pulled from every page of the book but the most obvious example is the main characters certainty in his own moral superiority to the Han for no reason other than they are Han.
As is common in books where a person travels from another age, the man from the 1900s proves superior to those of 2419. During his first interaction with the Han, Anthony is immediately able to figure out a way to bring down a Han airship with a handgun. Something the people who have lived their entire lives studying and fighting the Han have missed. Also, for no reason I can recall the book covering, humanity has become more fragile since the 1900s so Anthony is a physical standout. Humanity, in spite of living in a constant state of warfare for hundreds years, has forgotten basic tactics so Anthony, who served in World War 1, is a tactical wonder. As a result the supposedly rough and tumble society geared toward nothing but war pretty much immediately promotes the stranger from the past to the position of supreme leader because that’s the way people behave, right?
So, in short, this book can only be enjoyed as cotton candy for the mind/walk down memory lane, but, as such, it was fun.
...more

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Jan 22, 2019 Eric Cone rated it really liked it

A note of warning: there are statements which may spoil the end of the book, though they are not specific to any particular events.
:Armageddon 2419 A.D. was published in 1929, right as America was coming into the Great Depression. The book is set up as a memoir of Anthony "Tony" Rogers, recounting his extraordinary life, which in his 81st year of life had spanned nearly six centuries. Due to an accident during a mine survey in 1927, Rogers is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the year 2419 whe A note of warning: there are statements which may spoil the end of the book, though they are not specific to any particular events.
:Armageddon 2419 A.D. was published in 1929, right as America was coming into the Great Depression. The book is set up as a memoir of Anthony "Tony" Rogers, recounting his extraordinary life, which in his 81st year of life had spanned nearly six centuries. Due to an accident during a mine survey in 1927, Rogers is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the year 2419 where none of the worries of 20th century America are a concern any longer. In the setting of the novel, there is a second world war between Europe and the United States which leaves the U.S. vulnerable to attack by a joint Soviet and Chinese coalition. So, when Rogers wakes up, he finds himself in a different U.S., one which functions very well under a (never stated in so many words) socialist model. The bad guys, the Han Empire, which he also calls the Mongolian Empire, are lazy, capitalist, monacrats.
I love to look at older speculative fiction to see how they think the future will turn out. Nowlan has everyone using essentially cell phones, but that is about all he got right. Or course, he is predicting something another 400 years from now, so who knows. I love the idea of the "jumpers", belts which use a new synthetic element to counteract a person's weight. There is another synthetic element and then almost all raw materials needed are created from sub-atomic building blocks. Even 90 years after the book was published, much of what Nowlan describes seems plausible in a sci-fi way, and holds up quite well.
This is the book that influenced much of my childhood, and I have meant to read it for years, even starting a couple of times, but never getting very far for whatever reasons. How can it have influenced me if I hadn't read it? It's the book that Buck Rogers is based on, and of course Duck Dogers in the 24th and a half century. My library had a book of collected Buck Rogers daily comic strips, so I knew about the Han and their airships, but not how the story got started, as teh strips start at a point after the book ends. The television show, which I was also very fond of, has very little in common with the book other than the main character being rendered unconscious for five centuries, that and a few of the names, otherwise Buck Rogers is far more like Battlestar Gallactica and Star Wars than it is like the book.
What I am curious about is how the main character goes from being Tony Rogers in the book, to Buck Rogers in the comic strip and tv show.
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Aug 13, 2019 Metaphorosis rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-rev, reviewed

2.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Anthony Rogers wakes from suspended animation - 500 years later. The United States is now ruled by the Han, and a few rebellious gangs fight back in every way they can. But the gangs have lost some of the knowledge of military tactics, and Rogers is able to help them out.

Review
I was never a fan of Buck Rogers. Somehow, the whole thing slipped past me, I suppose because I simply didn't see the comic strips. And Armageddon 2419 A.D. doesn't have a lot to do wi 2.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Anthony Rogers wakes from suspended animation - 500 years later. The United States is now ruled by the Han, and a few rebellious gangs fight back in every way they can. But the gangs have lost some of the knowledge of military tactics, and Rogers is able to help them out.

Review
I was never a fan of Buck Rogers. Somehow, the whole thing slipped past me, I suppose because I simply didn't see the comic strips. And Armageddon 2419 A.D. doesn't have a lot to do with my vague image of Rogers, which is mostly rayguns and ... well, that's about it, really. Rayguns.

When I got down to reading this, the narrator's name triggered the idea, "Hey, maybe this is Buck Rogers," but I didn't really know enough about Rogers to make a decisions. By the time rayguns appeared, I'd kind of forgotten about it. When he starts fighting the Han - the Yellow Blight - I thought of Ming the Merciless, but I just looked it up, and that turns out to be Flash Gordon - another comic strip character I know little about. Comic strips just weren't my thing as a kid.

The Yellow Blight element of the story is a little much, but for a story written in 1928, I think the terminology is intended as descriptive. The Han are smaller, weaker, and more decadent than the rebellious Americans, but I can swallow that as simply intended as a slur on the ruling class. We don't get to see enough of the Han - other than their oddly detailed communications to know whether there's more of a racial element to it, but there is a reference to "saving the race", so I'm not optimistic.

Beyond all of that, there's a mildly amusing pulp adventure. Our hero naturally brings special skills to the table, wins the girl (who is quite capable, and whom he marries almost instantly), becomes the leader of the resistance, etc. Some of the geography seems a bit iffy - Wyoming seems pretty close to New York - as does the statecraft ("Russian Soviets"?)

It's interesting and at times fun, in a Burroughs and Doc Smith way. I can't say I'm likely to become a Buck Rogers devotee, but I have the sequel (The Airlords of Han), and I may zip through that at some point too, to see if my fears are correct, and to see how Rogers becomes Buck. ...more

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Feb 01, 2017 Matthew Bieniek rated it liked it

I knew that this was not the same Buck Rogers that we'd seen in the Buster Crabbe serials or the Glen A. Larson-produced TV show of the '70s. These stories were the very first featuring Anthony Rogers, sci-fi's own Rip Van Winkle, as he comes out of his radioactive gas-induced slumber to make sense of a world almost 500 years in his future. My guess is the Buck Rogers that we're familiar with was more the product of the retelling of the stories in the newspaper comic strips in the 1930s.

There's ...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Doctor Moss rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

The original Buck Rogers story is a little surprising. It is certainly a great example of pulp science fiction, and you can see why it might have inspired the comic strips and serials that came later. It’s entertaining in exactly the way you expect from pulp.

What’s a little surprising is that, when we think of Buck Rogers, we think of spaceships and otherworldly adventures. There’s none of that here. And he’s not “Buck” — he’s “Tony”. He’s working with radioactive gas and is trapped in a mine ca ...more

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Mar 19, 2017 TheOldWoman&TheSea rated it liked it

I quite accidentally found this book at Project Gutenberg, when I was searching for a place to buy the 'Buck Rogers in the 25th century' dvds.

I had no idea this wonderful tv series was actually based on a 1920's story by Philip Francis Nowlan.

As it turns out, the tv series doesn't have all that much in common with the original story. In the book, the hero is called Anthony Rogers, and he's a WW.I veteran.

While investigating some unusual phenomena in a coal mine, Anthony Rogers gets trapped, and ...more

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Oct 14, 2020 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1audio, 2fiction, scifi, 3series

This is the original Buck Rogers tale from 1928, but he's Tony Rogers who winds up 500 years in the future after a mine cave traps him in some radioactive gas that puts him into suspended animation. He wakes up to find his country gone & his people hunted by the Mongolians, so at one point there are the White & Yellow intelligence groups keeping an eye on different enemies. Yeah, a little racist, but it was a fun story & short. The science is pretty magical, but interesting as is the social stru ...more

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Feb 06, 2020 Kerri Murphy rated it it was amazing

So back in the sixties, when I was a very young girl, the neighborhood boys would go and see a old man, who fought in WWI. He would tell them stories of battles he was in. The one that seemed to make a big impact on them was about the Mongol Warriors, how they would come in waves seeming to be endless, climbing over the bodies of their fallen. This would not be the last time I had a chance to hear almost the same thing but second hand from sons, brothers, friends of men from this war. So it was ...more

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About Philip Francis Nowlan

Philip Francis Nowlan

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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