The AIRLORDS of HAN

About This Book

First published in the March 1929 issue of Amazing Stories, The Airlords of Han is a science fiction novella by Philip Francis Nowlan (1888–1940) and the sequel to Armageddon 2419 A.D. Together, the two novellas introduced the character of Anthony Rogers — later rechristened Buck Rogers in the comic strip that would make him one of the most iconic figures in American science fiction.

Set in twenty-fifth-century America, the story follows Rogers and the warrior Wilma Deering as they lead a desperate rebellion against the Han, a technologically advanced invading power that conquered the continent in 2109. The American survivors, organized into scattered forest gangs, strike back using disintegrator rays, jumping belts, and rocket ships — technologies that Nowlan imagined years before their real-world analogs existed. The novella is credited with anticipating bazookas, night-vision goggles, and paratroopers.

The story reflects the racial anxieties of its era in its depiction of the Han as an Asian threat, a common trope in early pulp science fiction. Despite this, Nowlan's vivid technological imagination and adventure storytelling had an enormous cultural impact, spawning the Buck Rogers newspaper strip (1929), radio serial, television series, and film adaptations. The work is in the public domain.

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