When the Atoms Failed and Dragons of Space

Armchair Fiction presents extra large editions of classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. One of the true grandmasters of sci-fi wrote the first novel, "When the Atoms Failed." John W. Campbell, Jr. was only about twenty years old when he wrote both "When the Atoms Failed" and its immediate follow-up, "The Metal Horde." These tales appeared in the January and April issues of Amazing Stories all the way back in 1930. Campbell was attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, and his knowledge and love of science is very apparent in both of these stories, which are rousing good space opera tales about invasions from outer space by seemingly unstoppable alien hordes. Since they are so closely linked, we present both of these works together as essentially one work, broken into two parts with chapter breaks throughout. The second novel is veteran sci-fi author Aladra Septama's "Dragons of Space." It all started so quietly--an incident here, an incident there: two men riding on horseback vanished in the middle of the night--no trace could be found; an aerocar with nine people aboard disappeared, literally, into thin air; even more remarkable, the bathers of an entire swimming pool seemingly vanished from the waters in which they swam. Then the incidents spread to livestock and other animals. Before long fantastic creatures of an ethereal nature began to appear in the skies, floating menacingly above Earth. No one knew what they were or where they came from, but one thing was clear: they had come to annihilate the life forms of not only Earth, but all the planets of the Solar System. With a grim task in front of them, the greatest brains of the civilized planets gathered in desperation. Their goal: to prevent their worlds from becoming a feeding ground for an unearthly menace from beyond the void...