RAYS AND AIRSHIPS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 19

RAYS AND AIRSHIPS

To speculate as to what the world will bo like ono hundred or a thousand years Jieneo must bo a great temptation to ti novelist with imagination. One of the latest to succumb is Michael Aden. He has forsaken nis gilded Mayi'air and butterfly women, and in "Man's Mortality" has drawn a picture of the world in 1987, Our globe fifty years hence, according to Michael Avion's novel, will then be controlled by International Aircraft and Aiiways (I.A. for short). Tiiis is a trust affair, controlled by the brains of a few men who, unfortunately it would Bccm, enlisted the brains of one superhuman wonuin. "The architects of this new ordti,*' we are -informed, "were inspired by the splendour of a dream of peace; of peace at all costs, even at the cost of tyranny." And certainly thero is tyranny. There is discontent amoug the nations, who are mere puppet* liopt in order by threats of drastic action su the part of the I.A. There w revolt and a spectacular conflict results in tho destruction of Paris and the employment of rays for all kinds of destructive purposes. The story is full of explanations as to why certain events hapepned or did not happen, but these explanations do not prevent the story from being a "thriller," although a reasoned one and ono which contains some fine descriptive- passages.

Another new novel describing conditions in the near future is "Prince Pax" (Duckworth), by George Sylvester Vicreck and Paul Eldridge, who have previously collaborated to produce several rather far-fetched romances. "Prince Pax" is the story 01 a monarch of a tiny European State. H« is a super-scientist, and uses rays and forces to such an extent that all kinds of wonders eventuate, including the destruction without let or hindrance, by means of an airship controlled by rays, of all that stood in the way of universal peace. "Prineo Pax" is a fantastic thriller, almost too impossible to be convincing. "Man's Mortality," on the other Laud, seems possible. The love- interest which is so conspicuously lacking -in Michael Allen's story is present in "Prineo Pas."