Prelude to Armageddon

Introduction by John Pelan
Cover by Allen Koszowki

Heinlein, Simak, Hubbard, de Camp, Cartmill... These are the foundations upon which John W. Campbell built the “Golden Ageâ€Ã‚ in Street & Smith’s Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds. All of these authors have had much of their fiction collected and are well-known to today’s readers. Cleve Cartmill has been remembered primarily for his notoriously prescient atomic bomb story “Deadlineâ€Ã‚, which brought Federal Agents swooping down on Campbell’s offices worried that there had been a leak at the Manhattan Project. Cleve Cartmill was far, far more than merely the author of this one well-known tale; his fantasy novellas rank among some of the best to have been published in Unknown and his science fiction still holds up well today some sixty years later. This is the first of a projected set of five volumes that will collect all of Cartmill’s superlative fiction in a matched set. Shifting seamlessly from modern fantasy to social commentary through the medium of science fiction, Cartmill’s stories are sharp, original and eminently entertaining. For readers familiar with his work, this is a volume that is many years overdue; for those new to the author, you’re cordially invited to enjoy this journey back through time to the Golden Age of fantastic fiction.

Limited to only 500 copies