A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own
invention....
First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to
threaten the safety of two planets....
The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant
marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this
Solar System....
These were the three challenges that tested the skill
and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts
Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a
classic of science-fiction which first brought the name
of their author, John W. Campbell, into prominence as a
master of the inventive imagination.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL first started writing in 1930 when his
first short story, _When the Atoms Failed_, was
accepted by a science-fiction magazine. At that time he
was twenty years old and still a student at college. As
the title of the story indicates, he was even at that
time occupied with the significance of atomic energy
and nuclear physics.
For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a
scientific background that ran from childhood
experiments, to study at Duke University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold
science-fiction, achieving for himself an enviable
reputation in the field.
In 1937 he became the editor of _Astounding Stories_
magazine and applied himself at once to the task of
bettering the magazine and the field of s-f writing in
general. His influence on science-fiction since then
cannot be underestimated. Today he still remains as the
editor of that magazine's evolved and redesigned
successor, _Analog_.