Three hundred survivors from the Jearth, picked largely for their scien-{tide attainments, have aligned irom Jo "spaceship" on a strange planet where they attempt to build up a new civilization, Such, backed up by a wealth of plausible astronomical Jdetail, is the theme of this sequel to. "When Worlds Collide." And when Jwe find that the new planet, Bronson Beta, contains the well-preserved remains of a civilization much higher {than our own, the stage is temptingly set for a first-class satire after the style of Mr. Aldous Huxley.
But we do not get it These outhers see human "achievement [chiefly in terms of kilowatts and horse-power. The Bronson Betans had cars which could do 380 miles per hour, transparent metal impervious to bullets, and mighty power stations depending in some obscure Woy on radioactivity, but of their social life and customs little can be, [deduced except that they were very [Eregarious (doubtful proof of their: superior civilization) and that their children played with bricks representing atoms and molecules.
Three hundred distinguished seientists, nearly all Americans, afe led by the designer of their space-ship.
patriarchal figure reminiscent of pioneering days in the middle-west, whose commands they obey with a sheep-like docility. they Soon Jalize that they are not alone on their planet. Another American space-ship, which had been given up for lost, has arrived with depleted numbers, and the two join forces Later we find that yet another ves-rel, from Manchoukuo, is here with its load of Russian communists, Germans and Japanese, who have taken [possession of the capital city of Bronson Bets. Already they have enslaved the survivors of a fourth (British) expedition which was wrecked, and are out to exterminate all rivals with the exception of the women whom they need for their nefarious design of peopling the new world with good litle communists.
From now on we are concerned with their strategy and the counterplans of the Americans, until. the latter emerge triumphant thanks to the pleasant) moron' who had got Jamong them by mistake.
The story contains plenty of thrills, and though, like most of its kind, it may irritate the scientifically-minded with its excursions Into. the realms Jot wild hypothesis, it. will entertain the less exacting reader who can fslways skip such dry matter as the two-page lecture on thermal energy.—
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.