Public-domain ebook
Tarrano the Conqueror
by Ray Cummings
Language: en12,416 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Science Fiction·Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Adventure
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #21638.
About this book
Ray Cummings’s Tarrano the Conqueror is a forward‑looking science‑fiction adventure set in the year 2430, a time the author imagines as only a few centuries beyond our own. The story opens amid a chaotic public spectacle in a massive, multi‑level Chicago park where the President of the Anglo‑Saxon Republic is assassinated. From the narrator’s frantic perspective, a news reporter caught in the crowd, we are thrust into a world of soaring air‑cars, massive moving sidewalks, and interplanetary politics that instantly establishes a sprawling, high‑tech setting. The opening scene blends a vivid description of the crowd‑packed park, the sudden murder, and the rapid flow of news across continents, hinting at a plot that will intertwine political intrigue, alien contact, and personal daring.
The novel’s voice is that of a 1930s pulp writer deliberately adopting a “future‑present” tone, complete with footnote‑like asides that explain imagined technologies to a contemporary reader. Cummings writes with brisk, cinematic prose, emphasizing spectacle over philosophical speculation, and his style reflects the era’s fascination with mechanized progress and the promise of space travel. Readers who enjoy early speculative fiction that mixes rapid action, grandiose world‑building, and a touch of romance, especially fans of classic space opera and vintage adventure tales, will find this work an engaging glimpse into the imagination of science‑fiction’s formative years.
Characters in Tarrano the Conqueror
- Tarrano the ConquerorHandsome middle‑aged man in sleek metallic uniform, high collar, scarred cheek, confident gaze
The opening · free to read
_In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.--a time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyond Columbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into that time--to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read a novel of our present-day life.
To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time, addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself reading a present day translation of my original text--a translation so free that a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that could not possibly have their counterparts in the year 2430.
Apart from the text, you will occasionally find brief explanatory footnotes. Conceive them as having been put there by the translator.
If you find parts of this tale unusual or bizarre, please remember that we are living now in a comparatively ignorant day. The tale is not intended to be fantastic or full of new and strange ideas. I have used nothing but those developments of our present-day civilization to which we are all looking forward as logical probabilities--woven them into a picture of what life in America very probably will be five hundred years from now. To that extent, the tale itself is intended to be only a love story of adventure and romance--written, not for you, but for that future audience._
RAY CUMMINGS.
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