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Armchair Fiction presents classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The leadoff novel is “Space-Liner X-87” by heralded science fiction author, Ray Cummings. There was a murder mystery on board X-87! Under the guise of a mathematics clerk, special agent Fred Penelle boarded the X-87 with the mission of uncovering an interplanetary plot surrounding the family of scientist Georg Blake. Every passenger on board was a suspect and narrowing down which ones were involved in the conspiracy proved to be a much more arduous task than Penelle had anticipated. In the vacuum of space, the X-87 roared towards its distant destination—the moon. But well before its arrival, passengers’ bodies littered about the corridors like forgotten dolls on a blood-red floor. The X-87 was a cacophony of alarms, gunshots, and enemy footsteps ringing throughout the ship—but Fred Penelle and Nina Blake were the only innocent passengers alive to hear them! The second novel is Amazing Stories veteran Earl L. Bell’s “The Moon of Doom.” The end was nigh! The change had begun simply, with nothing more than the sun rising three minutes later than usual; within a week the days had lost a quarter of an hour. The shock of these shortening days had ushered in a new ice age and the world was on the brink of extinction. And the cause of this calamity, the Earth’s only satellite—the Moon, which was being drawn to the Earth at a shocking speed. This had disrupted the Earth’s orbit and hastened it to spin dangerously fast upon its axis. Those on Earth were helpless to stop the massive celestial body, and as the ocean swelled under its gravitational pull, civilization itself collapsed under colossal waves of water and ice. Was there any hope for the doomed world as the Moon’s face loomed larger and larger upon the hapless remaining fringes of humanity, mocking their suffering in her ever growing smile of destruction. But a pure hearted and talented young Lunarian, Professor Ernest Sherard, hoped that the cause for they demise might just hold the key to their salvation, as he led the last remnants of humanity into the unknown terror of space to the only haven they had left—the Moon!
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