A brand new world by Ray Cummings

A brand new world by Ray Cummings is a science fiction novel written in the early 20th century. It follows the discovery of a new planet, Xenephrene, whose arrival upends Earth’s climate and social order while a young reporter, his astronomer father, an inventor friend, and a Puerto Rican family encounter a white‑haired visitor named Zetta as a hostile invasion looms. The opening of the novel traces the “new star” from first sightings to its naming as Xenephrene and the dawning realization—led by the narrator’s father—that its gravity is tipping Earth’s axis, plunging the northern hemisphere toward months of darkness and deadly cold. Society reels: New York is snowbound, refugees flee south, and the government relocates to Miami while broadcasters plead for calm. In Puerto Rico, Dan Cain and Hulda discover a silver sphere and a nearly weightless, leaping girl, Zetta, who proves gentle and begins to learn their language. Meanwhile, reports arrive of hostile landings near New York; an inventor’s small heat‑projector is examined, and a reconnaissance flight broadcasts stark tel‑vision images of a frozen, deserted Manhattan and a distant crimson glow accompanied by an eerie, rising whine—the invaders’ advancing weapon. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Read or download for free

For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide

Reading Options Url Size
Read now! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.html.images 462 kB
EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.epub3.images 408 kB
EPUB (older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.epub.images 407 kB
EPUB (no images, older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.epub.noimages 299 kB
Kindle https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.kf8.images 424 kB
older Kindles https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.kindle.images 401 kB
Plain Text UTF-8 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77608.txt.utf-8 442 kB
Download HTML (zip) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77608/pg77608-h.zip 304 kB
There may be more files related to this item.

About this eBook

Author Cummings, Ray, 1887-1957
Title A brand new world
Original Publication New York, NY: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1928, copyright 1942.
Series Title Produced from Famous Fantastic Mysteries September 1942.
Note "This story appeared originally in The Argosy All-Story Weekly, beginning serialization September 22, 1928."
Credits Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at www.pgdpcanada.net
Language English
LoC Class PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature
Subject Science fiction
Category Text
EBook-No. 77608
Release Date
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 500 downloads in the last 30 days.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!