Tama of the Light Country

By Ray Cummings

One midnight in August, the raids began. The White Summer Camp for Girls was struck first and when the confusion ended ten girls were missing and two were dead.

Hysterical witnesses claimed they saw shapeless forms lurking at the cabin windows. Several girls mentioned flashes of green-blue light. As stories trickled in from the surrounding countryside, it became evident that these inhuman invaders were attacking with a purpose—and from outer space. Why were the victims always young girls? How, despite the constant surveillance of the State Patrol, did the invaders strike?

A team of scientists and reporters left earth in a pioneer space ship to try and solve the mystery. Among them was the sister of the famous Guy Palisse who had disappeared into space ten years ago in an attempt to reach the moon. Reports indicated that he was dead, but near White Summer Camp the body of a winged girl was found. The last words she had gasped were in English. Was it possible Guy had reached his destination after all?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Jul 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781479459322

Ray Cummings

Ray Cummings (born Raymond King Cummings) (August 30, 1887 – January 23, 1957) was an American author of science fiction literature and comic books. Cummings is identified as one of the "founding fathers" of the science fiction genre. His most highly regarded fictional work was the novel The Girl in the Golden Atom published in 1922, which was a consolidation of a short story by the same name published in 1919 (where Cummings combined the idea of Fitz James O'Brien's The Diamond Lens with H. G. Wells's The Time Machine) and a sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, published in 1920. Before taking book form, several of Cummings's stories appeared serialized in pulp magazines. The first eight chapters of his The Girl in the Golden Atom appeared in All-Story Magazine on March 15, 1919. Ray Cummings wrote in "The Girl in the Golden Atom": "Time . . . is what keeps everything from happening at once", a sentence repeated by scientists such as C. J. Overbeck, and John Archibald Wheeler, and often misattributed to the likes of Einstein or Feynman. Cummings repeated this sentence in several of his novellas. Sources focus on his earlier work, The Time Professor, published in 1921, as its earliest documented usage.

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