The Fire People
1924
In 1924, when the stars still felt impossibly distant, Ray Cummings imagined a world transformed by a single, terrifying gift: meteors of strange light falling to Earth, carrying with them the first whispers of alien intelligence. These are the Fire People from Mercury, and they have come with a warning or a threat no one can decipher. Professor James Newland and his children Alan and Beth find themselves at the center of a cosmic mystery that will determine whether humanity meets its neighbors among the planets as friends or conquerors. As Alan forms an unprecedented connection with Miela, a being of extraordinary qualities from the Mercury, the personal becomes planetary. The novel pulses with early science fiction's giddy wonder at what lies beyond our world, but also carries an undercurrent of genuine dread about what contact with the unknown might cost us. This is first contact fiction before the genre had rules, written with the irreplaceable optimism and anxiety of an era that believed the future would be both miraculous and dangerous.
