The giant world by Ray Cummings

"The giant world" by Ray Cummings is a science fiction novel written in the early 20th century. It follows clerk-turned-explorer Frank Elgon and the twins Martt and Frannie as they journey in a size- and time-shifting craft to a concave “Inner Surface” to find Brett, encountering the singer Leela, her family, and an indolent, art-loving society shadowed by marauding giants from a vaster outer realm. The tale blends romance, awe at strange scales, and rising menace as human-sized lives collide with titanic powers. The opening of the story finds Frank Elgon summoned by Dr. Gryce to help find Brett, only to arrive as the old man dies; honoring his last wish, Frank, Martt, and Frannie enlarge a remaining model craft and descend to the Inner Surface. In the city of Crescent they reunite with Brett—now living with Leela and set to marry—while learning of Romantica’s peaceful, music-rich life and the uneasy rumors of giants near Reaf. During a lantern-lit island festival, a towering figure appears offshore, panic erupts, and giant agents drug Leela and Frannie, shrinking them beyond immediate rescue as Brett and Frank look on in horror. Martt and Leela’s impetuous sister Zee then pursue the captors by fast sail through fog to Reaf, hoping to steal the size-changing drugs from a sleeping giant, while Frannie’s viewpoint traces a breathless, size-shifting ride on horned mounts and a plunge into the subterranean rivers that lead toward the giants’ world. (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/77512.html.images 193 kB
EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.epub3.images 770 kB
EPUB (older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.epub.images 769 kB
EPUB (no images, older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.epub.noimages 254 kB
Kindle https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.kf8.images 1.2 MB
older Kindles https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.kindle.images 1.2 MB
Plain Text UTF-8 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77512.txt.utf-8 179 kB
Download HTML (zip) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77512/pg77512-h.zip 2.1 MB
There may be more files related to this item.

About this eBook

Author Cummings, Ray, 1887-1957
Illustrator Rankin, Hugh, 1878-1956
Illustrator Senf, C. C. (Curtis Charles), 1873-1949
Title The giant world
Original Publication Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1928.
Series Title Produced from Weird Tales January, February, March 1928.
Note Sequel to: Explorers into infinity, #77505.
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. 77512
Release Date
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 263 downloads in the last 30 days.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!