The volume opens with an editorial manifesto declaring that the line separating the astounding from the commonplace is merely time, predicting a future of interplanetary travel, human invisibility, and matter disintegration. Victor Rousseau leads the fiction with The Beetle Horde, a two-part antarctic novel wherein two explorers discover fossilized prehistoric beetles five feet in height, only to stumble upon a hollow earth inhabited by degraded humans and a mad scientist named Bram who commands trillions of man-sized insects. Captain S. P.
Meek contributes The Cave of Horror, a chilling narrative of an unseen reptilian monster haunting Mammoth Cave and dragging sentries to their doom until defeated by ultra-violet light and high voltage. Ray Cummings presents Phantoms of Reality, a fourth-dimension adventure involving palace intrigue, revolutionary toilers, and a brutal murder that triggers a throne usurpation. Other tales include M.
L. Staley's The Stolen Mind, C. V. Tench's Compensation concerning an absolute zero invention, Murray Leinster's Tanks depicting future armored warfare under fog-gas, and Anthony Pelcher's Invisible Death. The collection serves as a remarkable time capsule of pulp science fiction, reflecting the scientific optimism and literary conventions of the interwar period.
