Philadelphia, 1918: three people are transported to the year 2118. Terry Trenmore, his sister Viola, and their friend Robert Drayton find the once bustling city is now an isolated survivor of an unknown disaster, where people have ID tags instead of names and a totalitarian society is dominated by a wealthy elite and ruled by a powerful woman. The travelers are swept up in the annual games to decide who this ruler's consort will be—and it is a competition to the death. Writing from 1917-23 as Francis Stevens, pioneering science fiction author Gertrude Barrows Bennett originated the subgenre of dark fantasy.