 Likewise, Olaf Stapledon, in his 1930 novel "Last and First Men", depicts a very brief but devastating war in which fleets of bombers deliver huge payloads of poison gas to the cities of Europe, leaving most of the continent uninhabited.As late as 1939, Nevil Shute portrayed a war opening with a sudden air attack by bombers in his novel "What Happened to the Corbetts".At the time, bombers had a slight performance advantage over fighters by having multiple engines and streamlined but heavy cantilever wing designs and so a successful interception would require careful planning to bring interceptor aircraft into a suitable defensive position in front of the bombers.