Author Paul Warren Fairman dabbled in a number of different genres and styles over the course of his career. "Deadly City" is one his most successful science-fiction outings, eventually making its way to the silver screen as the basis for a movie adaptation called Target Earth. In it, a Chicago man finds himself seemingly alone on the planet after a brutal siege has taken place. Eventually, he falls in with a motley crew of a few other survivors—but will they ever solve the mystery of what fate befell the world they knew?