Early science fiction, a cult classic, an enjoyable adventure. The story opens when our hero and his friends go to South America to look for radium, which has anti-gravity properties, and battle with a race of cruel Inca-type people who use the radium to fly, and disguise themselves as giant birds and terrorize the locals. âThe Radium Seekersâ is a fairly good novel written by Frank Aubrey. Francis Henry âFrankâ Atkins (1847â1927) was a British writer of âpulp fictionâ, in particular science fiction aimed at younger readers, writing at least three Lost-World novels along with much else. He wrote under the pseudonyms Frank Aubrey and Fenton Ash.