A couple from the future tires of the war in their modern lives, so they go on a vacation to the more serene past in an attempt to escape with the help of a company called Travel in Time, Inc. They go to Mexico in 1938, but are pursued by a government agent who forces them to come back to 2155.
With Black History Month just a couple of weeks away “Black Faces of War: A Legacy of Honor From the American Revolution to Today” commemorates the achievements by African-Americans in the United States military from the American Revolution to the present. I loved the perfect blend of paintings, photography and prose to tell this story. The book includes contributions from prominent historian Hal Chase, W. Stephen Morris, and Luther H. Smith, one of the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen.Two men in a spaceship are discussing how empty and cold space is. The first man is a little bit insane and keeps asking questions about how there is nothing sure in space and there is no night or morning. He refuses to believe anything about reality without sufficient evidence and soon becomes skeptical of everything he cannot directly experience. He said that he doesn’t believe in stars because they are too far away. The second man is wandering about the ship when he learns that someone has left the ship, and it is the first man. The first man is still talking to himself and has killed himself by letting himself fly freely through space.
Numerous works of literature are banned and burned on Earth. The fictional characters of these books are portrayed as real-life entities who live in a refuge on Mars. However, they are vulnerable, as when all the books on a character are destroyed, the character itself vanishes permanently. When the group of characters learn that some people are coming for them, they stage a counterattack, but are foiled by the astronauts who burn the last remaining books from Earth, unknowingly annihilating the entire colony.
In this story, a married couple awakens to the knowledge that the world is going to end that very evening. Nonetheless, they go through their normal routines of going to work, eating, brushing their teeth, and falling asleep, knowing and accepting the fact that they will not wake up.
A group of priests travel to Mars to act as a missionary to Martians. Once there, they discover that the natives are actually entities of pure energy. Since they lack corporeal form, they are unable to commit sin, and thus do not need redemption.
This is one of my all time favorite short stories. A group of astronauts are stranded on Venus, where it rains continually and heavily. The travelers make their way across the Venusian landscape to find a sun dome, a shelter with a large artificial light source. However, the first sun dome they find has been destroyed by the native Venusians. Searching for another sun dome, the characters, one by one, are driven to madness and suicide by the unrelenting rhythm of the rain. At the end of the story, only one sane astronaut remains and manages to find a functional sun dome.
A group of space explorers land on a planet to find the population living in a healthy state of bliss. Upon investigation, they discover that an enigmatic visitor came to them. Further description leads the two spacemen to believe that this man is Jesus (though he is never named, leaving room for other religious personas). One decides to spend the rest of his days on the rejoicing in the wake of the man’s glory. The other continues in his spaceship, chasing ‘him’ always a step behind, never fast enough to catch up to him, constantly trying to achieve the unachievable. Other members of the crew decide to stay on the planet to learn from the contented citizens, and are rewarded by the discovery that he is still on the planet.
A husband and wife living by a highway in rural Mexico go on living their normal, idyllic lives as the highway fills with people fleeing a nuclear war. The story ends with some young travelers they help telling them about the nuclear war, and how the world is ending. After the travelers leave, the residents briefly wonder what the world is, and then continue with their lives.
Mars has been colonized solely by black people. When they learn that a rocket is coming from Earth with white travelers, they institute a Jim Crow system of racial segregation in which white people are to be considered second-class citizens, in retaliation for the history of wrongs perpetrated on their race by white people. When the rocket lands, the traveler tells them that most of the Earth has been destroyed in a nuclear war, and asks for their help. The people realize that discrimination is harmful in all its forms, and reverse their planned segregation.
