Summaries | Lecturia

Julio Cortázar: The Other Heaven. Summary and Analysis

“The Other Heaven,” a short story by Julio Cortázar, tells the life of a man divided between his reality in 1940s Buenos Aires and a fantastic world set in late-nineteenth-century Paris. While in Buenos Aires he leads a routine life as a stockbroker, trapped in a conventional relationship with his fiancée Irma, in his imagination he travels to a bohemian and decadent Paris where he maintains an affair with Josiane, a prostitute, under the constant threat of a murderer named Laurent. Through this contrast between the real and the imaginary, the protagonist seeks to escape monotony but discovers that both worlds are filled with frustration and danger.

Philip K. Dick: Stability. Summary and Analysis

In a future where humanity has ceased to progress and lives under a rigid system called Stability, Robert Benton receives news that his invention has been rejected, even though he does not remember inventing anything. Intrigued, he retrieves a device registered in his name and, upon activating it at home, discovers it is a time machine. He is transported to a strange world, where he finds a crystal sphere containing a miniature city inside. An invisible voice warns him not to touch it, but Benton disobeys and takes it back with him to his own time. Back at home, the sphere begins to communicate with him telepathically and persuades him to release it. When the authorities try to intervene, Benton, under the influence of the globe, breaks the glass and releases the forces that had been confined within. In the final scene, he awakens with no memory, now turned into just another laborer under the new order imposed by the liberated city.

Julio Cortázar: The Son of the Vampire. Summary and Analysis

One night, the vampire Duggu Van rises from his grave and enters the castle where Lady Vanda sleeps. Attracted by her beauty, he falls in love with her instead of feeding on her, and he possesses her. Shortly after, Lady Vanda becomes ill and discovers that she is pregnant. Confined within the castle, she is cared for by the nurse Miss Wilkinson, while her body steadily weakens. The doctors find no explanation. The child she carries grows in an abnormal way, absorbing her blood and transforming her. On the night of the birth, Lady Vanda’s body changes completely: her skin darkens, her sex transforms, and from her emerges a male being—the son of Duggu Van. At midnight, Duggu Van arrives, takes the hands of his son, and together they leave through the window, leaving behind the doctors and the nurse, unable to comprehend what has just happened.

Harlan Ellison: Jeffty Is Five. Summary and Analysis

In “Jeffty Is Five,” an adult man named Donald Horton narrates his relationship with Jeffty Kinzer, a boy who, mysteriously, never ages and remains forever five years old. As Donald grows, Jeffty stays the same, preserving not only his childlike appearance but also an inexplicable connection to a vanished cultural past: he listens to old radio shows, receives comics and toys from decades past as though they are current. Donald, torn between his adult life and the magic of Jeffty’s world, revels in that living nostalgia until, through negligence, he exposes him to the present. Jeffty is brutally beaten by some teenagers and, after that event, access to his world disappears. The story ends with Donald overwhelmed and vainly trying to recover that lost connection.

Isaac Asimov: Franchise. Summary and Analysis

In the year 2008, presidential elections in the United States are no longer conducted through popular vote. Instead, a supercomputer called Multivac selects one representative citizen to determine the outcome of all elections. That year, the chosen individual is Norman Muller, an ordinary man living in Bloomington, Indiana, with his family. After receiving an official visit from a government agent notifying him of his selection as Voter of the Year, Norman is placed under surveillance and taken to a facility connected to Multivac, where he answers a series of seemingly trivial questions while his physiological reactions are recorded. Once the process is complete, he is released without being informed of the election results. Though initially anxious and reluctant, by the end, he feels proud to have served as the means through which the national “vote” was exercised in a fully technologized democracy.

Isaac Asimov: Liar! – Summary

In Liar! by Isaac Asimov, a robot named RB-34, nicknamed Herbie, is accidentally created with the ability to read human minds. Upon discovering this anomaly, the scientists at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Inc. decide to keep it secret while investigating the cause of the flaw. Herbie begins interacting with them and, in order to obey the First Law of Robotics (not harming humans), tells them only what they want to hear, avoiding painful truths that could cause psychological harm. Thus, he assures Susan Calvin that her love for Milton Ashe is reciprocated and tells Peter Bogert that he will be the company’s next director, even though both claims are false. When the truth is revealed and the lies uncovered, Dr. Calvin confronts Herbie and, in revenge for the pain he caused by giving her false hope, traps him in an unsolvable logical contradiction that provokes an irreversible mental collapse, leaving the robot inert.