THE TWILIGHT BORDER between sleep and waking was a Roman one this morning: splashing fountains and arched, narrow streets, the golden lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. Sometimes in this semi-consciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or war German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes, also, in a fallow Georgia field at … Read more
THE GREAT SURGE of emotion, the milling and shouting of the people fell gradually to silence in the town park. A crowd of people still stood under the elm trees, vaguely lighted by a blue street light two blocks away. A tired quiet settled on the people; some members of the mob began to sneak away into the … Read more
“The Other Foot,” a short story by Ray Bradbury included in his collection The Illustrated Man (1951), tells the story of a black community on Mars that anxiously awaits the arrival of a rocket from Earth, the first in twenty years and with a white man on board. The inhabitants of Mars, who had fled a past of racial discrimination and violence on Earth, are confronted with their memories and the temptation to reverse the roles of oppression when they welcome this new visitor.
Major Lawrence Hall bent over the binocular microscope, correcting the fine adjustment. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Isn’t it? Three weeks on this planet and we’ve yet to find a harmful life form.” Lieutenant Friendly sat down on the edge of the lab table, avoiding the culture bowls. “What kind of place is this? No disease germs, … Read more
Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.—Ebn Zaiat MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch,—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that … Read more
MY friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right. The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, … Read more