The Veldt
Parents in a futuristic society worry about their children's mental health when their new virtual reality nursery, which can produce any environment the children imagine, continually projects an African veldt, populated by lions feasting on carcasses. A child psychologist suggests that the automated house is not good for the children's development, nor the parents', and insists they disable the automation and take a vacation to become more self-sufficient.
The children are not pleased with this decision but later coolly agree to it. The children trap their parents in the nursery, where they become prey to the lions. They later have lunch on the veldt with the child psychologist. They then see the lions feasting but do not recognize what has happened.
Kaleidoscope
The crew of a space ship drift helplessly through space after their craft malfunctions. The story describes the final thoughts and conversations of the crew members as they face their death. The narrator bitterly reflects on his life and feels he has accomplished nothing worthwhile. His final thought is a wish that his life would at least be worth something to someone else. As he falls through Earth's atmosphere and is incinerated, he appears as a shooting star to a child in Illinois.
The Other Foot
Mars has been colonized solely by black people. When they learn that a rocket is coming from Earth with white travellers, they institute a Jim Crow system of racial segregation in retaliation for how the whites once treated them. When the rocket lands, the travelers tell them that the entire Earth has been destroyed by war, including all of the horrific mementos of racism (such as trees used for lynching black people), leaving few survivors. The black people take pity on the white travelers and accept them into their new society.
The Highway
A husband and wife living by a highway in rural Mexico live their simple, regimented lives while the highway fills with refugees of a nuclear war. They give assistance to some young travelers, who tell them that the nuclear war means the end of the world. After the travelers leave, the husband wonders what they meant by "the world," before returning to his work as normal.
The Man
Space explorers find a planet where the population is in a state of bliss. Upon investigation, they discover that an enigmatic visitor came to them, whom the spacemen come to believe is Jesus. One decides to spend his life rejoicing in the man's glory. Another uses the spaceship to try to catch up to the mysterious traveller, but at each planet he finds that "He" has just left after spreading his message. Other members of the crew remain on the planet to learn from the contented citizens, and are rewarded by the discovery that "He" is still on the planet.
The Long Rain
A group of astronauts is 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. 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 astronaut, his sanity in question, remains to find a functional sun dome.
The Rocket Man
Narrator Doug remembers his astronaut father coming home after a three-month space flight, one summer when Doug was 14. His father tried to interest himself in Earth life, but after a few days he felt the urge to return to space. He warned Doug not to become an astronaut, always torn between Earth and space and at risk of a million deaths. Doug's mother prepared a Thanksgiving dinner the night before his father's departure, even though she had long ago accepted that he would die in space and had detached herself emotionally. The next morning his father assured them that the mission would be his last. After word arrived that his father's rocket had fallen into the sun, Doug and his mother shunned the daylight.
The Fire Balloons
A group of priests travels to Mars to act as missionaries to the Martians. They discover that the natives are entities of pure energy. Since they lack corporeal form, they are unable to commit sin, and thus do not need redemption.
The Last Night of the World
A married couple awaken to the knowledge that the world is going to end that very evening. Nonetheless, they go through their normal routines, knowing and accepting the fact that there is no tomorrow.
The Exiles
Numerous works of literature are banned and burned on Earth. The deceased authors of these books live in a kind of afterlife on Mars. Though dead, they are still vulnerable in the sense that when all of an author's works are destroyed, the author vanishes permanently. The authors learn that people are coming from Earth, and they stage their retribution. Their efforts are foiled when the astronauts burn the last remaining books, annihilating the entire colony.
No Particular Night or Morning
Two friends in a spaceship, Clemens and Hitchcock, discuss the emptiness and cold of space. The slightly eccentric Hitchcock embraces solipsism, and repeatedly insists that nothing in space is real 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 says that he does not believe in stars, because they are too far away. Clemens learns that Hitchcock has left the ship. Hitchcock continues to mumble to himself as he dies of exposure to the void of space.
The Fox and the Forest
A couple living in a war-ravaged future society on the brink of collapse uses time travel to escape to 1938 Mexico. They and others before them have used the technology to enjoy life before chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare ruined everything. Unfortunately, the authorities have also traveled back in time to return the exiles to the future.
The Visitor
Mars is used as isolation for people with deadly illnesses. One day, the planet is visited by a young man named Leonard Mark of 18 who has the ability to perform telepathy. The exiles, including a man named Saul, on the planet are thrilled with his ability and a violent fight breaks out over who will get to spend the most time with their visitor and enjoy the illusionary paradises he can transmit. In the struggle, the young man is killed and the escape he provided is lost forever.
The Concrete Mixer
A reluctant Martian man is forced to join the army as they prepare to invade Earth. When they arrive, they are welcomed by a world at peace, full of people who are curious rather than aggressive. The protagonist meets a movie director, and it becomes clear that the people of Earth have planned to exploit the Martians for financial gain. He tries to escape to Mars, but is run over by a car and killed.
Marionettes, Inc.
An unhappily married man, Braling, buys a realistic robot who looks exactly like him, Braling Two, from Marionettes, Inc. Braling Two acts as a surrogate so that Braling does not have to deal with his wife, who trapped him into marriage by getting pregnant and threatening to turn him in for rape if he leaves her. While Braling's friend considers getting his own robot doppelgänger, he discovers that his wife already has replaced herself with one. Braling Two falls in love with Braling's wife. Arguing that he is better at providing for her than Braling, Braling Two locks the real man in the crate in which the robot was delivered.[2]
The City
A rocket expedition from Earth lands on an uncharted planet and finds a seemingly empty city. As the humans begin to explore, they realize that the city is not as empty as it seems. The city was waiting for the arrival of humans, designed by a long dead civilization to take revenge upon humanity; the civilization was destroyed by human biological weapons before recorded history. Once the city captures and kills the human astronauts, the humans' corpses are used as automatons to take a final act of revenge — a biological attack on the Earth.
Zero Hour
In the near future, young children are persuaded to help a seemingly imaginary friend named Drill to play a game called Invasion. When one of the mothers realizes that children far away from her town play the exact same game, and her own daughter says casually that the adults will have to die, she starts to worry. Eventually Drill turns out to be a real alien with many more coming after him, and they find the hiding parents with the help of their own daughter.
The Rocket
Fiorello Bodoni, a poor junkyard owner, has saved $3,000 to fulfill his dream to send one member of his family into outer space. The family cannot choose who will go, fearing those left behind will resent the one chosen. Bodoni instead uses the money to build a replica rocket containing a virtual reality theater that simulates a voyage through space.
