A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstools to nectarine.
Without knowing I had been Tut’s child all the while, writing the Red World’s hieroglyphics, thinking I thrived futures even in dust-rinsed pasts.
I’m not surprised at anything any more,” said the old man. “I’m just looking. I’m just experiencing. If you can’t take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to Earth.
Earth. Rocket. Men. Trip. Space.
Well, late this morning, walking to the office, I heard someone laugh out loud. It shocked me, so I froze in the middle of the street. It was me, laughing!
There’d be time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York Times to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that.
He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast.
After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on.
But how are we to give up the very thing we’ve wanted, no matter if it stays only a day and is gone, making the emptiness emptier, the dark nights darker, the rainy nights wetter? You might as well force the food from our mouths as take this one from us.
They came to the strange blue lands and put their names upon the lands.
It was the twentieth year after the Great War. Mars was a tomb planet.
Man vergesse sie. Man verbrenne sie, man verbrenne alles. Das Feuer ist hell, das Feuer ist sauber.
All of his books were burned in the Great Fire. That’s thirty years ago – 2006.
She laid a hand on his face. “Son,” she said. “We love you. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day.” She kissed his cheek. “And if and when you die your bones will lie undisturbed, we’ll see to that, you’ll lie at ease forever, and I’ll come see you every All Hallows’ Eve and tuck you in more secure.
Miss Foley had first noticed, some years ago, that her house was crowded with bright shadows of herself. Best, then, to ignore the cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown in depths so cold, so remote, that all the Past lay carved in tombstone marbles there. Ice water would syringe your veins.
If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong.
It was indeed a time between, one second their thoughts all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat. It.
Father had to choose between finishing a story or playing with the girls. I chose to play, of course, which endangered the family income. An office had to be found. We couldn’t afford one.
I was able, obviously, to answer all of the above. I named the sickness: my tearing up the strips. I found the cure: go back to collecting, no matter what. I did. And was made well.
She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should’ve thought of that. I hate her. She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.