Set in a late 20th century dystopian society, this story by Henry Slesar questions the acceptable limits of government control. A couple appears tense at the breakfast table on what should be a happy day, their only son’s twelfth birthday. The following week, the boy must take a government intelligence test. Although the father appears poorly educated, struggling to answer basic science questions, his son does well at school and is confident of passing. To their horror, he does even better and aces the exam. Themes include government control, fear, oppression, conditioning and acceptance, eugenics. More…
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The Crowd
In this chilling story by Ray Bradbury, a man badly injured in a car accident senses something ominous about the onlookers in the crowd that gathered around him. Several weeks later, he notices these same individuals at another accident. He searches newspaper archives and discovers that they and similar groups had attended hundreds of accidents over the last decade. Their sinister purpose is revealed when he has another car crash and they decide to “make him more comfortable”. Themes include morbid curiosity, schadenfreude, anonymity and the possibility of evil in a crowd, the supernatural. More…
The Old Demon
In this story by Pearl S. Buck, the widowed matriarch of a small Chinese village is too old to flee when it is bombed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Left alone, she tends to a dying Japanese pilot and refuses to allow his body to be defiled by Chinese soldiers fleeing an advancing Japanese army. With help from her “Old Demon” (the Yellow River), she single-handedly stops the advance, saving her family and thousands of other villagers. Themes include family, change, the unpredictability and power of nature, the brutality of war, humanity, sacrifice. More…
Exotic Pleasures
In this science fiction story by Peter Carey, a poverty-stricken woman waiting as her husband applies for a mining job on a distant planet spends some of their last savings on a brightly coloured exotic bird. The bird has a unique quality… it gives a rush of euphoria followed by continuing pleasure to those who stroke it. The woman develops a lucrative business traveling the country selling time with the bird, little realizing that it has a dark side which will destroy her marriage and cause mass destruction. Themes include poverty, love, entrepreneurship, self-gratification, jealousy, biosecurity risks. More…
The Daemon Lover
In this haunting psychological horror story by Shirley Jackson a woman wakes on what was to be her wedding day to realize that: 1) she may have been used and duped by a dapper writer’s promise of marriage; and 2) contrary to social expectations of the day, she may find herself “left on the shelf” at age thirty-four. In her desperatione to find the man she shows signs of mental instability, questioning whether the proposal was real or imagined. Themes include isolation and loneliness, social pressure, manipulation, imagination vs. reality, denial, obsession. More…