The Illustrated Man

The three witches from Macbeth cast a spell on a beach. On a spaceship above, rocket men hallucinate supernatural creatures and die. The captain, thoroughly sterilized and professional, ignores the visions and tries to figure out the mysterious deaths of his crewmen, Perse and Reynolds, and the nightmares suffered by himself and others. He wonders if they might have something to do with the 200 books they have on board. A century ago, almost all these books—works of speculative fiction—were destroyed and forbidden on Earth, along with holidays like Halloween and Christmas. The copies on board are all that remain.

On Mars, the witches observe this in their crystal and look to The Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City, where Edgar Allan Poe surveys the troops. He is deep in conversation with Ambrose Bierce about what should be done with the rocket men. Poe hopes Earthmen might fall prey to superstition and war again and destroy themselves. Algernon Blackwood is in hysterics, but Poe is confident in their literary forces: “They won’t be prepared for us, at least,” he says. “They haven’t the imagination. Those clean young rocket men with their anti-septic bloomers and fish-bowl helmets, with their new religion” (126).