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).

Poe and Bierce visit a cobblestone street of 1800s London. It is Christmastime. They knock on a door marked SCROOGE, MARLEY, AND DICKENS; inside is Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas party from A Christmas Carol. They plead with Charles Dickens to help them, but Dickens refuses, hating to be lumped in with their types of books: “Do you think I would help you fight against those good men coming in the rocket?” he says. “I don’t belong here, anyway. My books were burned by mistake. I’m no supernaturalist, no writer of horrors and terrors” (127). Poe responds that they are gods and must fight for the worlds they created. He also tries to argue that A Christmas Carol is quite supernatural, but Dickens kicks them out.

On the beach, Arthur Machen frets over what will happen when the last copies of their books are burned. The authors agree that “if a final edict tonight destined our last few works we’d be like lights put out” (129). A. E. Coppard wonders if anyone on Earth is thinking of his fiction and thus revitalizing it. A thin, unnamed man with skin hanging from his bones joins them—Blackwood pities him, who “was once more real than we, who were men […] after centuries of manufacturing him they drowned him in a vat of Lysol” (130). Poe wonders what Earth must be like without Santa Claus and Christmas—“nothing but the snow and wind and the lonely, factual people….” (130).

Suddenly, Bierce disintegrates. The authors realize his last book has just been burned. Blackwood is prepared to flee, but Poe rages and leads the charge. Meanwhile, the rocket men burn the last books, dedicating themselves “all the more firmly to science and progress” (134). Some hear screaming; a man named Smith thinks he sees the Emerald City falling. The captain denies hearing anything and recommends Smith for psychoanalytic check. There is nothing on Mars.