A woman has had what seems to be a love affair with an old apple tree. She goes to see the dried up old tree one last time to break up with it for good, but for some reason eats the apple that rolls down the hill behind her as she leaves. 

That night she gets violently ill. Their farm is far from the hospital, and she dies from what the doctor ends up ruling appendicitis before her husband can get her there. Seven or eight months later her husband and father-in-law visit her grave and find an apple tree growing in the field.

It’s obviously a quirky story but I like the mise-en-scène.

Cast of characters

• Lori Patterson
• Steve – Lori’s husband
• Ed – Lori’s father-in-law
• The apple tree?

Loyalty to the Free Union is enforced by telepaths. Someone has been anonymously mailing ‘hoods’ (metal alloy bands that block the ‘teeps’) to members of the government. Once the Anti-Immunity Bill, which outlaws the use of these hoods, is passed through Congress there won’t be any way to stop the teeps from taking over the Union. Walter Franklin, a director of a government department, is sent a hood, and he is chased by the teeps until he meets up with hood maker James Cutter who explains what is going on. 

They go to meet Senator Waldo, the author of the Anti-Immunity Bill, to try to convince him to kill the legislation, but it turns out Waldo has been a teep all along. Cutter then spills his secret: the teeps aren’t the next step in human evolution as everyone believes, but rather they are just freaks from a radiation blast who are unable to reproduce. Cutter is more than willing to be scanned by the teeps at that point so that this news can be disseminated to everyone.

“The Hood Maker” was adapted for the first season of Electric Dreams. They tweaked the story to be more about the conflict between the non-telepaths and the oppressed teeps, only one of whom has just started working with the government to scan the citizens. Unlike a lot of the other chintzy episodes in the series this one visually looks great. All the telepaths have a facial birth mark of sorts to identify them, and the ‘hoods’ are actual creepy-looking hoods instead of some silly metal band.

Cast of characters

• Clearance Director Ross
• Peters – works for Director Ross in Clearance
• Ernest Abbud – a telepath employed by Clearance
• Walter Franklin – Director of the Federal Resources Commission
• James Cutter – the titular Hood Maker
• Senator Waldo – author of the Anti-Immunity Bill in Congress

Eric Blake, returning from a work trip to Ganymede, brings a minor Ganymedean deity back as a present for his wife Patricia. This ten-inch creature, when offered a bit of food, wakes up and explains he is actually from another dimension on the hunt for the evil Nar Dolk. Eric’s co-worker Matson from Terran Metals shows up at the house and offends the ornery god who then changes him into a toad. Patricia has a fit about that, and the god turns her to stone. 

Eric’s boss Bradshaw demands he come to work right away to report on his trip. Bradshaw isn’t happy that Eric let one of their best workers get turned into an amphibian, so he fires Eric but keeps the toad. Back at home, Eric, Patricia (benevolently no longer a statue) and the deity plot how to get Matson back when the police, along with Bradshaw, surround the house. Turns out it is illegal to transport non-Terran life to Earth. Eric makes a deal to change Matson back to a human if they call off the troops, which his boss accepts but then reneges on once the deity has converted Matson back. Just then the deity realizes (long after the reader) that Bradshaw is the evil Nar Dolk in disguise, and the two of them fight before disappearing to their own dimension. 

Cast of characters

• Eric Blake – brings Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo to Earth from Ganymede
• Tinokuknoi Arevulopapo – a Ganymedean deity
• Patricia Blake – Eric’s wife
• Thomas Matson – Eric’s co-worker
• Horace Bradshaw – Eric’s boss
• Jennings – works in the biology lab at Terran Metals

In the moralizing ‘Breakfast at Twilight’ Tim McLean’s suburban home and entire family are transported overnight seven years into the future to find everything has been destroyed years ago during a war with the Soviets. Like everyone, Tim had ignored the obvious signs that a conflict with Russia was brewing. The family encounters the military, and they determine the concentrated energy from a robot operated missile must have caused some kind of time quake.

They take their chances that another missile attack that night will send them back, which it does. Their house is destroyed in the process and Tim blames a defective water heater rather than try to explain the time travel (and the need to do something about the geopolitical crises to prevent what will happen) to the nervous neighbors.

Cast of characters

• Tim, Mary, Earl, Virginia and Judy McLean – the nuclear family
• The military Captain
• Political Commissioner Douglas

A global ennui gradually took over the Earth as humans failed to find life on other planets in the solar system. To cope with this everyone retreated into Worldcraft where they could play god and evolve entire civilizations contained in small globes. This culminates in contest parties to judge the most successful world, and at least in the contest party that opens the story, everyone then smashes their worlds in a melee of destruction. 

The Directorate member and intellectual Nathan Hull is appalled by this behavior. He recognizes these Worldcraft bubbles as a substitute for man’s desire to discover new things and be in control, but Worldcraft doesn’t truly satisfy this urge and that energy turns destructive. 

Hull introduces a bill to outlaw Worldcraft on the humanitarian grounds that these are real lives being destroyed, but it is overwhelmingly defeated. Just then Terran Spaceways announces the discovery of a civilization in the Proxima system. This means Worldcraft will now be abandoned as humans can direct their energies outward toward new worlds.

As Hull and his girlfriend leave the Directorate Hall they hear about an enormous earthquake that demolished the newly constructed transportation tube across the Pacific. Only Hull seems to understand the horrible implication that they might be in an artificial bubble world themselves. 

Cast of characters

• Nathan Hull – member of the Directorate and the Intellectual class
• Julia Marlow – Hull’s girlfriend
• Bart Longstreet – works for Terran Spaceways. Member of the Industrial class
• Lora Becker – wins the Worldcraft contest party
• Eldon von Stern – Directorate Floor Leader
• Forrest Packman – inventor of the Worldcraft bubbles

Eleven-year-old Tommy is fascinated by Mr. Billings who is renting an apartment at his friend’s house. Mr. Billings turns out to be a cosmic bureaucrat of sorts who is cataloging everything about the current batch of humans, known as Project B, on Earth. Project A (implied to be the angels) was considered a failure as those beings were given too much self-dependence which eventually turned into pride. This latest round of humans were given a herd mentality, but they have also become more individualistic over time, likely because of influence from any surviving members of Project A.

Once Mr. Billings has completed his documentation Project B will be eliminated and it will be on to Project C, still in its very early stages as tiny two-inch creatures kept in a pen in his rooftop garden. These “humans” have antennae and no innate drives with the hope they will be more rational than previous iterations. 

Tommy wants the creatures for himself, so he steals them. Mr. Billings wins them back in a game of marbles, but it’s too late as they’ve already learned about independence from Tommy. When Mr. Billings tries to return them to their pen they attack him and escape. He decides to report to his superiors the conclusion they might as well just let Project B run its course, since any consecutive attempts to create the perfect humans will end up in rebellion and failure anyway. 

Cast of characters

• Tommy Jackson
• Dave and Joan Grant – Tommy’s friends whose parents own the house where Mr. Billings rents a room
• Edward Billings – currently documenting the Project B round of humans on Earth