Hou Ji Space Station is descending gradually through the thick atmosphere. Seen from the ocean, the space station resembles a shining silver pillar crossing the sky and the waterline. The vessel Qin Fei is riding in sits underneath the Hou Ji Space Station....

Kaku, Alpha Transit, 7.8 yrs   “Are you ready?” Dad says. “I wouldn’t want to miss this for the world.” He lingers on the threshold of my lab. I could welcome him in; I could tell him that I’m also excited; I could share the moment with him....

He’s shivering as he emerges from the pod. No surprise, he was frozen for like a billion years. I do all the stuff on the script, all the “Fear Not! You are a welcomed citizen of our Utopia!” stuff while I’m toweling him off....

What do we know about Sandoval? Everything is communication. In an information-rich society Sandoval was that outlier, a rebel without a node. Earthrise: Imagine the grey chalk surface of the moon spreading before you. You may be watching it from inside one of the cities – perhaps even Lunar Port itself, that oldest and least imaginative of settlements....

On a wrist-mounted computer, Betsy Haadama watched a six thousand-year-old silent film. It was grayscale, overexposed, two-dimensional, and chronologically jumbled. On the film: a mustachioed man doting over his young son at a crowded zoo. A woman vigorously combing the boy’s white hair beside a large piano....

I, Gideon Gorsky, stand with my back against the brick wall. My hands are up in the air, my body is covered from head to toe in the green byproduct of the unplanned transmutation of some passerby. The world is ending, and there is no escape....