Skip to main content

Looking for sci-fi short story anthology with a particular story of an Earth/Mars war children inheriting the surface


I read this in the early to mid 80's. It was a textbook sized hardcover anthology with color illustrations throughout. Each story had a few images, some were full page illustrations.


The particular story I remember the most involved Earth survivors living underground. Robots controlled the war from the surface. A teenage girl and boy decided to sneak away to the surface as no one had been up there in a long time.


The kids discover greenery and a healthy environment, with rusted robot guardians. The robots had been keeping the humans fooled that the war was still going on, and had kept them under the surface. Mars had been wiped out from nearly the first volleys of missiles.


The robots judge the teenagers as worthy and let them remain on the surface. The kids had silver jumpsuits that dissolved when they got wet.



The robot illustrations were blocky, almost weathered stone-like statues. They had nearly spherical feet and square simple heads. The faces had eyes and simple mouths.


-edit- The robots were similar in shape to the one in this picture, but smoother, and no arms. The illustrations with them had the robots being several stories tall. I kind of remember that the kids emerged from the belly of one or something like that. enter image description here



Answer



As per Ayshe's comment, this is probably "The Children" by Malcom Hulke, as answered here, which apparently only showed up in Galactic Adventures, also known as Purnell's Book of Adventures in Space. Unfortunately, there is no online summary or review for me to quote, but at the time of that that I helped improve the answer, I read all of the stories in the volume, and your memory is essentially correct, a pair of children emerging from underground, learning that the war has long since been over, and their jumpsuits do dissolve, leaving them "naked in the Garden" as the phrase goes.


From the other question



Two children who escape an underground city to find giant robots launching missiles into the desert so humans think war is still occurring.



Another question which was answered with the same book includes a story which might have been the mash-up of multiple stories, which mentions the jumpsuits.




A story of two people who get on a spacecraft or rocket that sends them to a planet filled with nature with no other humanoids. For some reason, water causes their tunics and other clothes to melt away. Their craft cannot be used anymore so they are stranded on this planet. It is then revealed that they are Adam and Eve.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...