Meteor and Other Stories Read online

  Samine: Hymorell, is it really you?

  Hymorell:

  Samine: But how can you be so sure? Your traps haven’t caught

  Terry so far and he’s always managed to transfer himself back.

  Hymorell:

  Samine: Of course he’ll want to. Here he has a young, strong

  body, with two whole legs.

  Hymorell:

  Samine: A new body? You mean you’ve done a three-way transfer? So who has been unlucky enough to get Terry’s old body?

  Hymorell:

  Samine: And what will happen to him?

  Hymorell:

  Samine: Poor Stephen Tallboy! And what about Terry? If he’s in

  Stephen Tallboy’s body, how will he ever get out of hospital?

  Hymorell:

  Samine: I expect you’re right. Terry was clever - and energetic, and young, so very young …

  Perhaps this is what some of the characters in the stories were thinking. Which characters are they (two from each story), and what is happening in the story at this moment?

  ‘How can he have changed so much? He’s so hard, so bitter, so cruel! This experiment of his is a terrible mistake!’

  ‘I’ve seen the bruises on that poor girl’s face! She’s very intelligent and she deserves someone better than this stupid, uneducated bully. I’m glad I’ve told him what I think of him.’

  ‘It’s an artificial meteor, with very advanced technology. I’m sure it is. My colleagues disagree, because they can’t understand the purpose of it, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong …’

  ‘What the hell’s happened to his legs? Those are knife marks -Oh my God! That means someone has… Oh, that’s horrible!’

  ‘All around me is an endless forest of tall, thin green plants. The air is colder and fresher here than in the tunnels. So far we’ve seen no monsters, so I think we’ll go back and fetch the others.’

  ‘Oh no, not the wheel-chair again! Oh God, the pain! I can’t risk the painkiller - it may be poisoned. How can I stop him? Perhaps a little bomb in the machine, on a time switch …’

  ‘I’m so hungry! I can’t go on like this. No, I’ll just have to tell the Captain about the baby. He must let me have more food. He must. After all, I’m eating for two people now.’

  ‘Is he going to cut the wall, and blow us both up? No, he heard me, and there he is at the window, looking in at my little bomb. He’ll soon be dead, anyway. He’s very dumb for an Earthman.’

  Here are some new titles for the stories. Match them to the stories that suit them best. Some of them are suitable for more than one story. Which are they, and can you explain why?

  Escape to a New World · Baby in Orbit

  The Mouse That Roared · A Tax-Free Revenge

  Insect Killers · A Fatal Mistake

  The Transfer Trap · Wheel-Chair Games

  Dumb and Dumber · The Cost of a Wife

  Monsters of the Blue Planet · The Globe

  The Woman Wins · The Use of Legs

  What did you think about the ideas in these stories? Think about or discuss the following questions.

  ‘Go and be wise, kind, and truthful. Go in peace.’ If this is the Fortans’ attitude, do you think that Earth is a suitable place for them? What advice would you give the Fortans on arrival?

  ‘Look, baby. Look there! Food! Lovely food …’ These were the last words in Survival. What effect did these words have on you? Do you think it was a good ending? Why, or why not?

  If starving people have no other source of food, can they be forgiven if they eat other human beings in order to survive?

  Is the urge to survive the strongest urge in all living creatures? What can you find in these stories to support this idea?

  Do you think human nature will always be the same, despite the changes that the future is bound to bring to the world?

  Which of these four stories did you like best, and which did you like least? Explain why.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was born in 1903. He lived in Birmingham until 1911, and then in many different parts of England. After leaving school, he tried a variety of careers, including farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and in 1925 he started writing short stories, under different combinations of his full name. Before World War II he wrote stories and detective novels under the names of John Beynon and John Beynon Harris, but he became best known as John Wyndham for the science-fiction novels he wrote after the war, which were published during the fifties. He died in 1969.

  His first and most famous science-fiction novel was The Day of the Triffids (1951), a story of a world changed by two disastrous events - a rain of meteors which has blinded most of the human race, and the appearance of huge, walking plants which eat human flesh. This novel and The Kraken Wakes (1953) have been translated into many languages. Other well-known novels are The Chrysalids (1955), and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which has been filmed as The Village of the Damned. His short-story collections include The Seeds of Time (1956), from which the stories in this book are taken, and Consider Her Ways and Others (1960).

  Science fiction has moved on in fifty years, but several of Wyndham’s novels are still regarded as classics in the genre. He was particularly good at the ‘What if story - taking a single fantastic idea, and setting it in an otherwise familiar, everyday world, where people have suddenly been plunged into a desperate struggle for survival.

  OXFORD BOOKWORMS LIBRARY Classics · True Stories · Fantasy & Horror · Human Interest Crime & Mystery · Thriller & Adventure

  The oxford bookworms library offers a wide range of original and adapted stories, both classic and modern, which take learners from elementary to advanced level through six carefully graded language stages:

  Stage 1 (400 headwords) Stage 4 (1400 headwords)

  Stage 2 (700 headwords) Stage 5 (1800 headwords)

  Stage 3 (1000 headwords) Stage 6 (2500 headwords)

  More than fifty titles are also available on cassette, and there are many titles at Stages 1 to 4 which are specially recommended for younger learners. In addition to the introductions and activities in each Bookworm, resource material includes photocopiable test worksheets and Teacher’s Handbooks, which contain advice on running a class library and using cassettes, and the answers for the activities in the books.

  Several other series are linked to the oxford bookworms library. They range from highly illustrated readers for young learners, to playscripts, non-fiction readers, and unsimplified texts for advanced learners.

  Oxford Bookworms Starters Oxford Bookworms Factfiles

  Oxford Bookworms Playscripts Oxford Bookworms Collection

  Details of these series and a full list of all titles in the oxford bookworms library can be found in the Oxford English catalogues. A selection of titles from the oxford bookworms library can be found on the next pages.

  bookworms · fantasy & horror · stage 5

  I, Robot

  ISAAC ASIMOV Retold by Rowena Akinyemi

  A human being is a soft, weak creature. It needs constant supplies of air, water, and food; it has to spend a third of its life asleep, and it can’t work if the temperature is too hot or too cold.

  But a robot is made of strong metal. It uses electrical energy directly, never sleeps, and can work in any temperature. It is stronger, more efficient - and sometimes more human than human beings.

  Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest science-fiction writers, and these short stories give us an unforgettable and terrifying vision of the future.

  bookworms · fantasy & horror · stage 5

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  PHILIP K. DICK Retold by Andy Hopkins and Joe Potter

  San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. People live in half-deserted apartment buildings, and keep electric animals as pets because so many real animals have died. Most people emigrate to Mars - unless they have a job to do on Earth.

  Like Rick Deck
ard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They’re machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill.

  The film Blade Runner was based on this famous novel.

  bookworms · fantasy & horror · stage 5

  Ghost Stories

  RETOLD BY ROSEMARY BORDER

  After dinner we turned the lights out and played ‘hide-and-seek’. In the dark, I touched a hand, a very cold hand. Now, because of the game, I had to hide in the dark with … with this cold person - not speaking, not knowing who it was. Slowly the others found us, hid with us, until we were all there - all thirteen. Thirteen? But there were only twelve people in the house! We touched each other in the dark, counting. Thirteen. Quickly, nervously, I lit a match to see …

  bookworms · thriller & adventure · stage 6

  The Enemy

  DESMOND BAGLEY Retold by Ralph Mowat

  On a beautiful summer evening in the quiet town of Marlow, a young woman is walking home from church. She passes a man who is looking at the engine of his car. He turns round, smiles at her … and throws acid into her face.

  Then her father, the scientist George Ashton, disappears. And her sister, Penny, discovers that her husband-to-be, Malcolm, is a government agent. Why has Ashton disappeared, and why is Malcolm told to hunt for him? Who is George Ashton, anyway?

  And who is the enemy?

  bookworms · human interest · stage 6

  Cold Comfort Farm

  STELLA GIBBONS Retold by Clare West

  The farm lies in the shadow of a hill, and the farmyard rarely sees the sun, even in summer, when the sukebind hangs heavy in the branches. Here live the Starkadders - Aunt Ada Doom, Judith, Amos, Seth, Reuben, Elfine … They lead messy, untidy lives, full of dark thoughts, moody silences, and sudden noisy quarrels.

  That is, until their attractive young cousin arrives from London. Neat, sensible, efficient, Flora Poste cannot bear messes (they are so uncivilized). She begins to tidy up the Starkadders’ lives at once …

  OXFORD BOOKWORMS COLLECTION Fiction by well-known authors, both classic and modern. Texts are not abridged or simplified in any way, but have notes and questions to help the reader.

  A Window on the Universe

  Short stories by ray bradbury, bill brown, philip k. dick, arthur c clarke, jerome bixby, isaac asimov, brian aldiss, john wyndham, roald dahl

  What does the future hold in store for the human race? Aliens from distant galaxies, telepathic horror, interstellar war, time-warps, the shriek of a rose, collision with an asteroid - the unknown lies around every corner, and the universe is a big place. These nine science-fiction stories offer possibilities that are fantastic, humorous, alarming, but always thought-provoking.

  METEOR AND OTHER STORIES

  It was just a smooth round metal ball, less than a metre in diameter. Although it was still hot from its journey through the huge nothingness of space, it looked quite harmless. But what was it, exactly? A meteor, perhaps -just one of those pieces of rock from outer space that occasionally fall down on to the planet Earth. But meteors don’t usually make strange hissing sounds …

  In this collection of four of his famous science-fiction stories, John Wyndham creates visions of the future that make us think carefully about the way we live now.

  Text adaptation by Patrick Nobes

  Cover images courtesy of Science Photo Library/David McLean (meteor shower) and Image Bank/Max Dannenbaum (meteor)

 

 

  John Wyndham, Meteor and Other Stories

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