In a society where civilians are monitored by personality tests that surveil whether they are being perfect citizens, a 1970s high school teacher meets an over-achieving student who forces him to confront the forced boredom dominating his own life.

When it is discovered that the human brain is key to interstellar travel, one impoverished tradesman must decide whether to sacrifice the wonderfully wise, but ultimately artificial, eagle brain residing inside a beautiful humanoid shell or his own. A desperately poor tradesman realizes his humanoid friend, a charming artificial intelligence, is the key to faster and more lucrative interstellar travel. But to achieve this, he must pry her brain from her body and risk killing her.

All his life, a man creates machines to compensate for his idiocy, but, over time, the machines he creates lose respect for him and treat him poorly, causing him to lose all hope. A single machine opens his eyes to the idiocy of others, changing his perspective and giving him back hope and joy.

A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.

On a far-future Earth, a young man accidentally commits adultery and is exiled to a distant planet that has undergone catastrophe—only to realize that this planet is an experiment to create a second Earth, and he has an opportunity to lead the inhabitants in building an interstellar empire.

Through three tales of impossible machines with abilities to manipulate the physical world, travel through time and space, and bestow telepathy onto an entire community, candidates of an engineering exam in the far future are asked to ponder fantastical implications of technology.

A space pilot ordered to annihilate a human colony contemplates sabotaging the mission, but the autopilot on the ship maintains the course.

When an upstart young man dreams of bigger things than his job at the local mine, he finds his connection between his father and his best friend in peril.

Online, space ship storytellers discuss why they tell stories for a living—and how to do it right.

In a future where technology has advanced to the point where humans can undergo "optimization" to rid themselves of emotions and increase their mental functions, one man decides to cling to his humanity in an effort to atone for his sins and appreciate the beauty of being human.