A story is on trial for falsely claiming to be science fiction in a satirical 1940’s London courtroom.

A man visits a woman he once had an affair with twenty years ago, in the hopes that he might rekindle their relationship. The woman asks her friends to join them for dinner, as they must help her judge the man's intentions.

On a train ride to a metallurgical conference in Chicago, a consultant tries to avoid the debate between pure and applied sciences, but he cannot avoid it when he gets cornered in the washroom by two professors and an undecided bright new recruit.