When a young hospital attendee runs away from charges of murder, he lands in the refuge of two artists. He stays to learn how to paint and begins to form secretive bonds with his strange hosts.

A college student and his former dissertain advisor use their knowledge of anthropology to survive the zombie apocalypse and theorize about the evolution of humans and zombies.

In seventeenth-century Delft, a fanatically curious fabric merchant invents the microscope. Even as he neglects and abuses his family, he discovers a new world of life.

When a fourteen-year-old boy moves with his family to a farm town, he reads a book that leads him to have a crisis of faith and he begins to question what really happens after death.

In deep space, a crew of humans and artificial intelligence deliberate on whether or not to change course so as to preserve the life of an innocent-presenting alien-being.