The Comet

by W.E.B. Du Bois

In a vaguely futuristic yet oddly contemporary world, a passing comet casts a shadow of death over Manhattan. Only two survive: a black man whose world has been one of poverty and hard work, and a white woman who knows only leisure and privilege.
If humanity is to have a future, the two must build a new world from the wreckage of the old.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Classics, School, Horror, Read For School

13 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

More: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stori...

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0his...

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dub...

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in The Big Book of SF

A passing comet kills all people in Manhattan. Only two people seem to survive, a black man living in poverty and a privileged white woman. The book seems to be set during the segregation period so the short story is an interesting way to introduce and expand racial themes.

[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short standalone story is available, for free, here: https://magicmonstersbcc.files.wordpr...

When a comet soars overheard, all those who view it succumb to an eternal sleep. Throughout all of New York City, only two individuals survive. One is a wealthy, upper-class white woman, the other is a poverty-stricken black man.

The comet's trajectory through the sky was only briefly mentioned before Du Bois begun to philosophise on the nature of humanity when the society it functions inside of has been eradicated. This focused more on the reactions of the humans that remained, and how quickly their preconceived notions and societal-based modes of thought alter when forced to do so, rather than on their new and horrifying surroundings, which I appreciated. This was a short yet sorrowful and profound piece of writing and it said more about the author's contemporary times rather than the potential, dystopian future he created.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never knew that the famed civil rights activist had written a piece of post-apocalyptic fiction! This public-domain piece is also available online, here: http://hilobrow.com/2013/05/21/the-co...
A low-level bank employee is busy with a seemingly-unenviable task in the vaults when the Earth whisks through the tail of a comet. The astronomical event was predicted; its effects were not. When the man emerges from the sealed-off depths of the bank, he is shocked to find that it seems that he may be the last man on Earth: everyone around him has succumbed to toxic vapors from the passing comet.
The language the piece is written in is rather florid and overwrought, to the present-day reader. However, the point of the story is clearly impassioned and still-valuable, even today. DuBois was primarily concerned with human rights, not fiction, and this is a story with a message: The bank vault survivor is a black man, and he discovers another survivor: a wealthy white woman. The two are as far from each other as can be, according to social rules of race, gender and class. Yet, with all those things stripped away, for a brief moment they relate to each other as simply two human individuals: equals... until, unexpectedly, the outside world comes crashing back in with some joy, but also terrible tragedy.
I'm extremely glad to have read this.

Later thought:
I've been asked many times: What is the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction? I think DuBois cuts right to the heart of it, here. The question at the core of much of this genre is: What would we be, if everything we take for granted was stripped away?
Often, authors answer that question with "barbaric and terrible in oh so many ways." DuBois has a different answer, and I think his has much truth to it.

[Kevin (the Conspiracy is Capitalism) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disaster, “the leveler and revealer”...

--I need several life-times to traverse the mountains of to-reads, where my priority = understanding the material (social + physical) conditions of 21st century crises. Thus, most of the arduous climb is made of critical nonfiction.
--If and when I ever get around to fiction, these days I try to prioritize diverse, radical social imagination to chip away at the status quo I inherited by default (you already know the identity labels, so spare me from listing them).
--The end of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements mentions this short story by Du Bois, which got me excited. Du Bois is an absolute legend in critical nonfiction, as a pioneer of sociology in the US during Jim Crow segregation with (according to Vijay Prashad) a fascinating transformation from liberal reformism (the period most are aware of) to communism/anti-imperialism (censored esp. by the Red Scare). Since I haven’t found time to go through his extensive nonfiction works spanning this transformation, I figured I would ease in with his smaller works (this short story is compiled in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

--This little story features “death, the leveler and revealer” momentarily deconstructing the social construct of racism. I’m not going to dissect any further (ex. critique gender norms), only to say this idea of disaster as an opportunity to break from the status quo reminds me of studies the social transformations from disasters:
-A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century (especially relevant in our age of escalating crises): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-Arundhati Roy:

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

-“The Pandemic Is a Portal” in Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

[Luciana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curtinho, mas focando em uma temática importantíssima, O Cometa, é uma ficção especulativa, no qual Du Bois nos conta a anomalia que ocorre na cidade de New York, onde, após a passagem de um cometa, as pessoas são aniquiladas, restando, somente, dois sobreviventes distintos, uma jovem branca e um homem negro.

Influenciado pelo horror do Verão Vermelho de 1919, isto é, o período em que supremacistas brancos utilizaram das piores barbáries possíveis para infringir ao povo negro um mar de humilhação, linchamento e assassinatos brutais nos Estados Unidos, o autor faz da distopia um meio a conversar sobre a narrativa do colonizador, a rotina de violência praticada e assim, expõe que somente com o fim do mundo, com o último homem negro na Terra, se possa viver como ser humano, pela primeira vez.

A todo instante somos confrontados com a realidade do medo e do julgamento que engole a população negra, ao passo que Du Bois ousa "dissolver a fronteira da cor e com ela a distribuição da vida e morte, a violência gratuita e a propensão para o assassinato sem nenhuma razão", que é tão covardemente atribuída aos negros. Com uma análise final bastante elucidativa do texto, a mim, a leitura foi bastante satisfatória, embora eu corra das distopias sempre que posso.

[Ashlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story from WEB Du Bois uses an apocalypse to expose how the “other” is constructed by society by completely killing off society with only a white woman and Black man still living. The white woman grapples with her othering of this Black man who has become her companion in this apocalypse— first she sees him as “not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers... that he seldom even entered her thought.” As they work together, she realizes that her understanding of Black people is socially constructed and keeps them separate from herself. She eventually sees him as “no longer a thing apart... but her Brother Humanity Incarnate.” However, when they realize that it was only their city’s population that was killed off, this white character rejoins her white fray and seems to snap right back to the social constructs of race they inhabit. She does not allow her white family to accuse him of assault and lynch him, but neither does she applies her deconstruction of race and challenge the social order that we see them re enter.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I write this review, Comet Olbers will soon be visible in the night sky, and my son and I plan to take out our trusty telescope and try to get a glimpse of a hurling ball of ice that hasn't been seen in 70 years. But this infrequent visitation reminds me of a Radium Age science fiction story that I thought would be timely to discuss today.

Published in 1920, this story was written by black nationalist and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, W. E. B. Du Bois. It first appeared in his collection "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil," and is a tremendously powerful commentary on race relations as well as a wonderful early example of apocalyptic literature that fans of stories like "I Am Legend" will find fascinating.

Jim is an African American courier for a Manhattan bank who is sent by his bosses to the dingy corporate vaults to save some documents from water damage, a thankless task likely assigned to him rather than a more "valuable" employee. Ironically, this act of passive racism saves his life, as the earth passes through the tail of a comet and wipes out the population instantly. He believes he is "the last man on earth," until he finds another survivor, a wealthy white lady, and "of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him."

The writing, for the most part, is quite masterful. Du Bois is able to convey so much in just a single beautiful sentence. The story is only 16 pages long, and yet by the end, you feel like you've been completely emersed in this world. There is some interesting humor thrown in when you least expect it. At one point, the woman puts on a telephone operator headset and is "distracted" by the long black microphone dangling in her face. Yes, even in the 20s, we were not above telling dirty jokes.

There are some apparent issues with continuity which are surprising considering the brevity. For example, the woman tells Jim that there's a car they can use to scout for other survivors. He says he doesn't know how to drive it. But he just had been driving a car when he met her! Did I miss something? Were automobiles in the 20s so vastly different in operation from one model to the next? You car buffs can let me know in the comments.

Anyway, this is a great tale about how inequality is a social construct, with the destruction of that society suddenly leveling the playing field and revealing the truth. A perfect literary supplement if you are planning to see "A Quiet Place: Day One," and required reading for fans of science fiction.

SCORE: 4 apocalypses out of 5

[J.B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

The world has ended in a rather bizarre manner. You see death in it's bleakest most disturbing forms. Humans, lifeless, lay everywhere. Piles of them.

The comet set up was quick, it's execution more so. The stories tension lies not in the comet or the death it brings, but the race relations between our main character and the other living soul he comes across.

W.E. B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor, so this angle isn't a surprise.

In an end of the world story, I want more. I expected more with this. We can get this race relations set up in any old story. It didn't work for me. It seemed forced. Like everything around it (the comet and all) was lightly applied window dressing. That isn't what I want in an end of the world story.

[PinkPanthress · Rating 4 out of 5]

It all happens in a matter of seconds… Jim Davis, the messenger, faints — and when he wakes up, nothing is as it once was.
Add Julia into the mix, and we might just have the beginning of a Utopia.

It’s a compelling short story that also reflects the country and era in which it was written (1920?). The behaviour and language of the white characters are telling — and frankly, appalling.
I can’t help but wonder what Du Bois must have felt while writing it.

I liked this one well enough, even if the ending felt a bit anti-climactic.

A short story of about ~10 pages / ~75 minutes.

Here the Links for you for free.
For your ears -> »The Comet« @ Youtube
For your eyes -> »The Comet« @ digginganddeepening

[Mlak · Rating 3 out of 5]

this reads like a very well written year 6 creative writing piece. i thought it was gonna end with "and it was all a dream"

no but seriously i was so excited to hear this incredible big brained civil rights worker from 20th century America also had some fiction? so cool

[Marilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Li a tradução desse conto na Caixa Preta de setembro e gostei muito.

[Rogerio Lopes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um breve e perturbador conto que se torna ainda mais sombrio com os esclarecimentos do ensaio anexado nessa edição. Saidiya Hartman contextualiza e esclarece alguns pontos que ficam um tanto confusos na tradução do conto. Ela fará também a relação com outras obras ampliando o escopo da reflexão em torno do conto que por si só já é bastante abrangente.
O conto é simples, um enredo sem sofisticações, e com um núcleo até certo ponto previsível, o plot ainda que não perca sua força não é de todo inesperado. O que impressiona aqui, entretanto é o que não é dito diretamente, o autor constrói certas imagens, insinua outras, surpreende o quão rápido somos imerso na atmosfera proposta e é difícil não sentir certo desamparo.
Talvez o maior incômodo seja perceber como as dinâmicas propostas continuam atuais, fato inclusive apontado por Saidiya ao nos lembrar os paralelos da pandemia existente à época da escrita do conto e a pandemia de Covid 19.
Temos pelo menos duas cenas extremamente perturbadoras, sendo a segunda talvez a mais incômoda, o autor nos mostra uma idealização, que choca o leitor por seu disparate. É difícil não sentir um certo asco, não pela relação proposta em si, mas pelo absurdo que ela representa no mundo proposto (mundo não nos esqueçamos extremamente preciso e real). É quando o autor desfere o golpe ou aliás os golpes e o conto que já era cruel torna-se ainda mais devastador.
A conclusão talvez pareça enganadoramente otimista, ok de fato existe um débil consolo, mas os elementos propostos estão muito longe de um final feliz. Pode-se inclusive pensar numa subversão de símbolos. O corte abrupto deixa para o leitor especular os efeitos deixados pelo cometa, mas o clima de desamparo e pessimismo é evidente.

[Sydney S · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, although I'm not entirely sure how I should rate this one.

Beautiful writing, and that is reason enough to read this story. It's a strange one, because it feels like something is off the whole time (and I don't mean the obvious dead-bodies-abound bit). It seems absurd, almost dream(or nightmare)-like, the way the two main characters interact.

The writing is very on-the-nose at times, it'll raise eyebrows, and the "moral of the story" is basically waving in your face, so those are either negatives or positives depending on the type of reader you are. The story takes an odd turn. Two odd turns, really. The last two pages are not fun or easy to read.

I think the fact that this was written in 1920 makes it work. Somehow. This would make a good Twilight Zone episode. It's weird, and I like weird.

[Leandro · Rating 3 out of 5]

O livro é simples e traz uma temática forte de forma sútil, deixando nas entrelinhas aquilo que muitos consideram “normal”. A estória possui algumas falhas e conexões que não são explicadas, infelizmente.

A releitura, por outro lado, traz essa problemática de modo muito mais forte e, de certa forma, deixa o enredo todo em segundo plano, fazendo com que muitos fatos e acontecimentos sejam passado em apenas 1 parágrafo.

[Goran Lowie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t read this short story for its sci-fi aspect, because that’s not the focus here. It’s all background, some disaster scenario which creates the situation in which a person of color rescues a white woman in the 1920s, and the shock it causes. Obvious themes of racial and social justice, this story is a kind of proto-afrofuturist work, lacking in depth maybe, but probably a great story at the time.

Read as part of the "Voices from the Radium Age" anthology.

[Cameron Naramore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and haunting tale of death, tied up in knots with racial relations

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good themes, but was kinda confusing and ridiculous at some points

[Ruben Schuster Postiglione · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well... the ending was a bit anticlimactic yet I enjoyed this short story so far. Death is there to equal us all no matter race or social standing. Hopefully a comet does not do that to us in real life

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gorgeous story one can almost regret that the author didn’t write more creative fiction in his long and storied career.

[Harry Sumption · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Comet: The fleeting Apocalypse


Apocalyptic media by its very nature is concerned with the aftermath of immense tragedy and loss. The post-apocalyptic genre typically explores the many ways the world can change following the end of human domination. These stories depict the decay of morality and the emergence of new ways of life following the apocalypse. Post-apocalyptic media fundamentally posit that when the world ends so do social and cultural norms. But what if social and cultural paradigms are not so easily cast aside, what if the nature of society lies not in physical objects but deep within the minds of people? This is the argument that W.E.B Du Bois’ “The Comet” posits. The comet follows a young black man named Jim who emerges from a bunker to discover that the world as he knows it has been destroyed by a passing meteorite. “The Comet” subverts genre conventions, through the vehicle of the apocalypse to explore the racialised dynamic between its black protagonist and the world he can now traverse that was previously forbidden to him. The apocalypse can act as a preserving force as well as a destructive one, where survivors venerate the old world and positively contrast what has been lost to their current circumstances, but in “The Comet" there is no reverence for the previous regime supposedly destroyed by the apocalypse. For Du Bois and his protagonist Jim, racial ideologies endure beyond the end of his world.


“The Comet” may seem like an archetypal post-apocalyptic story but uses genre aesthetics to comment on how foolish it is to think we can transcend political and social norms through an apocalypse. The text, written in 1920, depicts a world in which most of the population of New York is eradicated as a result of a passing meteorite. A lesser story might only explore how the world is transformed through this impact. Instead “The Comet” examines how humans preserve hierarchies, such as racial ideologies, and how this construct remains deeply rooted in the minds of those the comet did not touch. “The Comet” is a story about all the things that do not change in the apocalypse, from Jim's fear he will be held responsible for the death of the president, to the acknowledgement that he would never be able to have a relationship with a white woman in any other circumstance; as the protagonist notes “He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet”.


Fundamentally “The Comet” rejects escapism. There is no world, Du Bois argues, in which the effects of systemic racism cannot be felt and actioned; “We who are dark can see America in a way that white Americans cannot” (Du Bois 1926). “The Comet” asks us to consider that if the end of the world cannot end racism, how can it ever be surmounted, a question Du Bois explored in his wider writing. The story also highlights the absurdity of racism, as survivors of the Comet have been plunged into a scenario where they should cling together and forgo previous toxic hierarchies, yet its effects still determine the trajectory of people’s lives. The story satires the idea that racism could ever be seen as legitimate and logical.


Part of “The Comet’s” political messaging comes from its misdirection, setting up a different kind of narrative. In the story’s exploration of the burgeoning interracial relationship between the black protagonist and his white love interest, we see the potential of a new world free from the bondage of racism. But this flight of fancy is shattered by the return of Julia’s father and fiance, reasserting old world power structures and forcing our protagonist back into his socially ordained place. This plot twist highlights the lingering power of racism, whilst also critiquing escapist fiction’s tendency to ignore complex intersectional issues such as race.


The apocalyptic genre often draws much of its horror and tension from the newfound danger that the characters - usually white - find themselves in. Du Bois suggests that this state of paranoia and fear is not a new feeling for people of colour but one that they live every day. The world may be ending for many of the denizens of the story, but it’s been on the precipice of collapse for people of colour for a long time. Du Bois intentionally obscures the names of the leading characters to heighten the initial lack of a racialised dynamic between them. This ambiguous status adds to the narrative’s post-racial misdirection, creating a false sense of racial rebirth for the characters which the ending undercuts, with the conclusion raising “ the specter of lynching, the omnipresence of white supremacy, and the rampant policing of Black sexuality in the period” (Rusert 2018).


The wider context of the Harlem Renaissance is an important subtext to “The Comet”. Du Bois was an immensely influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance, contributing to a broader debate going on at the time about the different ways African-Americans could advocate for themselves in a system that disenfranchised and abused them. On the one hand you had change from within, represented in ideas of black exceptionalism on the other you had transformative action breaking the illegitimate wheel that had victimised African-Americans for so long, seen in the apocalyptic subtext of “The Comet”. In line with the complexities of this problem, both options are treated as flawed. But this is not a purely nihilistic story; there is power to be found in black identity, in community and in culture, “ The Comet” goes to great lengths to explore this.


“The Comet’s’’ protagonist Jim is able to traverse spaces traditionally set aside from white elites seen most prominently in his relationship with Julia, a rich white woman. Critically this “transgression” is transient and it comes at a cost: millions of people had to die to temporarily uproot the enforced racial politics of the time. “The Comet '' defies the escapist elements of the apocalyptic-fiction genre by undercutting the transformative power of the Apocalypse. This story challenges the idea that you can escape from racial ideologies. Just as the experiences of the protagonist is fundamentally coloured by his racial identities, the experience of reading this narrative is an exercise in accepting that race fundamentally changes how you experience the world. “The Comet '' explores the immense power of racial identity to determine happiness, prosperity, success and safety, and though dabbling in the escapism of denying this reality, ultimately ends by enforcing racial reality back on the protagonist. Racial identity is a social construct thrust onto people, and despite this narrative's indulgence in the fantasy of living without this construct, the reality of the power of racism is all the more apparent because the protagonist can see a world unaffected by this issue but is denied full access to it.

[Fred Katterjohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dissapointing from from a Sci-Fi perspective. There was no attempt at explanation detailing catstrophic events taking place or the broader social consequences.

Rather the story focuses on the racist views of the white antagonist. More importantly how those feelings are changed depending on whether society is watching or not.

With the understanding that the story is significant in Sci-Fi, being written by a socially influential black man in the 1920. It should be read as for it's perspectives on racism in America from Dubois understanding rather than it's significance in the world of Sci-Fi in general.

Regarding insight into to Dubois it is an important piece.

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Du Bois takes a very simple, bare bones story, and makes it difficult to follow. There were several places where I went back and reread a passage two or three times, trying in vain to figure out some plot point or the meaning of a line of dialog that ultimately didn't seem to matter much anyway. What really matters is the final scene, and that, at least, is worth reading.

[Litsplaining · Rating 3 out of 5]

DuBois really wanted to get the white woman/Black man relationship off. The abrupt entrance of whites and Black woman at the end was an interesting twist to the ending scene. It left the short story feeling anti-climatic.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

"memórias e memórias da vida revolvida nos cantos escuros de sua mente"

[Roman]

Review and Summary of The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois (*Warning may contain spoilers*)

The Comet is the Tenth chapter of W.E.B Du Bois’s collection of poems, essays, and fiction titled Darkwater: Voices Form Within the Veil. The Comet tells a very compelling science fiction story that brings attention to society from the racial inequality of the world to the simplistic breaking down of the basic emotions of humans. The Comet tells the story of a black man “Jim” and a rich white woman “Julia” who are suddenly forced to work together despite their contrasting socioeconomic statuses and racial differences when a comet strikes New York and kills every person living in New York except our two main characters Jim and Julia. Jim’s and Julia’s emotions are contrasted, compared described, and even changed throughout this eventful story that forces Jack and Julia to work together despite their extreme racial differences and differing backgrounds that make our characters uncomfortable through fear and disgust and many other complex emotions. New York being a heavily populated city is completely wiped out and throughout the story, our characters persevere and experience changing emotions that shed light upon the complex emotions of humans. I personally felt compelled by the dialogues and descriptions that can be found throughout the story because they leave a deep emotional impact by exposing and describing the emotions of the characters and shedding light on subjects such as fear, racial inequality, self-worth, and societal norms. W.E.B Du Bois uses striking dialogues and writing such as “a man alien in blood and culture unknown, perhaps unknowable” to convey racial tension. This all makes sense seeing that W.E.B Du Bois was a renowned civil rights activist in the 20th century. The book also uses dialogues such as "The world lies beneath the waters now may I go?” to convey the lack of self-worth and overwhelming fear that you can feel throughout the story. Overall this book grabbed my attention through the well-spoken brevity of the events and emotions of the characters. This book also brought very relevant impactful emotions through a fictional story that would interest many people who would like to pursue further understanding of America’s civil rights movement and the many people involved in it such as the author W.E.B Du Bois.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some minor spoilers in review

This is a short survey by the civil rights activists W.E.B. Du Bois, written in 1920. I read it as part of a reading challenge where this year I am focussing on 'speculative fiction by people of colour' and where possible I want to focus on authors I haven't read before and from 'A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction' (http://www.nisishawl.com/CCHBSF.html).

Gases from a comet wipe out all life in New York City, except Jim a poor black man who at the time of the comet is sent into a vault to do some dirty or dangerous work, and a wealthy white woman. They come together, and for a short space of time they begin to see new possibilities beyond racial and class constraints - particularly the white woman.

There is a short dream sequence like quality where they travel (beyond New York? Beyond the world of racial segregation?) and for a moment there is a sense that these two are the only two on Earth and must populate and start again. In the short story there is something rather lovely about them seeing each other as individuals and not the colour of their skin or background.

I have seen some reviews saying there isn't enough science fiction in here - I dispute that. There is the fantastical - a need to change the world around us to see beyond racism and classism. And again, in the context of the time of writing, Du Bois needs to create a post-apocalyptic scenario to have his white character see Jim as a man. All of society needs to break down for this to occur. If science fiction asks 'what if?' and if science fiction is the presenting of new realities to understand our own then this is it.

The end of the short story is quite sad and somewhat ends the dream of two people seeing each other's humanity first and foremost. There is a sense of normality and a return to the status quo, although some characters have changed.

Plenty of free versions available online and worth a read.

[Fillipe Rocha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Encontrei esse ebook perdido aí pela Internet. Antes de ler, pesquisei um pouco sobre o autor, W.E.B. Du Bois, e fiquei maluco.

Du Bois é um dos principais autores negros da história dos EUA. No final do séc. XIX e primeira metade do séc. XX, lançou inúmeros trabalhos acerca das raízes afro-americanas, ajudando a criar a identidade do negro na América.

Se não bastasse, ainda era um excelente autor de ficção-científica. Esses dois contos mostram uma qualidade incrível e uma criatividade pulsante.

O primeiro conto é bastante previsível — o nome já entrega o tema sobre o que se trata. Mas a tensão e imagens causadas pelo conto O Cometa são impressionantes. Ficção científica de primeira, com belíssimos toques de horror.

Du Bois é um autor que quero ter sempre comigo; ler mais acerca dele próprio e conhecer mais sobre seu trabalho.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This classic SF short story has a lot going on. Jim, a bank messenger, is sent into the vaults by management to find several missing items. While he's down in the darkness, the tail of a comet passes through New York City and wipes out everyone, leaving bodies strewn across the city in horrifying fashion. Well, almost everyone is dead. After much searching, he eventually finds another survivor, a woman. He's black, she's white. He's a poor hard worker, she's the daughter of wealth. She survived by being shut in her dark room. They spend much time searching the New York from Harlem to Wall Street, to no avail, fighting belief they're the last people alive on Earth.

This wasn't quite what I expected, less horror and SF aspects and more social commentary. Du Bois spends lengthy passages discussing the nature of race, humanity, social issues, and gender roles.

[Sydney]

”Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face-eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love--it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid. Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other-the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice, ‘The world is dead.’”

[Kaesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the short stories in a book I am reading, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. This is a post-apocalyptic story about the last two survivors of a horrible disaster; it plays on some tropes that were probably newer at the time but are so common today that I know at least one of them gets you rejected from most SF publications, but there is a last-minute twist that puts those cliches to good use, I think.