In "Blue Kansas Sky,” Sonny Peacock comes of age in this poignant tale set in the Kansas heartland of the early 1960s. "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana” is set in 1980s Pretoria, South Africa, where a black man’s quest for the "Theory of Everything” is juxtaposed against the inhumanity of apartheid. In "Cri de Coeur,” aboard a 21st century generation wheelship, agrogeologist and poet Dr. Abel Gwiazda and his Down’s-syndrome son Dean travel on course for a new home in Epsilon Eridani. In the final novella, "Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” reprinted here for the first time in 20 years, ethnologist Egan Chaney’s private journals of his studies of the alien Asadi are the centerpiece of the story.