Escape From the Future and Other Stories — Paul Clayton

What if you had access to a time machine and could go back to visit a deceased love... one more time. Would you?In 1962, Bobby Newman's Grandpa, a basement inventor, loses his wife to cancer, then begins to lose his mind to grief. While tuning up his not-yet-perfected time machine for one last visit with his wife, he ends up going the wrong way... into the dystopian future of 2025. Inexplicably, he sends the machine back.Fourteen-year-old Bobby uses it to lead Mom and Dad on a mission to find Grandpa and bring him back.But Grandpa has other ideas...This volume brings together five of Paul Clayton's most ambitious stories to date, stories that juxtapose a familiar America of the very recent past with ominous new versions of the country now coming into focus.Clayton's concern is with ordinary people—their innate wisdom and persistent foolishness, their capacity to do good or harm, and their resiliency—with what happens when time travelers from the 1960s arrive in a city dominated by criminal gangs and corrupt politicians, or when a woman opts for a new procedure to avoid losing her cancer-ridden husband, or when a soldier in Vietnam is granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give his elevator speech, or when a man, illegally alive, attempts to stay that way...Clayton shows how people make choices that, collectively, point civilization in new directions, be it toward forcible reclamation of vast tracts of land as primeval wilderness or elimination of those deemed to be nonproductive 'useless eaters.'This is a first-rate collection of stories by a serious writer.—Stephen Gallup, author of What About the Boy?!!Five Stars!! Reviewed by Essien Asian for Readers' FavoriteGrandpa has been skulking around the house in a foul mood all week then one day he disappears. Mom and Dad have no idea where he's gone but young Bobby believes there's more to the strange metallic contraption that lies under the tarp in his parents' basement than meets the eye. This is just one story in Paul Clayton's short story collection titled Escape From The Future And Other Stories. Read on and witness the sacrifice that must be made for a green Earth, as well as the consequences of Ginny's reluctance to let life run its natural course among others. It's a brave new world and everything works better than it used to or so they want us to believe.Escape From The Future And Other Stories is a science fiction classic by Paul Clayton. It comprises a series of stories with a distinctly dystopian theme where you experience what could be the order of the day in the not-too-distant future. The unique aspect of this book is the way Clayton presents it -- eerily similar to what we see nowadays. He displays dexterity in writing skills, impressively creating a series of frightening stories with a decidedly humorous undertone. The characters have very solid backstories which are impressive when you consider how short some of the stories are. Despite being an excellent anthology, filled with entertainment, Escape From The Future And Other Stories carries a dark warning for readers who are perceptive enough to understand it.