Status Updates From The Illustrated Man: An Ess...

Poe and Bierce go to see Charles Dickens, who is having a Christmas party with his characters. Turns out that when their books were banned, the authors were resurrected by their characters to save the worlds they created. Dickens, whose books were banned by mistake, wants nothing to do with the others and refuses to help Poe and Bierce. This ... doesn't really make sense.

The authors on Mars are setting traps for the arriving astronauts, all based on elements from their stories. It appears Earth banned supernatural and fantasy literature in favor of what's real. Interesting. But I still wanna know how these authors are alive. Are they Martians that took the forms of the authors? I don't know.

Okay, for some reason, all the classic authors whose books were banned on Earth now live in the Emerald City on Mars. Edgar Allan Poe plans to have the astronauts killed out of revenge, or flee to another planet if they can't. Algernon Blackwood then informs him about the astronauts' books, then they go to tell Charles Dickens about the situation. How are these people even alive?

The three witches watch the astronauts through their crystal ball, worried the books they have will cause trouble. Meanwhile, so many other magic rituals are taking place, as somebody watches from a tower in a recreation of Oz's Emerald City. What the hell is going on here?

No Particular Night or Morning: 4/5

Just started reading the tenth story, "The Exiles". It's the year 2120. In a reenactment of "Macbeth", three witches on Mars perform a voodoo ritual on a crew of arriving astronauts from Earth, putting them through hallucinations, bizarre dreams, and death. Turns out that literature involving fantasy or the supernatural has been banned for a century. So, uh, what is all this?