Unusual Tales #29

J. L. Standish boards what seems like an ordinary bus on an ordinary morning—until he realizes it's flying. When it touches down on an alien world 8,000 years in Earth's future, he discovers he's one of countless humans ferried across time to work for the planet's machines, which are programmed to serve mankind but have become dependent on employing humans to justify their own existence. Standish must decide whether to accept this strange employment or seek another way home.

Capt. Earl Muntz crash-lands in an unmapped North African desert and, desperate for water, begins to hallucinate—or does he? A beautiful city materializes around him, with healers, food, and a devoted woman named Shema who insists their world is real, even if it exists only in his mind. As Muntz grows torn between two realities, a rescue team closes in, forcing him to choose between the harsh truth of the desert and the perfect dream he's found.

In "Who's Crazy?", a young man named Baxter Bibbs faces growing suspicion when no one else can see his mysterious companion—though she’s very real, and he’s not the one losing his mind. As the townsfolk question his sanity, Baxter prepares to leave Earth with her, bound for a world far beyond their understanding.

Two young wanderers named Frankie and Joey find themselves swept through a surreal parade of impossible worlds—from a golden inferno to ice caverns hiding Venusian cities, from hungry seas to the outer reaches of space—all while questioning whether any of it is real. As the boundaries between dream and waking blur, the boys must figure out where reality ends and imagination begins. A delightfully strange journey that captures the wonder and confusion of getting lost in a good story.

Stanley Moss has always felt out of place at the beatnik parties his girlfriend Gigi loves, but when she calls him too square to fit in, he resolves to transform himself into a proper beatnik—even if it means abandoning everything he actually cares about. His Martian friends, however, have their own ideas about how to help him win Gigi's heart, and what unfolds when they intervene at a Greenwich Village coffee shop is far more "way out" than either Stanley or Gigi bargained for.