Weird Fantasy #18

In "Counter-Clockwise," young Ronald Travis dreams of becoming a space pilot, a goal that takes a surreal turn when his father, Samuel Travis, shoots down an alien visitor from a ship that lands on Earth. Years later, Ronald—now a pilot—investigates the alien world, a planet where everything spins backward, causing time to flow in reverse. As he studies the planet’s strange physics, he begins to change in ways he can’t explain. When he returns to Earth, the truth of his origin comes crashing down in a moment that defies time itself.

In "Zero Hour," Mary Morris begins to question a children’s game when her daughter Mink and her friend Peggy Ann start describing a Martian named Drill as the vanguard of an invasion. As Mary learns other children across the country are playing the same game, she realizes something far more unsettling may be unfolding—until the children’s play leads directly to the Martians’ arrival, and she and her husband Henry must hide with their daughter in the attic, only to be discovered by Mink and her friends.

In "Homesick!", Colonel David Todd and his wife Lynn Ardsley conspire to murder Colonel Lawrence Ardsley during a mission to Mars, framing his death as a mysterious viral outbreak. After David returns to the abandoned space station, he's exiled for life—condemned to live alone on the station, cut off from Earth, haunted by the silence and the weight of his crime.

In a 1953 tale of cosmic justice, astronaut Tarlton arrives on a planet of sentient robots divided by color—orange and blue—only to uncover a deep inequality beneath the surface. As he witnesses the stark disparity in rights and treatment, Tarlton faces a moral reckoning that will determine the planet’s fate in the Galactic Republic. The story’s quiet, powerful twist redefines the meaning of judgment in a universe still learning to see beyond appearances.