In Porter and Ellard’s “Permanent Fixtures,” a woman examines her compulsion to hold onto everything. In Steffler and Rinkema’s “Killing Robby Jenkins,” a young woman contending with a vindictive ex laments her world is ending, and her mother tries to shield her from the fact that, indeed, the world is literally ending. In “Too Pregnant for Mice or Men,” Ania and Diane Payne show us a home renovation project that goes wildly askew.
Readers of Jules Verne’s early science-fiction classic From the Earth to the Moon (1870) — which left the Baltimore Gun Club’s bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers and dog, hurtling through space — had to wait a whole five years before learning the fate of its heroes. Not only were they rewarded for their patience by a fine continuation of the space adventure (which we won’t spoil by describing here), but also with the addition of a superb series of wood engravings to illustrate the tale. The set of images — arguably the very first to depict space travel on a scientific basis — were the work of the French illustrator Émile-Antoine Bayard. From the Public Domain Image Archive. See more at https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/emile-antoine-bayard-s-illustrations-for-around-the-moon-by-jules-verne-1870/