Starfield:The Comet

[While W.E.B. Dubois is famous as a writer, civil rights activist, and sociologist (among other things), it is not widely known that he also penned a science fiction short story. The following is an excerpt from The Comet, written in 1920.]

Low on the horizon lay a long, white star-mystic, wonderful! And from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars. In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped the lone majesty of kings long dead. He arose within the shadows, tall, straight, and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters hovering to his grasp.