From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

The Hammerpond Park Burglary by H.G. Wells is a seminal work of fiction that examines the human relationship between criminality and morality. Through its critique of the criminal justice system, Wells challenges the reader to consider how society should respond to those who break the law. The narrative follows a group of criminals as they attempt to burglarize a wealthy estate, while also exploring themes of guilt, redemption, and personal responsibility.

Halloway stared down at Earth, and his brain
tore loose and screamed, Man, man, how'd you
get in a mess like this, in a rocket a
million miles past the moon, shooting for
Mars and danger and terror and maybe death.

Peterson, a crew member of a spaceship loading up with food animals on Mars, buys an enormous pig-like creature known as a "wub" from a native just before departure. Franco, his captain, is worried about the extra weight but seems more concerned about its taste, as his ship is short of food. However, after takeoff, the crew realizes that the wub is a very intelligent creature, capable of telepathy and maybe even mind control. Peterson and the wub spend time discussing mythological figures and the travels of Odysseus. Captain Franco, paranoid after an earlier confrontation with the Wub which left him temporarily paralyzed, bursts in and insists on killing and eating the wub. The crew becomes very much opposed to killing the sensitive creature after it makes a plea for understanding, but Franco still makes a meal out of him. At the dinner table, Captain Franco apologises for the "interruption" and resumes the earlier conversation between Peterson and the Wub - which now has apparently taken over the Captain's body.

Kramer leaned back. "You can see the situation. How can we deal with a factor like this? The perfect variable."  "Perfect? Prediction should still be possible. A living thing still acts from necessity, the same as inanimate material. But the cause-effect chain is more subtle; there are more factors to be considered. The difference is quantitative, I think. The reaction of the living organism parallels natural causation, but with greater complexity."  Gross and Kramer looked up at the board plates, suspended on the wall, still dripping, the images hardening into place. Kramer traced a line with his pencil.  "See that? It's a pseudopodium. They're alive, and so far, a weapon we can't beat. No mechanical system can compete with that, simple or intricate. We'll have to scrap the Johnson Control and find something else."  "Meanwhile the war continues as it is. Stalemate. Checkmate. They can't get to us, and we can't get through their living minefield."  Kramer nodded. "It's a perfect defense, for them. But there still might be one answer."  "What's that?"  "Wait a minute." Kramer turned to his rocket expert, sitting with the charts and files. "The heavy cruiser that returned this week. It didn't actually touch, did it? It came close but there was no contact."  "Correct." The expert nodded. "The mine was twenty miles off. The cruiser was in space-drive, moving directly toward Proxima, line-straight, using the Johnson Control, of course. It had deflected a quarter of an hour earlier for reasons unknown. Later it resumed its course. That was when they got it."  "It shifted," Kramer said. "But not enough. The mine was coming along after it, trailing it. It's the same old story, but I wonder about the contact."

“WHAT would you do if you knew that this was the last night of the world?”  “What would I do? You mean seriously?”  “Yes, seriously.”  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”  He poured some coffee. In the background the two girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of the brewed coffee in the evening air.  “Well, better start thinking about it,” he said.  “You don’t mean it!”  He nodded.  “A war?”  He shook his head.  “Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?”  “No.”  “Or germ warfare?”  “None of those at all,” he said, stirring his coffee slowly. “But just, let’s say, the closing of a book.”

This story by Ernest Hemingway is about two “hit men” (killers who are paid to murder someone) who come to a small town restaurant to shoot a man as a favor to a friend. Some critics go as far as to say that this is one of best short stories of all time. This is all the more impressive given that Hemingway said that he wrote the story in just one morning in a hotel room in Madrid, Spain.  The Killers Ernest Hemingway Audiobook

It is three thousand light years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed that the heavens declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.  I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The facts are there for all to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can, and I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.