No lejos de la Tierra (Lit. "Not Far Away from Earth") is an anthology of several science fiction stories written by the Spaniard writer Domingo Santos in 1986.
The book contains eleven self-contained stories that, as the author mentions in the introduction to the book, unfold completely on Earth, with a single, somewhat twisted exception, as Santos tries to get the reader to reflect on many of the problems in our world, rather than write stories that unfold on other planets like other sci-fi authors do.
The eleven stories and their corresponding summaries are as follows:
- La puerta (The Door): A mysterious alien spacecraft lands in the middle of Washington, DC and its crew build a mysterious door in front of the Capitol, to the surprise and outrage of the American government and the entire world. Then, both the American government and scientists from various countries try to analyze the alien door to find out what its purpose is, without success.
- Señor, su cuenta no existe (Sir, Your Account Doesn't Exist): A Spaniard man mysteriously lost his access to his electronic money account and he tries to restore his access before he and his family runs out of money.
- Ponga algo nuevo a su vida (Put Something New Into Your Life): A salesman convinces a housewife to give him her old TV in exchange for a new one. When the woman's husband returns home, she realizes that the salesman is not as innocent as he looks and the fate of their old TV is much more sinister than it seems.
- Grummy: Basically, drugs are legalized and a poor guy tries to find his dosis in a drug vending machine.
- El sindrome de Lot (Lot's Syndrome): Due of the almost infinite choices on TV programming, people are clinically addicted to TV, a fact discussed in a documentary form.
- El cambio (The Change/Shift): Basically, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis told in a
more disgusting and bloodier way. - Los monstruos (The Monsters): A poor human guy ends in a place filled with sentient abominations. It turns out it's more complicated than it seems.
- Soldado (Soldier): A namesless soldier from a nameless land is forced to fight against a real enemy soldier, when previously he never has fought against a real human being before...
- Encima de las nubes (Above The Clouds): In a polluted Crapsack World, a businessman tries to ascend in the social ladder, so he can leave the hellish world when he lives.
- El tiempo y la muerte (Time and Death): A young man walks into a watch store and several strange events unfold there.
- En la ciudad (In The City): A young man and his mutated dog tries to survive in an apocalyptic world. Likely the most darkest tale of all the anthology.
Tropes:
- Awful Truth: This is what happens at the end of Ponga algo nuevo a su vida while the husband explains to his wife why that salesman want their old TV so badly: They want the rare metals from the old TV set so they can recycle them for its use in nuclear missiles.
- Brain Uploading: More than Brain Downloading here: In Soldado, it's technically possible to download the contents of the brain of any human being, even dead ones, so they can extract vital information from an enemy soldier without the need of interrogations or torture. It turns out it's literally impossible to do this with the titular "soldier" after he was captured when he killed an enemy soldier and the enemy army captured him, because the mental shock caused by having to murder another human destroyed his brain.
- Crapsack World: The settings of En la ciudad (after a nuclear apocalypse) and Encima de las nubes (after an enviromental breakdown).
- Creator Provincialism: With the sole exceptions of La puerta (U.S.), Soldado (Unknown country), Los monstruos (Another world) and El sindrome de Lot (Heavily implied to be the U.S. as well), all the remaining tales take place in Spain.
- Eagle Land: Type 2. Whenever the United States or its people are mentioned in any way or form in any story, they are always shown in negative or ridiculed ways, especially in La puerta.
- Eldritch Abomination: According with the description of the sole human protagonist in Los monstruos, the titular beings are exactly this. It turns out that despite their fiendish looks, the monsters are very nice people, and for their own standards, the human is the monster for them, and they are more scared of him than the human should be scared of them.
- I Am a Humanitarian: In En la ciudad, mankind is forced to resort to cannibalism when other means of food became extinct.
- New Media Are Evil: The way how El sindrome de Lot depicts TV. Keep in mind the story was written in the 80s and the author wrote it in first place as a giant Take That! against that medium.
- No Name Given: In Soldado, neither the characters or their countries are named, in order likely to enforce the human tragedy of the whole tale.
- Nuke 'em:
- This is how the Earth was razed after World War III in En la ciudad.
- In Ponga algo nuevo a su vida, the old TV sets are recycled for its use for building nuclear missiles.
