A science fiction short story by W. E. B. Du Bois that combines intimations of a dystopia of extraterrestrial origin with the ongoing dystopia of the US racialized social and political regime. "The Comet" is set in early twentieth-century New York City, where an extraterrestrial event has resulted in the deaths of most of the city's inhabitants, except for Jim, an African American man, and Julia, a white socialite. As this extraordinary event places extreme pressure on established notions of race and place, notions of hybrid vigor attend the self-fashionings of Jim and Julia as a new Adam and Eve.
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