A science-fiction story by William Baxter, Down in the Dark was published in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection. It follows astronauts on Titan (the largest moon of Saturn) struggling to survive after Earth is destroyed by a failed attempt to destroy a dangerous asteroid.
Tropes:
- But What About the Astronauts?: After Earth is destroyed, humanity is reduced to about 2,000 people in a dozen or so space stations and early-stage colonies desperately struggling to keep their supplies from running out. Between them, they only have a single spaceship, the Oberth, to distribute supplies between the colonies.
- Colonized Solar System: The story takes place in 2057, with human bases on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, the Fore Trojan asteroids, and Jupiter and Saturn's moons (Callisto and Titan to be exact).
- Disaster Scavengers: The narrator is assigned to recover a lunar lander, to be used to retrieve supplies from the remains of Earth.
- Driven to Suicide: Many survivors kill themselves due to grief (like the narrator's friend Jimmy) or because the Oberth can't get them vital supplies in time (like everyone on Mercury).
- The Elites Jump Ship: Rodrigo Durrell and Ms. Rhinehart, the two cabinet secretaries in charge of space exploration, managed to go to the Moon with their families on an "inspection tour" right before the dangerous asteroid intercept that ended up destroying Earth. The narrator views the two with slight contempt and notes that Rhinehart's daughter is the only five-year-old human left in the universe.
- Humans Need Aliens: The appearance of a race of Starfish Aliens at the end saves the human astronauts from dying out.
- The Lost Lenore: The narrator pines over his wife Lisa, who died on Earth.
