Paradise tales

"Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," a Cambodian ghost story, and "The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai," a samurai-style narrative, have the delicacy of Asian folktales or lyrical fantasies. By contrast, "V.A.O.," about a future society destabilized by prohibitively expensive health care, and "The Film-makers of Mars," which suggests that Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter stories were drawn from life, are set in futures that credibly extrapolate current scientific and cultural trends.