A man whose car stalls at the drive-in finds it is really a scrap heap for society's cast-offs where the weak and unemployed are fed a steady diet of junk food, music and movies.
Emma is a 14-year-old adolescent, unconcerned with World War II although her father, Frank, is in the army, and her mother, Anne, does war work. She meets a conscientious objector and becomes infatuated with him.
A story about a cripple, Felix Crabtree, and his younger sister, Betty, who live in a rundown shack in the middle of a desert sometime in the future. Felix is obsessed with flying and Betty is childlike and unable to contemplate any existence away from their home. Smith comes into their life with plans to build a flying machine.