“The Story Of Thanksgiving Is A Science-Fiction Story”, Scott Alexander2013-11-28 (Sci-Fi, history, tech)⁠:

It has come to my attention that people are woefully uninformed about certain episodes in the Thanksgiving narrative. For example, almost no one mentions the part where Squanto threatens to release a bioweapon buried under Plymouth Rock that will bring about the apocalypse.

I learned about this and other similarly neglected episodes from the Smithsonian Magazine’s Thanksgiving article, and I can’t believe I spent seven years of primary school cutting out little belt-buckle hats and feather headdresses while everyone avoided telling me the interesting stuff.

I think the problem is the story of Thanksgiving doesn’t really fit in the fables beloved of primary school teachers and moralists. The article above has convinced me that the proper genre for Thanksgiving is science-fiction.

Mr. S, an ordinary American, is minding his own business outside his East Coast home when he is suddenly abducted by short, large-headed creatures from another world. They bring him to their ship and voyage across unimaginable distances to an alien empire both grander and more horrible than he could imagine. The aliens have godlike technologies, but their society is dystopian and hive-like. Enslaved at first, then displayed as a curiosity, he finally wins his freedom through pluck and intelligence. Despite the luxuries he enjoys in his new life, he longs for his homeworld. He befriends a local noble who tells him that the aliens in fact send ships to his world on a regular basis, quietly scouting and seeking resources while the inhabitants remain blissfully unaware of these incursions. He gets passage on such an expedition…Yet when he returns, Mr. S finds a post-apocalyptic wasteland utterly unlike the world he left. America is empty, its great cities gone, a few survivors fighting for scraps among the ruins. 95% of the population is dead, slain by a supervirus unlike any doctors have ever seen. The few rumors from afar say Mexico, Canada, and lands further abroad have suffered the same or worse. He finds the site where his hometown once stood. There is nothing. Wandering in despair, he is captured by a gang of roving bandits and awaits execution or slavery.