In the midst of an interplanetary war, two women meet an alien who is hoping to retrieve the body of his dead brother, whom he honors by consuming his remains.

Assuming that they were here to invade, mankind massacred the aliens whose ships landed on Earth. Now, the aliens and humans have an uneasy peace together. The aliens who landed on earth love to fly kites. One kite-maker sells them despite harassment from skinheads who hate the aliens and anyone who does business with them.

The asteroid work crews don't have much to do but tell tall tales to each other. One man tells a particularly riveting account of an expedition where he met a strange parasitic species that inhabits human bodies and barely escaped unscathed—or did he?

A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.

After discovering a mysterious alien artifact on the Moon, human astronauts endeavor to uncover its purpose and message from an extraterrestrial civilization.

When a talented linguist makes contact with the Martian species and is invited into their inner circle, he uncovers a culturally rich civilization in danger of going extinct.

A priest on a planet with aliens that commune with their dead must go on a pilgrimage when the first human at his outpost dies and becomes a confused ghost.

When an alien spaceship lands on Earth in need of help, leaders of countries around the world help and house them, causing tension between humans and these costly guests.

On an alien world, a colony of humans has evolved to reproduce with one mother and many fathers. After delaying for years, one young woman finally chooses three fathers for her baby, but her desire for freedom draws her into the orbit of the post-human anthropologists who have come from the stars to study this quaint biological mating ritual.

Extraterrestrial visitors promise solutions to America's financial, environmental, and energy problems - in exchange for the country's black citizens. A cultural struggle breaks out to determine whether the trade will be made.