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.

The female mantis kills her husband ten different ways.

In an austere farmstead on the distant planet O, two lovers must find a way to fool their fellow citizens and satisfy a complicated series of marriage rites so that their forbidden love may last forever.

On a cold Seattle night, deep in the heart of winter, a woman walks into a bar and finds the beautiful and animal-like woman she has been waiting for. She chases the woman into the night and finds the stranger is not what she seems—but neither is the protagonist.

A lustful, rhapsodic husband makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce his distant wife and is surprised when the tables soon turn.

A man fantasizes about courting his friend's wife, despite being married himself, with increasing desire.

A man who unknowingly talks to himself wonders why a woman who is satisfied with her marriage is having an affair with him.

A professor who studies sexual selection tries to justify his own failed marriage with the flawed mating selection of female fruit flies.

With elaborate descriptions of the body, a husband muses about his relationship with his delicate wife. Reflecting on their good and bad days, the husband oscillates between worrying about their future and feeling passionate love.

In this excerpt from a longer piece of work, multiple characters' lives intersect near an interplanetary brothel.