A newscaster recently arrived in space receives ominous advice from a jaded engineer: whatever you do, leave space because getting attracted to aliens will be the death of us all.

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.

When a far-away planet requests the return of two fugitive queer extraterrestrials, a closeted man finds the empathy necessary to enable their escape.

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.

Aliens land peacefully on Earth and promise to fix humans’ societal problems, but humans soon get so frustrated with them that they flee to other planets. The smaller Earth population ends up bringing positive change, but this emigration to other planets reveals that many other populations have fled these aliens for the same reason.

Human detectives work to solve the mystery of who killed a human woman at an Earth-based alien embassy. They soon realize that human methods of solving mysteries come into conflict with the social customs of the aliens.

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.

A wife discovers that her husband is co-inhabiting his body with an alien visitor as part of an experiment; she comes to favor the alien lover over her unsatisfying husband.

The Eavesdropper, a human-alien hybrid woman, moves through a sentient spaceship full of comatose humans whose memories she absorbs and processes through mind reading.

In the near future, a young mother leaves behind a book for her daughter before she embarks on her space journey to the outer solar system in an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial creatures. Sections from her book are interspersed with her husband's verbal recollections of their love story, which he addresses to their young daughter.