A grieving mother and accomplished linguist relives her child's lost life as she learns to communicate with the aliens that have landed on earth.

Two extraterrestrial beings land on Earth in search of information and struggle to adapt.

After alien spaceships appear all over the world, a commercial driver gets a contract from the aliens to drive one of them around the United States. A commercial driver gets a contract to drive an alien around the United States. She soon learns that the alien is not conscious, but has been using humans as hosts to understand subjective experience.

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.

A linguist is called to investigate robots that seem to have created their own language.

All across the contemporary world, space whales are falling from the sky. They seem to be trying to deliver a message to the Earth — but as an American grassroots movement attempts to communicate with these creatures, it will face challenges from the government as well as the possible dangers of interacting with these interstellar beings.

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.

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?

An older Indian man recounts his story of "alien" encounters on Mars during Saturday tea.

A scientist collecting samples on Titan finds the expedition to be beyond her wildest dreams—and her darkest nightmares—when she connects with disembodied alien life. Their strange communications take on new urgency when both their lives are at risk.