After a young woman receives a secret message from a flying saucer, she refuses to reveal it and suffers as a social outcast.

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.

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.

A New York bartender attempts to engage in a conversation about owning comets — as in, the ones in space —with his somewhat crazy customer.

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.

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?

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.

A divorced astronomer finds hope when she discovers a UFO.

A strange intergalactic force infiltrates the consciousness of a modern Earthling, prompting meditations on the role of the human, the loneliness of life, and the greater unknown.

In contemporary New York, an unlikely friendship develops between the starship that hovers above the city and the Earth’s human representative. The ship faces a difficult dilemma—it must decide whether to leave to help its creators or to stay with its new human friend.