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.

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.

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?

When aliens land on a planet new to them, they find a population obsessed with a virtual reality and uninterested in the intense beauty of the natural world around them.

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.

Is it better to have a human civilization devoid of art and culture than to have none at all? Three Earth ambassadors must whether to annihilate a space colony that has traded away human consciousness for a hive mind that feels nothing but the need for survival. In the distant future, three humans in possession of nuclear warheads must decide whether to allow a remarkable human variant species without consciousness to dominate the galaxy or destroy them forever.

When a low-budget science fiction television show successfully predicts the discovery of extraterrestrial life, its cult followers investigate its mysterious origins, only to be met with more mysteries.

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.

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.

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.