5 stories from the original version of this book, plus 2 essays and 2 new stories. The back cover says the author's "an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong." "Bloodchild" (a multiple SF award winner) is good. It's macabre though (humans used as hosts by sometimes friendly aliens - shades of "Never Let Me Go"). The aliens sometimes cuddle humans. The 2nd story, "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", has macabre elements too. It's about Duryea-Gode disease (DGD). "Hedeonco: the magic bullet, the cure for a large percentage of the world's cancer and a number of serious viral diseases - and the cause of Duryea-Gode disease . If one of your parents was created with Hedeonco and you were conceived after the treatments, you had DGD" (p.46). Victims last beyond 40 if they're careful about diet, and if they resist the self-destructive tendencies. "Speech sounds" features another epidemic -"Language was always lost or severely impaired. It was never regained. Often there was also paralysis, intellectual impairment, death" (p.96). "Amnesty" features more invaders - the Communities, moving clumps of entities with no sonic language. They and humans interact, though not happily - the Communities originality experimented on humans and use pain to coerce. They cuddle humans too
In the final story, "The Book of Martha", God offers a woman a wish - an old idea, but well done.
In general the aliens are interesting, and the stories are much more than disguised info-dumps. Some look rather like allegories, but the characters are well-enough developed for that feeling to fade. Once dialogue starts it has trouble stopping. The essays are bland.
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