Why would aliens visit earth? I asked myself that question early in my writing career and rejected the more benign responses like “They want to be our friends!” or “They want to help us progress toward a new age of Enlightenment!” because, well, an advanced alien species encountering us would hardly be impressed; quite the contrary. After all, they would be advanced, as in dramatically superior to us. I also didn’t want to have them show up to blow us to bits (which they could easily do, being superior to us), since that’s been a bit overdone since H.G. Wells’ "The War of the Worlds." So I thought about it, came up with a few plausible responses that fell between these two extremes and wrote some stories for the ones that seemed to make the most sense. This collection is mostly a product of exploring alien encounters of this sort, with a sprinkling of stories set in space thrown in for good measure.
