In this collection of SF sort stories, themes covered include first encounters with aliens that don’t go quite as most expect, ways AI or similar digital intelligence could naturally evolve and what intelligent life long before and long after humanity on our home planet could be. Other examples include: how would an interstellar civilisation with slow relativistic travel but near-instantaneous communication play out? In a post-apocalyptic world, what would we miss the most? How might we interact with an almost-similar parallel universe? If we made near-human androids, would we bee able If you generally like an interesting what-if conundrum, that’s the starting point of good SF.