Alien Abductions (Daw Book Collectors, No. 1136)

This is a collection of eleven short stories, each having to do with alien abduction. It pretty much delivers what it promises, although a few stories stood out for me as being exceptionally wonderful. My favourites were:

Work in Progress by Michelle West. This story weaves the jumbled and lost memories of a heavy drinking party girl into a surprisingly tender inter-species love story. West's beautiful, descriptive writing really makes this a piece to be savored.

In Toobychubbies by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, exhausted parents finally get a break from their toddlers with a new TV show about brightly coloured, babbling aliens (does everyone remember Teletubbies...?) The story is acutely unnerving, almost horror. Very good.

Gary A. Braunbeck's One Brown Mouse was my favourite of the collection. Levon is the survivor of a car crash in which he lost the love of his life. He attends a grief support group once a month. The eccentric mathematician-turned-counselor obsessively twirls a green and red magician's coin and insists the members take turns getting to know his pet mouse, Tiresias. Levon remains silent and brooding in these meetings, until one day he unexpectedly blurts out: 'I don't belong here; she's not really dead, you know.' One Brown Mouse is unlike anything else in the collection, a study of parallel - sorry, simultaneous universes, perception and reality. ( )