Are You There and Other Stories

This edgy and dark collection revels in sorrow and loss. Alien invasions (of Earth in “Life on the Preservation” and one human at a time in “Double Occupancy”) and future tech (body hopping in “Overlay,” holographic projections of downloaded personalities in “Scatter”) sit side by side with a magical little boy in “The Apprentice” and an evil spirit that corrupted the original Tree of Knowledge in “The Tree.” The strongest stories are the ones where struggles with pain take center stage and the speculative setting fades away, such as “Thank You, Mr. Whiskers,” in which an aging woman tries to escape paranoia and joint pain. There are no pat endings, especially when death is only a pause en route to a haunting or digital immortality, but readers braced for powerful emotions will find this collection more than worthwhile. (Oct.)