You can only teach your shadow one trick . . .

Adlai Bringer remembers going to the desert market with her father: The colorful tents, the wink of gold, and her father's shadow, black as night, as it moved of its own accord and stole whatever trinket she wanted. He called it the Shadow Game.

After her father disappears, Adlai keeps going back to the market determined to find some trace of him and stealing what she can with her

A new collection of stories by the master of humorous science fiction adventure, including: The full-length novel, The Day the Machines Stopped—and what happens, not just to civilization, but to humanity and its chances of survival when all the machines stop working at once?

A man is captured by aliens who are investigating the Earth as a possible target for colonization. The aliens have science and technology far in advance of humans—but,

Humans—there's no understanding them,

And no dealing with them either. Or even their planet. Pity the poor aliens, whose shape-changing ability should let them take over the planet Earth before the humans even know they're there-if it weren't for all that omnipresent pollution.

Or consider another set of invaders, from a planet where the weather is always mild and the changing of the seasons is hardly noticeable. They land in force and

Humans on the space frontiers may have enough problems with befuddled bureaucrats, rules that don't fit the realities of very dangerous situations, and general rear-echelon incompetence without bringing in unfriendly aliens, but it's that kind of universe. On the other hand, as master satirist Christopher Anvil makes clear, the aliens are anything but omnipotent and have plenty of problems of their own.