A collection of (often very) short stories, all sharing the same theme: what happens when aliens arrive on Earth. This isn't hard science fiction. It's a series of metaphors, of analogies, and while nearly all of them are funny some of them are more successful than others.

The ones I preferred were often the shortest - not so much because of length, but the longer stories were often a set-up for a joke, while the shorter ones were little glimpses of utter strangeness (like "Newton" and "Old Oak"), which is the sort of thing that really appeals to me.

The strongest part of this book was I think the very vivid images that would pop up from time to time - humans hand-swinging with giants, the intergalactic baseball team, the laying out of cadavers, the shower of millions of little yellow cubes - and this is my favourite, I have to quote it: "they came like an epileptic fit in a Skittles factory". I LOVE that last image, even if it did make me hungry. (The fascination with food is an ongoing theme...)

As for the weakest part... I think that might have to be the final story. Tempting as it is to take your readers by their scruff and say "Did you get it? You got it, didn't you?" sometimes it's best to rely on the fact that they do have some intelligence and can figure the occasional thing out for themselves. They're readers, after all, there must be some lights on inside their skulls. Calvino's been around for a while, all cities are Venice, they are us and so on.

But overall, a fun easy read. Not encyclopaedia-length either, which is something I always appreciate in my genre fiction. It made me laugh, and some of the images are lovely.