Featuring wildly imaginative stories told in calm prose--with twists and turns and a touch of pathos--this collection approaches reality from a variety of angles, so that the oddest people and situations seem just the way things are, or will be. Some such tales tell of a boot camp for laundromat offenders, a right-wing private school, and a cold-cream testing site. Others reveal conversations with an alien, a general in the midst of a national crisis and, most frightening of all, an unborn daughter. It considers the what-ifs of catastrophes like an asteroid striking the earth, the collapse of the dollar, and the destruction of television. It also introduces such characters as insurance adjusters who follow the destructive path of Godzilla, an "orthopractor" whose manipulations out-manipulate even Hollywood, and a guy who's been frozen for years in Alaska.