A family on the last starship finds that stories themselves may very well save a dying world. In one of those stories, a man dies of radio while another finds a new lease on life in an ancient dingus. A phone that can be used to call a few minutes into the future leads to unexpected turmoil. An anthroid on trial for a murder may be the victim of a faulty linguistic circuit. A retired astronaut who cannot get his footing, the last librarian on earth, tales of a future ghetto where surprise is still a possibility, and a mathematician whose brilliant insight continually slips his mind. These are few of the themes to be found in this collection of mystery science fiction tales in the speculative tradition of the satires of Kurt Vonnegut and the ironies of Jorge Luis Borges from the author of "A Small Box of Chaos" and the award-winning "An Interlude in Dreamland."