Hot Night, Alien in Tree
An unsuspecting newlywed finds himself the subject of alien scientific study in this humorous tale from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author.
After an evening out to dinner, one sultry midsummer eve, Charlie finds himself in the right place at the wrong time: lying underneath an oak tree after making love with his new wife. But while Maria drifts off into dreamland, Charlie finds himself being watched by a one-eyed alien in the branches above.
No leering voyeur is this alien; it’s here on research purposes only and has been lucky to observe human copulation. Now it has a favor to ask of Charlie: a personal demonstration. To make the situation more palatable, it transforms into one of Charlie’s beautiful ex-girlfriends. To keep the alien’s eye from wandering to his sleeping wife, Charlie will have to make the ultimate sacrifice . . .
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first science fiction stories to the lower-grade pulps in the mid-fifties, moved swiftly to the three prestigious magazines (ASTOUNDING, GALAXY and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION) and as his style deepened and themes expanded in through the next reached the first rank of science fiction writers. He is regarded as the greatest living writer of science fiction, an SFWA Grandmaster, ex-President (in the 1960’ s) of that organization, winner of five Nebulas, four Hugos and many other domestic and foreign awards. Among his famous novels are DYING INSIDE,THE BOOK OF SKULLS, DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH, A TIME OF CHANGES; his novella BORN WITH THE DEAD (1974) is perhaps the finest work of that length published within the genre. Shifting to a predominating fantasy in the late 1970’ s (LORD VALENTINE’ S CASTLE and the attendant Majipoor Series), Silverberg continued to write science fiction and won a Nebula in 1986 for the novella SAILING TO BYZANTIUM, and Hugos for the novelettes GILGAMESH IN THE OUTBACK and ENTER A SOLDIER: LATER, ENTER ANOTHER. He was editor of the long-running original anthology series New Dimensions and of important reprint anthologies such as THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, ALPHA and THE ARBOR HOUSE TREASURY OF MODERN SCIENCE FICTION.
