John Sladek explains the theme of the darkly comic stories in this wonderful collection:
"The aliens here are human. This book contains no giant flying
snails or telepathic octopods, no Ganymedean cat-women
dressed in silver, no aggressive dugong chiefs roaming the
galaxy in their pulsar-powered yo-yo ships. The aliens here are
human aliens. Most of them work in ordinary offices, and they
do not commute to work from Proximo Centauri, either. Yet these
here humans are aliens. Office life attracts them ..."