Foreword
WELCOME TO THE fifth installment of the Unidentified Funny Objects series. UFO books feature stories that are funny, sarcastic, or outright unclassifiable. In this year's volume Mike Resnick tackles the theme of elections and how to rig them, Esther Friesner writes about a kickass princess secret agent, Jody Lynn Nye delves into a murder mystery witnessed (and reported) by smart household appliances, and Laura Resnick mashes up several iconic science fiction franchises with Casablanca.
That's just the tip of the iceberg: there are stories of a hapless supervillain and a magical insurance claims agent, an intergalactic adoption agency and a Silicon Valley startup, an alien cooking reality show and a cryptid zoo in Florida.
Previous volumes featured one or two reprints per book, but all eighteen stories included here are original fiction and I hope to keep it that way going forward. There are, of course, many excellent stories I wish I got my hands on for UFO that were published elsewhere first. Over the course of the past year I edited several reprint anthologies featuring such material: Funny Science Fiction and Funny Fantasy are available now, with Funny Horror and Funny Science Fiction 2 on the way. If you're a fan of the UFO anthologies, I encourage you to check out those volumes as well.
Happy reading!