Captain Arnold & Other Tales of the Abnormal, by Arthur M. Doweyko, whose prior books I reviewed here before. This is an illustrated collection of 17 pieces, mostly stories or fragments, and one essay. The first is "Captain Arnold and the Zantharian Invasion," featuring nine year old Arnold, who has some sort of condition that twists his back, makes his breathing difficult, and makes him a klutz. He is cruelly teased by other children. His nurse, Nina, is a literal robot. She is very supportive, playing games with him without looking down on him. He falls asleep and dreams he is Captain Arnold, with a fine muscular body, the last hope of Earth to defeat the invading Zantharians. His first officer is Nina, now human. His dreams are better than his reality. Other stories have odd time travel, space travel, and weird happenings. Reality is seldom what it seems. In one story a human brain is grown in the laboratory, but it lacks the experience of living folk. In another a man travels back in time to change things, but it doesn't work out as expected. In another, folk are on a seeming death march, but which march is it? In another a boy invents a translator that enables him to read the thoughts of his dog--and other people. Others don't believe him, except for one girl who abruptly expresses her love for him. As I read I began to wonder about my own reality. In "Guardian Angel" it is literal; she really is guarding him, in her fashion. At the end she appears to him as a lovely woman. She may be about to tell him the whole story. The concluding essay, "Five Reasons to Wonder," presents thoughts on the Universe, the Nature of Matter and Consciousness, the Origin of Life, Existence, and Awareness. Is the Universe aware of itself? Now I wonder. I can't say I properly understand these stories, but that may be the point: they are meant to make you wonder, to question what is real, and not just safely in the volume. To jolt you out of your cocoon of normalcy.