Publishing history Unlikely Stories, Mostly was released as a Canongate hardback in 1983; an erratum slip was inserted into the first edition that read "This slip has been inserted by mistake." A Penguin Books paperback was issued in 1984. "Five Letters from an Eastern Empire" was issued as a stand-alone work in 1995 as part of Penguin's '60 shilling' series. A revised edition with the extra stories "A Unique Case" and "Inches in a Column" in thirteenth and fourteenth place, and a new postscript by Douglas Gifford, was released in 2010. "Logopandocy" is retitled "Sir Thomas's Logopandocy", and "Prometheus" as "M. Pollard's Prometheus" in this edition. In 2012 the entire work was included in Gray's collection Every Short Story 1951–2012. Summary Like Gray's best-known work Lanark, the book was published in the 1980s but contains work going back thirty years. "The Star"  A fantasy in the style of H. G. Wells about a star falling into an urban back garden. Written when Gray was a teenager, it was first published in Collins Magazine for Boys and Girls in 1951. "The Spread of Ian Nicol"  A riveter who begins to undergo fission.
Publishing history
 Unlikely Stories, Mostly was released as a Canongate hardback in 1983; an erratum slip was inserted into the first edition that read "This slip has been inserted by mistake." A Penguin Books paperback was issued in 1984. "Five Letters from an Eastern Empire" was issued as a stand-alone work in 1995 as part of Penguin's'60 shilling' series. A revised edition with the extra stories "A Unique Case" and "Inches in a Column" in thirteenth and fourteenth place, and a new postscript by Douglas Gifford, was released in 2010. "Logopandocy" is retitled "Sir Thomas's Logopandocy", and "Prometheus" as "M. Pollard's Prometheus" in this edition. In 2012 the entire work was included in Gray's collection Every Short Story 1951–2012. Summary
 Like Gray's best-known work Lanark, the book was published in the 1980s but contains work going back thirty years. "The Star" 
A fantasy in the style of H. G. Wells about a star falling into an urban back garden. Written when Gray was a teenager, it was first published in Collins Magazine for Boys and Boys in 1951. "The Spread of Ian Nicol" 
A riveter who begins to undergo fission.