Because of its charter for risk-taking and innovation, the Late Nite series at the Earle Ernst Lab Theatre can be uneven when it comes to audience appeal. But the season opener, now in an 11 p.m. time slot, is worth staying up for.

"Mercury: Science Fiction Theatre" is the collective title for four short pieces by established writers. It takes its cue from the Orson Wells radio series that in 1938 unleashed "The War of the Worlds" on an unsuspecting audience.

Director Brett Botbyl also credits "The Twilight Zone," "Outer Limits" and "The X-Files" among the show's generic antecedents.

Well, they mostly all click, beginning with a short prologue, "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson. In it, two galactic explorers debate the advisability of including Earth among its interstellar members. Blackballing sentient beings because their brains "are made of meat" leaves them only a small regret for the loneliness that must accompany the perception of being all alone.

Loneliness is also the theme in two works by James Patrick Kelly — one centered on a space traveler going deeper into space and the second based on one who returns to Earth.

"Propagation of Light in a Vacuum" is the evening's strongest piece, with Ryan Wuestewald as the Spaceman and Hannah Schauer Galli as his Imaginary Wife. Time is turned inside out in this play, as the traveler relives an event that left him the last of a crew of 50. Wuestewald explodes with contrasting emotions, slashing marks on a chalkboard and playing approach/avoidance with a decision he does not want to make. Galli is initially mild and supportive but begins to make personal demands despite her imaginary status.

In "Breakaway Backdown" a young woman (Michelle Hurtubise) returns from a stint in space to find difficulty readjusting to life in gravity. "Breakaways" — people who do not return — adapt to space as their muscles atrophy. All go barefoot and some undergo operations that create useful opposable big toes.

Trying on her spike heels for an evening out, the heroine in this monologue decides that they signal "that you've chosen to be vulnerable," and that her heart — also a muscle — atrophied in space.

The fourth and most difficult piece is "Puto — 10 minutes from a play in progress" by Ricardo Bracho. It is a day in the near future when farming has gone underground to escape the drought, and the central character's lover has left him, taking, it seems, all the tortillas and the laptop computer.

Puto (Carlo Barbasa) passes the time by taking suggestive photos — is it his lover Smiles (Mark Hill) in flashback? — and conversing with a human-sized bee (Galli).

The fragmentation in this work weakens the evening, and cutting it would improve the hour-and-40-minute playing time to something that straddles midnight less aggressively.

But sound performances and interesting concepts laced with humor make this a strong start to the Late Nite season.