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This week: Aliens Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.
-Ellen DeGeneres
Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI project's idea that we might communicate with extraterrestrial beings via telepathy is possibly a reasonable idea--if telepathy exists and if ETIs exist. Otherwise we are trying to communicate with someone who doesn't exist with a system which doesn't work.
-Philip K. Dick
You don't need to prove the existence of aliens.
That's unproductive, unless we make a bet on it.
-Toba Beta |
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When writing science fiction and certain types of fantasy, it can be fun to speculate about alien life. Especially that brand of alien life that possesses the qualities we term "intelligence" - tool use, detailed communication, philosophy, etc.; those things that we find in ourselves that, in aliens, might be similar.
I'm going to keep calling it "intelligent" life, by the way, without the quotes. I'm saying this in an attempt to forestall the most obvious comments about lack of intelligent life here on Earth. Yeah, we know, people can suck, and they do stupid things, ha ha. We can also build the Taj Mahal, construct the Saturn V rocket, and write poetry.
Aliens are, of course, a mainstay of science fiction. Their equivalent in fantasy are the fairies, ogres, giants, and so forth who are not human but possess intelligence to one degree or another. We're pretty sure that these creatures don't actually exist except in stories, because we've been all over the world now and never documented any such things with any certainty.
Nor do we have compelling evidence of aliens. Yes, I know many people would like to believe we do, but documented evidence of any sort of extraterrestrial life - sapient or not - is unconvincing to most people.
And now we're finding extrasolar planets using various techniques of science. Every once in a while, someone will describe such a planet as "earth-like," and the media starts a frenzy until we remember that "earth-like" planets, or terrestrial planets, include such inhospitable worlds as Mercury and Venus.
And while we certainly can't rule out the possibility of some sort of life on other planets, there has, thus far, been no indication of any - except for some markings on a rock that came from Mars which may or may not represent microscopic life, and scientists lean toward the "not."
Of course, the possibility that there's no intelligent life in the neighborhood makes for less interesting science fiction, but it's looking more and more like there probably isn't any.
How could that be, you may ask. With 200 billion stars in the galaxy, and with most stars in the neighborhood sporting planets, and with some of those planets in the habitable zones of their systems - how can there be no aliens?
Well, no one ever said that those qualities we term intelligence are a necessary development of evolution. It did, in fact (as far as we know), take four billion years for tool users, city builders, and rocket launchers to appear on our own planet. And while such a development might seem inevitable, consider that while your chance of winning the lottery may be one in 70 million (or whatever), your chance of having won the lottery once you won the lottery is one in one. And every other species on the planet has been evolving just as long as we have.
This doesn't address life in general, of course. There may be life out there that defies our thinking about what life even is. But there is, so far, no evidence of that, either. I'm hoping we find some sort of organisms underground on Mars, or perhaps in the deep oceans of Europa. And we probably will, somewhere.
But intelligent aliens?
Still limited to science fiction. |
And now some fantasy for you:
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Last time, in "Comic Adaptations" , I talked about the world of screen adaptations of comic book characters.
Magicmama  : Did we add in the current popularity of Graphic Novels? Of course some of those confuse some Americans--since the publishers retain the Japanese norm of setting up the books Right to Left. And anime (along with the cartoons Stan Lee creates). Most of the true anime contain true grown up type stories, up to and including very graphic content (not just violence either, unless you happen to be into bondage).
And I liked the FF2 especially when Stan Lee couldn't get into the wedding....
Once you get used to the right-to-left setup of anime, it's not so confusing; I have a bigger problem sometimes with figuring out what the artist is trying to convey, because the artistic conventions are, well, alien to me. And Stan Lee's cameos are one of the best things about any Marvel movie.
And that's it for me for March - see you next month! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: March 11, 2015 Issue [#6868]
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