Posts Tagged ‘aliens’

Last week my lady and I went to the Star Wars exhibit at our local science museum, and it was a kick, really fun, looking at all the models and costumes they had actually used and realizing how big Chubacca and Darth Vader actually were and how slight Han Solo seemed to be in comparison…but by far the most interesting thing we did was to take a trip in the Millenium Falcon…simulated, of course. We sat in a re-creation of Han’s cockpit and soared into the absolute blackness of space, through the solar system, then out into space beyond, but the most spectacular thing I saw was our galaxy from above, beautifully rendered, with millions of other galaxies in the faint distance, the way I’ve always dreamed of seeing it. Even artfully manufactured in some special effects, high-tech lab in California, it was more satisfying than I could ever have imagined…mostly because fulfilled a life-long dream and in the process, made me think about something I hadn’t for quite a while.
There’s NO WAY we could be all alone in our plane of existance; it’s just too improbable. I know I write science fiction, which ALWAYS has a couple of aliens running around, but to tell you the truth, my brand of sci-fi mostly focuses on this planet and what we have here…and often fail to appreciate. More often than not, MY aliens teach us something, even if it’s what NOT to do or how NOT to be…but sometimes they surprise even me and show how we can be better.
The other day I read a piece tolling the death knell for religion on Earth if aliens were actually discovered…a STATISTICAL probability, though these days even the Catholic Church acknowledges it, slowly swinging around. The Church does EVERYTHING slowly, but I don’t really see how finding intelligent life anywhere should drastically change our concept of the Supreme Being. I don’t know about yours, but MY God is infinite. Dealing with more than one bunch of sentient beings in the universe, even millions of them, would be child’s play the way I see HIM.
Christians have tied their belief system to Jesus, as have I, but we part company pretty quickly when they start telling me His coming means we’re somehow unique, the only ones in the entire universe. Who says? They probably haven’t considered it, but maybe we were so screwed up we needed special attention…and THAT’S why He was born. We were drifting too far off course, so Providence sent help to steer us into a midcourse correction. You non-Christians can use the same reasoning for YOUR luminaries. It works every which way.

As I see it, I’ll bet there are lots of other sentient beings up there in our starry swirl, and God knows how many in all those other fuzzy swirls too far away for us to ever reach or learn from. I’m even willing to bet there are some beings who haven’t required Divine intervention.  Now, THOSE are the guys I’d really like to meet! It’s funny, because I wrote just such an alien into Dawn on Earth; I just didn’t realize it at the time. Life is a learning process…at least, mine is.
I was trying to show what I consider an ideal being, the likely product of a civilization and society on the right track from the beginning, someone who abhors violence, cherishes God, and lives a life of gentle love and the endless hope of helping others. Interestingly, in Dawn he changed after he was stranded on Earth and came to see the need for violence at times, and I for one didn’t really realize what was happening to him.
On a new planet threatened by rapacious intruders, he accepted our aggressive philosophy and DEFENDED those beings he had come to love, and maybe that’s what might actually happen when interstellar visitors confront others who don’t share their life concept. I, for one, sure as hell hope so. My innocent and pure alien decided violence in the defense of those you love is an absolute good, but while I agree with him, it’s the possibility of INTERACTIONAL change I find most interesting, change working both ways.
I feel sorry for Gamma, my perfect alien. He abandoned a pure and wonderful philosophy because he was stranded on a new and disturbingly violent world, but…you know…I think he gained something, too. He learned to identify EVIL, which he could never have known in his idyllic world, and he responded the way I hope we all would; he HATED it. In a way, it completed his education as a sentient being, but that’s just how it worked out for my buddy, Gamma.
Those creatures you dream up banging away at the computer sometimes surprise you…actually, a lot of the time. They sort of take on a life of their own while you watch, and if you’re smart, enjoy what’s going on. Gamma grew from my thoughts about the nature of goodness and went the only way he could when challenged, and I forgive him the choices he made, just like I hope SOMEBODY forgives me for some of the really dumb-ass choices I’ve made. Knowing Gamma, I’m sure he does, but the rest of you have to decide for yourselves…if you EVER read my book.
Actually, Defending Hope is the subtitle Dawn on Earth carries, and I MEANT it to be that way. Hope is the only thing we can hold onto when we tread uncertainly into frightening and potentially forbidding new experiences, but what I REALLY worry about is…what if the visitors are NOT like Gamma? What if hope is inappropriate? What if they’re really TERRIBLE assholes? Are we ready for them? I gotta say…not right now, but until they actually show up, my thoughts will remain only the stuff of FICTION.
We’re confidently comfortable and happy here on our perfect, beautiful blue planet, protected by the conceit of unbelievable distance way out on one spindly arm of our whorl, but what if it’s really self-delusion? WHAT IF THEY ACTUALLY COME? What will we do? What will our governments do…more importantly, what will THEY do? You know, when threatened, ostriches believe they can hide from danger, and they always give it a shot. I like ostriches. They’re beautiful, innocent, and hopeful creatures…but the lions almost always get them in the end.

Ever look up at night and wonder what’s up there? I don’t. I wonder WHO’s up there and what they’re like…and I think we can make at least one assumption. They’ll be proficient at adaptation. Simple survival can be achieved by decent numbers of beings just plodding away, but successful survival, dominance, requires the ability to deal handily with changing, unfamiliar events and surroundings…and that’s something they may not know about us. We adapt extraordinarily well…to almost anything.
We aren’t the fastest, the strongest, or even the most determined on this planet, and we can’t even say with certainty we’re the smartest. God knows what a dolphin or whale’s IQ is; we can’t even communicate with them. The extent of OUR interaction has been to kill a lot of them and trap others to perform endlessly, and the wild guys avoid us…who could blame them? Because they stick to doing their thing, we put them in the “dumb animal” category, but it’s also possible that knowing you have the life you love, relishing the sea and the treasures it holds, and enjoying it to the fullest suggests wisdom. I guess we’ll never really know.
We, on the other hand, aren’t always all that happy with with the environment we’ve been dealt, but we’ve succeeded EVERYWHERE, killing animals for fur when we’re cold, taking clothes off where we’re hot, finding new foods, taming unusual beasts, accomplishing life in the most unexpected places. Yes, we’re SMART. I’m even willing to put us in contention for the smartest, but when we’re seriously challenged, we instinctively narrow our thinking, focusing on the problem, trying to overcome it. If we can’t, we deal with it in a productive way and learn to live with it…we ADAPT.
I’ve marveled at that particular ability during…and most prominently AFTER hurricanes. It’s incredible how resourceful and imaginative people can be at those times, and new ideas seem to catch on IMMEDIATELY…when others realize they work. The trick is not to be the poor fool whose idea didn’t work, but even he contributes in a left-handed, mud-on-the-wall sort of way. He tells us what NOT to do, and the next time around, successful innovations have been improved, enlarged, shared, and usually in south Louisiana, tastefully painted. Like I said, we’re good at it. We’re human.
We’ve been working at it for eons. I can just imagine the looks on faces of desert nomads when a guy first walked up through the heat in billowing layers of light clothing. Most people were taking stuff off, but he was putting more on. He had discovered INSULATION, and you can just bet it wasn’t long before everybody was doing the same thing. They understood immediately…it works…Achmed looks comfortable, LET’S DO IT! And they’re still at it, by now improved almost into an art form.
We’re lucky. With our capacity to adapt and an extremely useful structure…two sturdy legs, two wide-range strong arms, hands built for manipulating things, binocular vision with good depth perception, and a gigantic information processor, we can go just about anywhere, survive, and find ways to make things better, not like other animals we know. With the possible exception of whales and dolphins, a lot of sea animals seem to be trying to be fish…not the soundest survival concept…and VERY limiting, and most land animals are hopelessly lacking in the processor department, relying mostly on instinct and the stastical security of a herd.
They’re STUCK where they are, damned to a life of reacting and responding, frequently in terror, never branching away, never launching anything remotely like imagination. Only our simian relatives are anything like us. After all, they share more than ninety percent of our genome, and they, too, succeeded in a way. They became US…and sometimes I think they know it. When I look at their sad eyes, their faces forced as far through the bars as possible, it seems like our biological cousins are wondering, endlessly asking themselves where WE went wrong. By the way, they adapt pretty well, too…just not as successfully.
I think other beings out in the starry swirl will probably look a lot like us at first glance…in form. It seems to be the most utilitarian, but if they visit within the next hundred years or so, we’ll know they’re a lot farther along than we. After all, THEY will have found US, while we’re still decades from visiting even the nearest planets in our solar system, and probably centuries from colonizing them…if we EVER get around to it. Personally, I think it will take some sort of impending threat before we really get serious about it. For now, I think we’ll have spectacular science programs on TV, politicians crowing, and a couple of people trudging around on Mars, like they did on the moon…little else.
No moon or Mars base, no colonization, nothing but a few flashy, well-publicised trips, and I don’t think that’s NEARLY enough. Lately, I’ve come to think contact will most likely occur within that time frame, the next hundred years, and as you can probably tell, I’m still troubled by those bright little things whizzing around up there in the sky…exciting and pretty…but worrisome. If they’re not manned, they’re drones, and if we didn’t make them, SOMEBODY ELSE DID, somebody with a very efficient physical form, a tradition of innovation…and most likely, a genius for adaptation. They all go together.

Actually, that’s one of the plot lines in Kukulkan, the sequel to Dawn on Earth, but besides our ability to adapt, we have another edge. We’ve been blessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of incandescent men and women who have taught us that kindness is better than hostility and good is preferable to evil, and for the most part…with exceptions here and there…you can fill in whichever trolls you prefer…we’ve incorporated those teachings into our lives. But meeting alien visitors who share that philosophy is NOT a given. They could be MEAN bastards…think Vikings…even Nazi aliens.
Who says they’re going to be NICE? I keep remembering all those movies, mostly in black and white…you know, people smiling, welcoming alien visitors…only to be blown to bits or incinerated. It sounds pretty much spot-on to me. They expected advancement to include kindness and benevolence, but as I said, that may be a CONSIDERABLE stretch. Actually, Clatu is the only exception I can think of…and we shot him in that movie. Of course, he got back at us, after he regenerated and Patricia Neal screamed a lot, and what he said was interesting. We have no idea what laws or moral code others may embrace…powerful, extraterrestrial others.
The sad fact is we’ve been the only successfully ADAPTABLE beings on this planet for so long we may have become a little smug about it. I mean, who’s going to challenge us? The only other species coming to my mind is dogs. They’re smart, too, but they seem to love us, carelessly relinquishing their innate adaptive capabilities. We’re alone in our slot…and it might be a problem. Secure as hell as top adapter, we’ve been coasting for maybe fifty thousand years, resting on our laurels and getting a little lazy about the whole concept in the process. We’re top honcho here…big deal! What about out there?
Others out there…if there are others out there, and I believe there are…will have adapted to something we’ve only begun to think about halfway seriously, space flight over enormous distances. When they come, whatever we do, however we respond, they’re probably going to consider us interesting…but primitive and incapable of anything threatening…sitting ducks, and ask any duck hunter what he thinks about that. THEY’RE EASY! We’d be caught off guard and incapable of responding effectively if they turned out to be hostile, and non-human is only a hair’s breadth from inhuman.
The way I see it, we need to do two things, hold on to principles luminaries have left us, and pray like hell the aliens have something like it in their history. In Kukulkan, I have a character, an alien, saying, “Kindness is not weakness, mercy requires more courage than battle, and good is better than evil.” God, I hope alien visitors share have that philosophy. If not, when our skies are filled with unfamiliar and threatening ships, we’ll be eyeball deep in you-know-what…adaptable or not.
If you think this is all imagination gone wild, read HISTORY, particularly the history of India and central Europe. Long before we took to the skies, people in those areas awakened to the sight of stuff like that up in the air…there are even paintings and woodcuts documenting it. The scary thing is it’s happened before, but it seems we were lucky then. They were at war with each other…not us, but WHO THE HELL WERE THEY…and will they come again? My answers are I have no idea…and yes, they will.

Since I got home, I’ve been going through the final draft of Kukulkan, the sequel to Dawn on Earth. I don’t plan to put it out until Dawn has been around for a while, but I thought it would be nice to have it in final form before I went on to other things. Working on the new novel took my mind back a few years because I used something in it I had actually seen…UFOs.
Yes, I’m afraid I’m one of THOSE people! I know it puts me way out there on the fringe, knew it at the time. I didn’t want to see them, wasn’t looking for them, just wanted to go out and get a burger, a cherry coke, and fries at the Dairy Den, but there they were up in the night sky doing their thing–two greenish-blue disks kind of dancing around each other…and they weren’t silent like they always say on the Sci-Fi channel. They emitted a clearly discernable hum. Cue spooky music.
“Corroboration!” I thought. “I gotta get corroboration,” so I ran into the nearest building (which turned out to be the small hospital in our town), telling people I found there to come out—NOW! I wasn’t about to be the only one to have seen those peculiar little things zipping around, ruining my appetite. Maybe twelve people followed me. At first, they thought there was a fire in the building, but when I showed them why I had dragged them out, they began to wish it had only been a fire. It was all so unexpected, so wierd, so intrusive on that beautiful late spring night.
Okay…at this point a lot of you are going to say, “That’s it…he’s a nut!” I know I would. Like a lot of us, I had heard about the Roswell thing and other “sightings”, and I considered the stories interesting, even fun…but never real, only creative fiction or imaginative witnesses. Now I was ONE of them, and you could be right. It’s not impossible that I’m nuts…but what about the other twelve? To impune their sanity is both statistically unlikely and spectacularly unfair, and you know, sometimes “You’re crazy!” really means, “Stop saying that; it scares me!”
And what about President Carter? He saw a UFO…said so himself. Is he nuts? I don’t think so. Actually, he’s been deservedly admired, respected, and honored despite the fact that he was intruded upon by whatever those things are…which brings me to two obvious questions. What the hell are they, and where do they come from?
At the time I didn’t think about aliens, I thought about the military, the often secretive Department of Defense, and I guess I could still be right. But if those things were produced on Earth, somebody’s been keeping one homungus secret at least since the nineteen-forties…and WHO had that kind of technology in those days? I guess we could always pin it on the Nazis, but wouldn’t they have used them if they had stuff like that? Makes sense to me. When they were losing, they threw everything they could at us, including jets.
That was then. Now, I’m a sci-fi writer, so quite naturally I’m more willing to explore the other option…extraterrestrials. In Kukulkan, I made the UFO’s robotic scout ships left by aliens to monitor the planet…and you know, thinking about it, that’s not really all that bad an idea. As you can tell, I STILL don’t buy those abduction stories, but aliens visiting here and saying “An interesting species…let’s keep and eye on them and see what they come up with” sounds plausible, even smart.
Anyway, it happened. I can’t erase it from my reality. I saw it, enlisted witnesses, and have wondered about it ever since. Turns out I was unnecessarily cautious. A lot of people saw those things that night. It was even reported in the news, but at the time I didn’t want to be the only voice in the wilderness…thirteen voices sounded much more comfortable. After that night I tended to watch the night sky more closely but finally gave up when I realized the odds of seeing them again. If I saw them tomorrow, it would be as big a shock as it was the first time.
You know, a lot of those sightings seem to happen in the south…and I wonder about that, too. Maybe it’s because the night sky up north is all lit up by huge cities. They could be up there but nobody can see them. Down south we have big cities, too…just not as many. I remember when I lived in New Orleans, straining to find even one star through the gloom, but in the country we have lovely dark places where the sky is black and clear, the stars bright, and things like my blue-green disks would stand out.
Maybe, in the south we’re more interesting to aliens. I mean…we’re fun people, true…but THAT INTERESTING? We do have a more laid-back lifestyle, but I can’t see how they’d find that such a big draw. Naw…if this is real, it’s gotta be the light pollution thing…unless they’re inordinately fond of grits…or Hoppin’ John…or gumbo. I hadn’t thought about that.