• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Glad to meet you...

P

Prolixic

kickbox
No Spoilers Required

How realistic do you think SF writers are when they write about humans meeting aliens? Are they overly optimistic or overly cynical? List books, authors, and descriptions so we can discuss the answers.

For example in Footfall, by Niven and Pournelle, I think they hit the nail on the head. We'd probably be pretty excited about meeting up with an alien species if they showed up. But, if they were aggressive, they better come ready for a fight. These funny little bipedal human beings down here won't give up the Earth without taking a few of the the other guy--critter?--with them. Or even all of them if they could.
 
Maybe it's the same as with meeting people. You got your bad-tempered ones, and you got your friendly ones? Either way, I don't think any of us will have to worry about meeting an alien any time soon. We've been broadcasting our signals for over 50 years now, but they still haven't gotten too far, right?
 
In the Forge of God thats what brought the aliens down on the Earth. We were too loud and it cost us.

Conversely, in The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, they had long since quit using plain old radio to communicate so they wouldn't have even been equipped to pick up our signals. That was sort of a Utopian meeting with lots of friendly chatter and exchanges of drinks and technology--they had a penchant for whiskey if I remember correctly. Definitely the preferred brand of first encounter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top