When I look at the night sky, I don’t wonder whether alien life is somewhere out there; I think it probably is. Considering the sheer number of stars in the cosmos, and the possibly larger number of planets that revolve around them, the idea that humans are alone in the universe strikes me as unlikely. So, instead, I wonder: What is that life like, and will we ever encounter it?
Searching for extraterrestrials is, generally speaking, the province of scientists. But I’m a writer, and many of us also seek answers to equally fundamental questions about our fellow humans. As I found while working on my own novel, writing about aliens can be strangely helpful in this pursuit. Just as astronomers use telescopes to examine celestial objects light-years away, novelists can invoke imagined civilizations to reveal truths closer to home, in part by forcing their characters into contact with alien environments and worldviews. These fictional interactions challenge assumptions about relationships and consciousness, allowing authors to ask how universal our values really are. In the following six books, each writer looks to space to skillfully explore what it means to live on Earth.
Contact, by Carl Sagan
This groundbreaking novel, first published in 1985, examines the divide between blind faith and evidence-based belief—and how readily one can blur into the other. When the Earth’s population receives an alien radio signal that includes instructions for building a mysterious machine, people must decide together what to do with it. In many ways, Contact celebrates humans’ ability to work in unison, even as it acknowledges how easily our pursuit of progress can lead to self-destruction. The science advocate’s passion for teaching comes through in his clear prose and clean explanations, and his novel offers a sense of hope that is rare in modern speculative fiction: When the advanced alien beings ultimately appear, they show their goodwill by taking the form of the humans’ “deepest loves.”
[Read: America is killing its chance to find alien life]
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
Salvation and exploitation go hand in hand in this story by one of science fiction’s all-time greats. Dawn’s main character, Lilith, awakens in the care of an alien species long after Earth has been destroyed by nuclear war. These beings, the Oankali, seem magnanimous, but Lilith soon learns that they are not selfless; they are acting on a biological imperative to merge their genes with those of other taxons. Lilith is charged with preparing other awakened humans to help repopulate a revitalized Earth, but she knows that if she accepts and succeeds, future generations of her species will become something very different from her. Complex and unflinching, Dawn explores thorny issues involving consent and power; most forcefully, the novel contemplates what it truly means to love another being.
Singer Distance, by Ethan Chatagnier
In the alternate reality of Singer Distance, an alien civilization exists on Mars—but it’s not much interested in humans. Chatagnier’s Martians blaze mathematical proofs across the surface of their planet, big enough to be visible by telescope, but they eschew all other forms of communication. They deign to acknowledge our existence only when we display a correct answer across the Earth in turn. The story opens in the 1960s, during a long communication gap, as a group of MIT graduate students sets out to solve a proof that stumped the greatest minds of the previous generation (including Albert Einstein). This gorgeous novel explores obsession from multiple angles, asking how far people will go to find the answers that they feel they need. And when a breakthrough with the Martians does come, it’s enabled by another universal language—art—to beautiful and touching effect.
[Read: An alien movie for a post-truth moment]
Providence, by Max Barry
Seven years before the start of this novel, an alien species slaughtered everyone aboard a human spaceship—Earth’s first contact with extraterrestrials. Providence follows the four-person crew of an interstellar warship on a multiyear mission of revenge. Through each voyager’s distinct perspective, the book explores artificial intelligence, social media, and the effects of extended isolation. One character doesn’t care about these aliens’ civilization; he is content just to kill as many as possible. Another is driven to discover more; a third is focused on maintaining the morale of the others, even as she herself unravels. And their captain has to balance their individual needs against the requirements of the mission. Barry provides riveting, rewarding action without sacrificing smarts or character development. This quick read explores mankind’s dueling urges to connect and destroy, our divergent responses to the unknown, and how far some among us will go to protect ourselves and the people we care about.
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, by Kim Choyeop, translated by Anton Hur
In Kim’s first story collection translated into English, she takes a few different approaches to what connecting with extraterrestrials might be like. One story challenges the notion that contact with another species is likely to lead to conflict, instead tying the evolution of human morality to a symbiotic relationship with an alien race. What might it mean if, perhaps, the basic goodness of children were rooted not in innocence but in another world’s wisdom? In another story, set in the far future, a scientist who had disappeared decades earlier reappears in an emergency shuttle, claiming to have been saved by a technologically primitive alien race. In this scenario, our two species share many physical similarities but have one major divergence: These aliens do not appear to believe in death. This culminates in one more hypothetical: What if art could literally transport a soul?
[Read: The truth is still out there]
The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Arik Kershenbaum
In his nonfiction exploration, Kershenbaum asserts that our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth provides a solid scaffolding for projecting what alien organisms might really be like. An exoplanet with an Earth-like environment, for example, could give rise to species with similar adaptations to those we have here—which isn’t to say that giraffes roam on faraway worlds, but instead that where the equivalent of tall trees grow, creatures with the equivalent of long necks are likely to evolve. Intelligent species—ones we might think of as our peers—may also display adaptations such as language and cooperation, because they play key roles in our own survival. The zoologist’s thought experiment, both enthralling and logically sound, addresses perception, communication, and intelligence, and he wonders whether we might one day expand the word humanity to include alien species. At the same time, the book challenges readers to upend how they see the animals with whom we already share our planet. Is there any sense in which they might be considered human too?
The post Six Surprisingly Human Stories About Aliens appeared first on The Atlantic.
