Some alien thoughts...

nnnpr3 (35)in #aliens • 6 years ago (edited)

Today - 2nd of July is a UFO day (you know, Roswell and that) so I thought I'd write something about that.

I remember once I was talking to one of my dear friends. And I asked her: what do you wish the most in the world? She answered: that all my family is happy and healthy.

After a short pause, she inquired: What is it that you wish?

Well, I said without much delay, I wish that we get in touch with an extra-terrestial civilisation while I'm still alive...

That pretty much sums up the difference between me and my friend. Most of my friends, actually.

Photo by Jacub Gomez from Pexels

But seriously: don't you just wish we got in touch with an alien civilization and you could witness it with your own eyes? Or the eyes of social media, at least. I imagine they would all go haywire in such circumstances. Just imagine the selfies! That is, if we had time to take them before our planet is destroyed by Vogons (a hat tip to all the fans of the HGTTG!).

So here I will present you with a top-10 of my favourite alien stories, which influenced my imagination over the many years I have been thinking of the Fermi paradox:

10 - X Files

The aliens in this series are probably of the scary kind. I am saying probably because they supposedly infiltrate the US government, abduct people for experimentation and so on. But fundamentally they are a puzzle, a puzzle to be solved by two FBI agents representing rationality (Scully) and intuition (Mulder). And that dynamics was what drew me to the series in the first place.

9 - The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This is actually a series of 5 books, which I enjoyed but arguably was less and less invested in with each consecutive book. The best description of the books that I came across was "How to be English. In space". That about sums it up: the humour is very British (and I like it) and there is such a multitude of alien species that it makes your head spin.

8 - Doctor Who

My favourite British series of all times - I also am impressed by the sheer numbers of alien life forms invented by the authors but additionaly I love the deep humanistic message the series carries. (My all time favourite Doctor Who is the Tenth Doctor and favourite Doctor companion is Donna Noble!)

7 - Encounters of the 3rd Kind

Communicating with aliens is a difficult thing to fathom. Communication through music - a splendid idea!

6 - E.T.

A movie that defined my childhood. Need I say more? Watched it over 20 times in the 80s.

5 - District 9

Here we go into serious stuff. This is a movie more about us than about aliens and very current in the present time of immigration crisis.

4 - The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

This is quite a recent novel that takes place on a planet called Oasis where the local population (the aliens to us) are enthralled by the idea of Jesus Christ and to which a pastor comes to preach the words of the Lord. The novel touches the themes of alienation (in many senses), religion and cultural (mis)understanding in ways more than one.

3 - 2001: A Space Odyssey

If E.T. defined my childhood - this movie defined my teenage years. The mystery, the poetic nature, the philosophy - it all spoke to me at the time.

2 - Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness"

Again a tale of different cultures meeting and painfully trying to understand one another. The twist here is that the main character is also a bit alien to us and it is he who meets with a yet more stranger race of people with no fixed sex.

1- Number one has to go to my compatriot Stanislaw Lem, whose creation of the alien, sentient ocean in Solaris has influenced me the most in the philosophical sense. The impossibility of understanding alien life forms cannot be more vividly portrayed as in this novel. As an addition I'd recommend also "His Master's Voice" by the same author which discusses people trying to decode a 'message from space' and the possibility of contact.