Aliens have been in the news recently, largely because of Stephen Hawking’s comments about them in his new TV series, Universe. Also, Dr. Paul Davies’ recent book, The Eerie Silence, about SETI, the scientific search to find our extraterrestrial neighbours has been getting some press. (He was interviewed recently on the CBC’s science show, Quirks and Quarks). Many of the recent discussions have focused on the question, “where are they?”. After all, we’ve been looking for more than 50 years with ever more advanced technology, and with the exception of a few unique and unreproducible signals, there’s been no sign of life anywhere we’ve looked.
Yet even if we were looking in the right place, would we recognize alien life if we found it? Science fiction has been dealing with aliens ever since the first pulp magazines of the 1920s and 30s, to the point where bug-eyed monsters and giant silver spaceships are a cultural cliché. But what if the aliens don’t use spaceships? Or if they communicate by leaving messages in some place we’ve never thought to look? Is Anybody Out There?, a new anthology edited by Marty Halpern and Nick Gevers looks at the idea of the alien and the Fermi Paradox from several perspectives. You won’t find the clichéd aliens of Star Wars or V here – rather there are several stories that capture the true otherness of the alien.
- “Report from the Field” by Michael Resnick and Lezli Robyn plays with the idea of cultural relativity. It’s by no means the first time it’s been done in SF but this is a particularly good example and quite funny.
- “Where Two or Three” by Sheila Finch is a beautifully evocative story about a teenage volunteer in an old folks home and an astronaut who may have made the greatest discovery of all time, but apparently at the price of his sanity. I expect that this story will be a nominee for next year’s awards.
- In “Graffiti in the Library of Babel” by David Langford, the aliens are offstage (as they are in several stories in this book), known only by the obscure messages they leave in the world’s largest electronic library – messages that could convey great promises, or great danger.
- “Timmy, Come Home” by Matthew Hughes looks at the connection between the alien and insanity – perhaps those voices are real?
- In “Rare Earth” by Felicity Shoulders and Leslie What, the aliens are coloured balls of electricty that converge on Portland, Oregon, disrupting the life of a teenager and hs family. This story walks the delicate line between pathos and humour and never stumbles.
- “The Vampires of Paradox” by James Morrow, perhaps the most original story in the book and another likely award contender next year, would have made a good episode of Doctor Who as its philosopher protagonist tries to save a group of monks from parasitic aliens that thrive on paradox.
Not of all the stories in Is Anyone Out There work equally well – there were a couple that I couldn’t finish, and a couple of others that had good ideas but were marred by inexplicable choices of style or tone. But that’s going to be true in any anthology and this one holds up better than most with several truly memorable stories. It’s certainly a better anthology than last year’s The New Space Opera 2, which won the Locus Award recently for best anthology of the year.