Science Fiction and Our Speck in the Cosmos

We're all connected, somehow, with each other… even if we don't know it, and today, I'd like to explore that with you. Sure, we're all living on the same planet, but that's not exactly what I mean. Every human being, every person, can trace a connection to someone else. As of the time I'm writing this, the population is at approximately eight billion. Now, consider the different ways you choose to spend your time. It isn't appropriate to say that you, reader, are one-in-a-million, because, mathematically, that would imply that there are eight thousand people, at least, exactly like you. What I will say, though, is that, while great mind think alike, the term «Great Mind» is subjective, and I don't mean that in what someone is going to say is a condescending manner, no. In a way, the term «Great Mind» is pretext until a skillset is known, and even then, all of the awards, metals, certificates, everything you could get is entirely subjective. I don't want to sound bleak, but it is. At the same time, we're just one tiny speck in the cosmos, which brings me to my real topic: alien life.

Alien life is a staple of science fiction, I believe that goes without saying, but when you take into account the sheer size of the universe, science fiction goes from being Star Trek and Back to the Future to, in some form, asking the question of what all is out there. I'm sure, though that no sci-fi writers ever go so far as to ask the question, but I like to keep the idea in the back of my mind, much the same way that I don't like to make assumptions about anything. I feel like it's a little narcissistic to mention, but at the same time, this is a website I made for my writing (even if it has turned into a place where I try to post thought-provoking articles every week instead). Think of the Voyager probes with The Golden Record (Voyager 1 and Voyager 2), they're carrying a golden record with the intent on being found by intelligent life, the same goes for the Pioneer Plaque (shown to the right) on Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. If anyone wants to make some comment about the "content", yes I'm aware that NASA etched a nude man and woman into a plaque that they shot up into space in the early 70s for aliens to find. That being said, if you have complaint, take it up with NASA. Anyway, on a cosmic timescale, we're incredibly young. Taking our first steps, young. Only hearing sounds instead of words, young. There's very little that we do know for certain when we mark out hypotheticals and anything that we cannot verify for certain, which is truly a whole lot.

Going against the grain of my own words, I do want to talk about my upcoming book, even if it's placed, factually speaking, squarely within the category of «fiction». No, the characters aren't anthropomorphic, it's a callback to the first character I created, in that regard, but that's not important. What I'd like to talk about is the premise of it. An eleventh grader (Seth Davis) finds an alien (Azathoth, seen to the left with his personal assistant and in mostly human clothing) and, because of this one event on an otherwise unmemorable evening, he has his entire perception of reality shifted, solely because life exists beyond the planet Earth. Up to that point in time, the most reality-shifting thing that had happened was that the internet was becoming known about by more people; a letter that used to take days or weeks to be delivered was now possible to be delivered, anywhere in the world, within minutes. Everything we see and do, with very few exception, has been limited to our one blue/green rock in the cosmos. I'm gonna say something, and part of it's just going to be to rile up a few people (might as well own it when it happens, am I right?). If extraterrestrial life exists, and they come to Earth after discovering the plaques and/or records that we've shot out into the cosmos, they're not going to care if someone's a commie or not. They're not going to care if you've pirated a movie. They're not going to care if you like weird music from Asia (I'm not referencing most people's tastes here, I have no shame in my own music library). They're not going to care if you like iPhone or Android, none of that will matter to them. As much as we like for it to matter to us (and as much as we have to babysit a few idiots who most certainly shouldn't be in charge of anything more than their own damn lunch, pardon the French), ultimately, none of it matters to anyone except for who created those constructs, which, in this case, is humanity. In a way, I guess I could say, with a strong degree of accuracy, that The Golden Record (the story) is about perception and how we're just one small speck in the cosmos.