| Prescient E.T. Contact SciFi | |
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7 Mar 2005 @ 16:43, by Craig Lang
This weekend, I did a series of presentations at the MarsCon science fiction convention. I did talks on the UFO/close-encounter phenomenon and first contact, as well as conducted a meditation/guided-imagery workshop.
This year I did my First-Contact talk jointly with Kathy Sullivan, an SF author who is also interested in E.T. contact topics. She did a survey of the SF literature on alien contact, both past and present, while I talked about (real or potential) non-fiction scenarios of contact. We had not jointly pre-planned our talks, so they were not particularly coordinated with eachother. But what I found was that they particularly dovetailed anyhow.
One thing that I noted was how prescient much of the SF literature is. It seems that SF - especially as related to technology and space travel - frequently is about 20 to 200 years ahead of its time.
Thus, I was intrigued by the idea that first-contact now seems to be one of the most frequent themes in SF. Kathy found a plethora of such books - which all seemed to fall into one of three categories:
- We meet the E.T.s as we travel out there
- The aliens come to Earth - in peace or (more often) otherwise...
- An alien craft crashes on Earth - and its occupants interact with humans in one of a myriad of possible ways.
Kathy described a truly wide variety of contact scenarios. However, I noted that (at least to a very great degree) the literature to date does not seem to deal much with the idea of covert interaction between humanity and E.T. Visitors. In particular there is not all that much SF literature on UFO abduction. I also noted that there seems to be less about the idea of Star-Trek-like prime directive then on many of the other scenarios.
It also seemed that very few recent works of SF have picked up the theme of emergence and growth in preparation for contact - although there are some noteable exceptions to this statement. The idea of gradual, careful contact (where humans are contacting indigenous species of other worlds) is picked up by Gene Rodenberry in many ways. Carl Sagan's "Contact", and Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's end" both talk about human emergence in preparation for contact. Yet few to none talk about humanity as being the object of an alien prime directive.
Does this mean that many SF authors have not yet picked up on this? Does it mean that the idea that SF is prescient of actual social/technological advances may break down here? Does it mean that the SF genre has a vision that the rest of us don't yet share? Or does it mean that I simply haven't yet found the right sci-fi stories?... :-)
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Category: Extraterrestrials
2 comments
8 Mar 2005 @ 19:15 by : SF
If you leave out the thought of a visual contact and with a visual UFO encounter you may just have alot more info then you realize. Could it be that those communicating to us through meditation is partly those aliens you seek. Our spirit guides actually those you call aliens, I believe you may find it interesting if you get out of the belief that we haven't had contact yet when the majority of people actually have in many different means. Those aliens just may be us from another dimension.
8 Mar 2005 @ 22:24 by : Indeed
Thanks for the note, Marie.
That was somewhat out of the realm of what we were considering in that particular workshop. You're right in that regard. We were more focused on contact with physical ETI than with any mental/spiritual or extradimensional ones.
I didn't see a whole lot of the more spiritual focus in the first-contact SF genre. I've noted that many of the SF afficionados tend to be pretty physical-oriented and hard-boiled. They tend to largely congregate in the SETI community, which is pretty much non-spiritually focused. Their creativity takes a different direction, and as such, I find that contactees tend to far outpace SF writers in that arena.
Thanx again for your note.
-Craig
Other entries in Extraterrestrials
30 Aug 2008 @ 22:45: A candle for Edward Elmer
2 May 2008 @ 10:10: The Hunab Ku coming into Focus; NOW
12 Nov 2007 @ 13:08: RECONNECT and RE-MEMBER! Relationship Report for November
13 Aug 2007 @ 22:18: Creating the EarthStar Creation Civilization
24 Jul 2006 @ 17:46: Aliens, Allies and Discernment
7 Jul 2006 @ 21:39: Hidden Contact -- The Fermi Paradox and The Deardorff Hypothesis
1 Jul 2006 @ 16:19: UFOs, Rainbows and Bare Earth
23 Jun 2006 @ 18:34: Response to Space.com 'Ten Alien Encounters Debunked'
18 Jun 2006 @ 19:50: 2006 Crop Circle..
18 Jul 2005 @ 17:15: Seth Shostak's Glass House
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