The Problems with Extraterrestrials

I have worked on my fourth science fiction novel for the past five years, off and on. It has all the big reveals of what has really been happening in the first three novels and looks to be the last in the current series of which happened back in 1972 for my characters. I have also started a fifth book in the series that takes place 45 years later, (just to confuse the issue), but not to digress, my problem has been, all along, aliens.

I went for some simple solutions; there is established space warp technology, very limited faster-then-light communication and a thriving set of extraterrestrial civilizations some 1,200 light-years nearby. I even threw in a causality loop that created some serious problem for all involved. The reptilian aliens I created are called the Na, pretty much a direct steal from my old friend, Alan Dean Foster and his Humanx Commonwealth series. One of his alien races is called the AAnn, (so therefore my Na, just backwards), and they are of course, reptilian. I know rather quite a bit about Alan’s work since I co-wrote and fan published a Concordance of his epic series. But, once again, I digress.

In reality, I do not believe that we would ever have any kind of peaceful contact with extraterrestrials. In fact, my book aliens barely decided not to knock down human civilization and just preferred to wait until the great filter had its way with us. I have blogged on this subject before and so in short, the great filter is that all civilizations will self-destruct in one way or another through environmental degradation, war, pollution, using up all available resources, population expansion, climate change, famine, disease or others. And this is looking more and more possible on our planet. Unless we have the will to face all of this, then yes, we do have a more then likely possibility creating unsolvable problems. So once we immolate ourselves, they, (my aliens), will come to save us from ourselves. Though why any other group of creatures would want to govern us is way beyond me, we can’t govern ourselves and having someone completely different around would be a definite cause for war. So why not just eliminate us all and let the planet heal and come back in a hundred years and occupy it for themselves?

Good question that, we are such an infantile group that contact would be an extreme trial, and why would you put up with the equivalence of a bunch of termites ruining everything in the house? Perhaps I should write a more realistic novel where the aliens want nothing to do with us? Pretty boring that, and why should I assume that other creatures would be anything like humans? Perhaps there are some smart, nice people out there, now wouldn’t that be a novel twist and a big surprise?

(Maybe I am just projecting off the recent elections and it’s aftermath. But God forgive me, I would just like to see some common sense and intelligence around here for a change. ET, don’t phone home, we are beyond help.)

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