Roadside Picnic

by Arkady Strugatsky

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.

The problem is we don’t notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.

Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”

intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.”

ouch, sounds a lot like most jobs....

Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.”

if this is the definition, not sure that humans have intelligence