#aliens

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another? ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#the-other #communication

Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI project's idea that we might communicate with extraterrestrial beings via telepathy is possibly a reasonable idea--if telepathy exists and if ETIs exist. Otherwise we are trying to communicate with someone who doesn't exist with a system which doesn't work. ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#science-fiction #telepathy #communication

Lily closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs as she made the scariest fall of her life, plunging to her certain death while clinging to her rescuer who really didn’t rescue her at all. ↗

— Missy Lyons

#aliens #falling #rescue #rescues #death

The problem with ID, of course, is that it leaves open the possibility that the intelligence behind nature may have a moral interest in us, having communicated already with humanity in the past, and might try to boss you around in your private affairs. With hypothetical advanced aliens residing at a safely distant address in the hypothetical multiverse, that is - to the relief of folks like Gribbin, Dawkins and the New Scientist - manifestly not the case. ↗

— David Klinghoffer

#aliens #dawkins #extraterrestrials #id #intelligent-design

Last-Minute Message For a Time Capsule I have to tell you this, whoever you are: that on one summer morning here, the ocean pounded in on tumbledown breakers, a south wind, bustling along the shore, whipped the froth into little rainbows, and a reckless gull swept down the beach as if to fly were everything it needed. I thought of your hovering saucers, looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down, so it wouldn't be lost forever - - that once upon a time we had meadows here, and astonishing things, swans and frogs and luna moths and blue skies that could stagger your heart. We could have had them still, and welcomed you to earth, but we also had the righteous ones who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War. When you go home to your shining galaxy, say that what you learned from this dead and barren place is to beware the righteous ones. ↗

— Philip Appleman

#atheism #believers #time-capsule #faith

Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants. ↗

— Stephen King

#friendship #science-fiction #friendship

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available. ↗

— Ted Chiang

#determinism #free-will #time #life

If only Myrtle would pay attention to the Boy's Own Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, etc., she would know that these creatures were Threls, who come from a worldlet called Threlfall on the far side of the asteroid belt. This Threlfall is a cheerless, chilly spot, and the whole history and religion of the Threls has been concerened with their quest to knit a nice woolly coverlet for it. ↗

— Philip Reeve

#aliens #astroid #humor #planet #plantets

Two blue men the size of football players walking through a store wrapped in Roman gladiator armor was bound to attract attention. ↗

— Missy Lyons

#aliens #blue-men #gladiators #roman #romance

A head began emerging out of the darkness. It had two large antennae growing out of its forehead, with nothing recognizable as eyes. A mouth in the middle of its face opened in what I hoped was a smile. At least there weren't any sharp teeth. ↗

— Mary G. Thompson

#kids-sci-fi #kids-science-fiction #middle-grade-sci-fi #middle-grade-science-fiction #sci-fi