“Space is big. Really big,” as Douglas Adams observed. So why haven’t we seen any alien life yet?
Odds are a big universe must have some – or are the odds wrong? This is the Fermi Paradox, and today in pulp I’m looking at some of the novels that have explored it.
Don’t panic…
In 1950 Physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael Hart were chatting in the Los Alamos canteen when the topic turned to UFOs. Where were they? After a few calculations Fermi felt the probability of alien life was high enough; we just didn’t have any evidence ‘they’ were out there.
Frank Drake built on this in 1961. The Drake equation looked at the probabilities for how many stars and planets over what period could host life that could become intelligent and travel in space. Life on Earth meant the probability must be more than zero, but how much more?
Answers to the Drake equation vary, depending on the probabilities you assume. But arguments about the Fermi paradox have sparked a number of ideas about extraterrestrial life (or the lack of it) as well as a number of science fiction novels.
One theory involves the Great Filter: stages in the evolution of life that are very hard to pass through. For example if abiogenesis (the transition of non-living matter into life) happens very rarely then ‘life’ would be a huge lottery that few planets ever win.
There may be many Great Filters to intelligent life, so the odds of getting there are slim - evolution doesn’t care if we’re smart! Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (1969) is about our first encounter with aliens: they’re microbes, with no DNA, RNA or amino acids.
The Great Filter could mean we’re the first or only intelligent life so far. In Ursula K LeGuin’s Hainish novels life on other planets all comes from one ‘human’ world, Hain. Earth is a lost colony of Hain, with which it eventually makes contact.
More worryingly the Great Filter may be ahead of us: there’s something prevents most intelligent life from reaching the stars. For example in The War Of The Worlds (1898) it’s the alien immune system that stops the superior Martians from conquering Earth.
Quatermass And The Pit by Nigel Kneale (1959) is about another Great Filter: the idea that advanced intelligent life normally destroys itself. Quatermass finds evidence that genocidal Martians have tampered with Human evolution as their own world plunged into all-out war.
Assuming no Great Filter is insurmountable, we may be blind to alien life because it’s just too far away. In C. J. Cherryh’s novel Downbelow Station humans have only stumbled across it by chance, and are already at war over its resources.
We may also be unable to understand alien life because it’s so alien. Solaris (1961) is a planet with an intelligent ocean whose attempts to communicate with humans drive them to madness. Communication is not possible without a common language - thanks Wittgenstein!
Another Stanislaw Lem novel, Fiasco (1986) is about alien life that simply refuses to communicate with us, despite our threats to destroy it if it doesn’t. Only at the end does the protagonist realise the mounds of earth on the planet are actually the aliens.
Some books suggest aliens avoid contact with some planets until they become more mature. The Small, Still Voice of Trumpets by Lloyd Biggle Jr (1968) is about aliens who try to guide uncivilised planets to develop mature democracy before contacting them.
In Greg Eagle’s novel Quarantine (1992) aliens surround Earth in a force field to prevent it harming others, whilst Terry Bisson’s story They’re Made Out Of Meat (1990) suggests aliens are repulsed by how we look and deliberately avoid us. Looks like we're bad galactic news!
Many novels suggest aliens are secretly watching us: in Robert A Heinlein’s Have Space Suit Will Travel (1958) Kip Russell ends up defending ‘primitive' Earth at an interplanetary trial, persuading them we are child-like creatures who should be given more time to grow.
Of course Earth could be in a galactic backwater where ‘intelligent’ life is actually pretty dumb. A Fire Upon The Deep (1993) by Vernon Vinge describes Earth as being in a galactic ‘Slow Zone’, whilst other areas of the galaxy have different physical laws and more advanced life.
Aliens could think much faster or slower than us, making communication difficult. In Dragon’s Egg by Robert L Forward (1980) we discover aliens on a neutron star, whose huge gravity means they are as small as seeds and evolve and communicate at lightning speed.
Perhaps alien life finds the rest of the universe dull and prefers to live in cyberspace instead. Or we could be in a giant matrix, imagining we have free will but really being manipulated by AI. Or there are aliens in parallel pocket universes. The list goes on and on…
Whatever the answer to Fermi’s paradox, lets try and avoid the Singularity: a self-aware AI that upgrades itself so frequently it becomes intelligent beyond our comprehension and leaves us all behind. In which case I’d better get off the internet.
More stories another time…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Between 1960 and 1970 Penguin Books underwent several revolutions in cover layout, at a time when public tastes were rapidly changing.
Today in pulp I look back at 10 years that shook the Penguin!
Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, aiming to bring high-quality paperbacks to the masses for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. Lane began by snapping up publishing rights for inexpensive mid-market novels and packaging them expertly for book lovers.
From the start Penguins were consciously designed; Lane wanted to distinguish his paperbacks from pulp novels. Edward Young created the first cover grid, using three horizontal bands and the new-ish Gill Sans typeface for the text.
Today in pulp: a tale of an unintentionally radical publisher. It only produced 42 books between 1968-9, but it caught the hedonistic, solipsistic, free love mood of the West Coast freakout scene like no other.
This is the story of Essex House...
Essex House was an offshoot of Parliament Press, a California publishing company set up by pulp artist Milton Luros after the market for pulp magazines began to decline. It specialised in stag magazines sold through liquor stores, to skirt around US obscenity publishing laws.
By the 1960s Parliament Press was already selling pornographic novels through its Brandon House imprint, though these were mostly reprints or translations of existing work. Luros was interested in publishing new erotic authors, and set up Essex House to do just that.
Today in pulp... one of my favourite SF authors: Harry Harrison!
Harry Harrison was born Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925. He served in the US Army Air Corps during WWII, but became disheartened with military life. In his spare time he learned Esperanto.
Harrison started his sci-fi career as an illustrator, working with Wally Wood on Weird Fantasy and Weird Science up until 1950. He also wrote for syndicated comic strips, including Flash Gordon and Rick Random.
Today in pulp... Blade Runner! Let's look back at the classic 1982 movie and see how it compares to original novel.
"It's not an easy thing to meet your maker..."
Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? However 'inspired' may be a better word, as the film is very different to the book.
In the novel Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police. The year is 1992; Earth has been ravaged by war and humans are moving to off-world colonies to protect their genetic integrity. They are given organic robots to help them, created by the Rosen Association.
In the 1970s a fascinating engineering battle took place between America and Japan for control of the future. The prize was the world we live in now. And one of the key battles took place on your wrist.
This is the story of the digital watch...
'Digital' is a magical marketing word. Like 'laser' or 'turbo' it suggests progress, mastery and the future. People like those ideas. They like them enough to spend a lot of money on products that have them, especially if they can be a first adopter.
And so it was with the wristwatch. Electronic quartz watches were already a thing by the 1960s: an analogue movement driven by a quartz crystal resonator, powered by a small button battery.
But one American company was setting out on a new timekeeping odyssey...
Today in pulp... let's look back at a Shōjo manga artist whose work celebrated friendships between women: Jun'ichi Nakahara.
Jun'ichi Nakahara was born in Higashikagawa in 1913 and worked as an illustrator, a fashion designer and a doll maker. His work is highly regarded in Japan and he was a significant influence on modern manga art.
In the '20s and '30s Nakahara often drew for Shōjo no Tomo ("Girl's Friend") magazine. The style at the time was for demure, dreamlike imagery, but Nakahara added to this large expressive eyes, often reflecting the light.