Julie Nováková

The European Astrobiology Institute and the editors had a great idea for this book. Pair science fiction stories about extraterrestrial life with scientific perspectives on the themes embedded in the stories.

There are endless themes to explore — detection and recognition of life, recognition of intelligence, life as we know it, life as we don’t know it, ethical issues, communication with alien life, . . .

You’d think such a book would bias towards “hard science fiction” — stories show more that stick close to scientifically grounded facts and speculations, but there are more “fantastic” stories here as well. Eugen Bacon’s story, “Human Beans”, explores a “Super Earth” (not the astronomical use of the term) where humans and other life from Earth, some of it extinct, are transported away from the natural and human-created problems of our own planet.

Other stories stretch us into scientifically grounded, but severely stretched-out possibilities. Bogi Tokacs’ “Cyclic Amplification, Meaning Family”, suggests communication with an alien species via an exchange of prions, and is followed by a more general speculative discussion about the obstacles and possibilities of communication with aliens, by linguist Shari Wells-Jensen.

The stories that touched strongly on the theme of communication were especially provocative — how would we learn to communicate with an alien species, is it even possible?

Sharing a language is a complex matter — language is embedded in a world of things, meanings, actions, practices, and concerns. You can’t just exchange names for common objects and take off from there (if the alien species we’re trying to communicate with even has a language with names for objects).

I think one of the strengths of the collection is that it provokes us to question the kinds of assumptions we’ve grown into with popular depictions of humanoid aliens exchanging messages, maybe even serving together on Star Fleet starships.

Will we recognize life when we see it? Might it take completely unfamiliar forms, like highly structured clouds of magnetically charged particles? Might its metabolism move at such a slow pace that we don’t notice it? How, strictly speaking, do we draw the line between complex chemical reactions and biology?

Attempts have been made to define life, but as biologists here attest, there is no common agreed definition, at least not one without blurry edges and counterexamples.

And, if anything, “intelligence” is an even harder case. Would we know intelligence when we saw it? We have been painfully slow to recognize it in other Earth-based species.

Even if we restrict the kind of intelligence we are interested in to technological intelligence, we’re not on sure footing. Is a beehive technology? Is a bird’s nest, or a beaver’s dam? If we discovered such things on an alien planet, what would we think?

The commentary articles are not all by physical scientists. Obvously, the issues and themes range across all sorts of fields. And the articles include not just physicists, astronomers, and biologists, but also linguists, philosophers (from various branches of philosophy), anthropologists, and others.

So, this is going to make you think, and it’s going to make you think beyond the standard treatments of exoplanets, astrobiology, and cultural studies.

I’m going to give the book five stars just for that. I can’t say these are among the “best” or most riveting science fiction stories I’ve ever read, or even that the commentaries are consistently as insightful and thoughtful as I would have liked.

But this is a unique approach. I’d say it was a unique book altogether, but it turns out the European Astrobiology Institute has published another book with the same format, Strangest of All (unlike this one, that book is not available in print format). show less

Tentokrát poněkud dystopická současnost po epidemii, která vyhubila většinu žen. Není to ale něco na způsob Sexmise, spíš vcelku komorní příběh, který se odehrává v době, kdy jednotlivé zdecimované státy zkoušejí, jak daleko můžou kvůli celosvětové krizi zajít se zaváděním různých totalitních praktik. Patří spíš k tomu lepšímu v rámci cyklu, kapesní formát JFK ale neumožňuje některé motivy líp rozvinout - občas jsem měl pocit, že se show more některé věci odehrávají moc rychle (přijetí Kováře odbojáři) nebo trochu přebývají a mohly by se škrtnout nebo naopak rozšířit (Karlín). Trochu jsem doufal, že něco bude z hlavního padoucha, kdyby dostal víc prostoru, dalo se s ním ještě trochu pohrát. I když, on je momentálně skoro každý subboss v JFK zajímavější, než všemocně a tajuplně nudný X-Hawk. Každopádně přijatelné vlakové čtivo, které je postaveno i kolem nějaké nosné myšlenky (i když nutně podané vcelku polopaticky - jde hlavně o rozostřenost přechodu mezi totalitou a snesitelným režimem a otázku, kdy už se dá říct, že jsme na tom bídně) a ne jen kolem rekvizit. show less

An interesting SF anthology obtained as part of of the Kickstarter reward for the Life Beyond Us campaign. I hadn’t come across any of Nováková‘s fiction before, and enjoyed it very much. It would be interesting to see some longer fiction.

Recommended.