In Dreams Awake

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Tuesday 19 March 2019

Bones under our Feet

 I write about other worlds, and other species. In reality, though, are such things likely?

 Physics says yes. If life can begin it will begin. NASA says there are over a million hi-tech civilisations in our galaxy alone. Biology says no. Life on Earth had to survive so many setbacks, jump through so many hoops, that the chance of another spacefaring species emerging is almost nil.

And out there we see nothing, hear nothing. No signals, no relics, no ruins, no energy leaks. Zilch.

 There are lots of theories as to why. One says that we're alone after all, the single spark of intelligence in the universe. Another says these cultures do arise... but then they fall. All of them. So then we ask why, because we can imagine things that might end a species like that - a nearby supernova, a supervolcano on the home world, a meteor strike, and so on. But none of those would finish EVERY civilisation. That totality points to something deliberate. Something that hunts and destroys.

 It doesn't really matter. Whatever it is, it must happen to species just as they emerge into space,because otherwise we'd see some evidence of them. Huge solar sails that change the light signatures of a star, for example. We don't, so disaster must occur before they're built - and that means we humans are barrelling straight at it.

 It's not a nice image, is it? A galaxy full of ghosts. Ruins on world after world, haunted by the people who built them and then died out. If humans ever did get out there we'd be crunching bones under our feet with every step. It's very dark, very despairing... but it draws me. Non-human species crying out from the past, speaking through fragmentary inscriptions and the buildings they left, while others try to piece together who they were.

 Quite an image, and it works as well in Fantasy as in SF. And in both genres, a bit of creativity in the plot might mean the dead aren't quite that dead after all.

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