One very common observation by moviegoers is that the book is better than the movie.
And It’s certainly that way for many books that have been made into movies.
But that actually didn’t seem to apply to one Stanley Kubrick.
My own favorite horror movie that I’ll be revisiting this spooky season is The Shining,
and it’s excellent in both book form and on film, though the two stories are actually
quite a bit different from each other and very good in their own ways.
And it continued, even the relatively recent sequel, Dr. Sleep is good in both forms if
you like Stephen King stories yet also the film version which works well with Kubrick’s
movie.
But sometimes it can get a bit weird.
2001, Stanley Kubrick’s very famous movie that he co-wrote with Arthur C. Clarke actually
stems from a short story written decades before by Clarke known as the Sentinel.
That one is still an interesting and good story for having been written in 1948, but
it’s very different from 2001, and indeed the movie actually predates the full on novel
length book of the same name, which became a series of novels that Clarke wrote.
But 2001 itself presents a very interesting hard science fiction scenario, where alien
von Neumann probes, the famous black monoliths, enter the solar system from afar and essentially
set up shop at the moon and elsewhere, Jupiter being one, all bearing a ratio of 1:4:9 but
varying in size.
There was artistic license taken in the very good sequel 2010 however, Jupiter simply does
not have the mass to become a star or it would have done it on its own, and if it did, then
Europa would be baked by it due to close proximity.
But the core idea of a civilization coming here and setting up shop is an interesting
one, and also a plausible one.
Such a thing could happen and in a way it’s mildly surprising that it doesn’t appear
to have ever happened in the history of the solar system.
So far as we know.
Yet.
So far, no convincing evidence of an alien presence in the past has been found in this
star system, even though it is possible.
But we’ve barely looked.
That discovery may yet happen if some ancient defunct technology is found in a protected
environment such as the moon or asteroid or even comet, afterall no comprehensive search
for this has ever been done for this, thus if there were something like Clarke’s monolith
sitting on the moon, we wouldn’t know about it unless we stumbled across it by chance
which is unlikely at this stage since we’ve barely explored its surface.
And that’s one thing with SETI near and far, we’ve only just started looking and
the mantra it’s never aliens, comes with a second part.
Until it is, people often forget that these days.
It’s a statement of ambiguity of detection, but does not speak to an unambiguous detection.
But the search is broadening, with many countries now sending probes to the moon to expand our
data set and increasing SETI experiments worldwide.
Likewise, many of the moons of the solar system present very ancient surfaces that could also
sport artifacts of a past visit or even past colonization by aliens, though oddly, despite
its position as a good place to look for life in the solar system, Europa is not among them
for a technosignature.
Europa renews its surface geologically through periodic upwellings from the subsurface ocean,
so it shows a sometimes shattered and mottled surface that does not preserve many craters,
and any artifact that might have been there is now likely just some kind of remains at
the bottom of the subsurface ocean or ground to powder over the eons.
But as to other bodies in the solar system that might preserve evidence, it doesn’t
have to be close to earth, we have no idea how many minor planets, and indeed major planets,
might lurk undiscovered in the Kuiper belt and beyond.
We’ve only just barely begun to explore this region, yet anything out there might
also have served as a point for depositing artifacts.
Even stranger, since these objects might remain undiscovered, even if they were still active
we wouldn’t actually know it necessarily, even if there were a full on alien colony
located on an object in the outer solar system.
Doesn’t seem to be the case for the ones we've seen, but for the ones we have not seen
up close it’s an open question.
This has led to some interesting papers in the past suggesting that we might search Kuiper
belt objects for artificial lighting signatures that might indicate an alien presence far
out there, perhaps placed out there specifically to avoid interference with the inner solar
system and our development.
Interestingly, any of those objects could host enough radioactive decay in their cores
to maintain oceans under ice shells, and thus a source of energy despite being distant from
the sun for a civilization to maintain an observational outpost on one.
That’s not to say that they do, it seems unlikely, but it is plausible.
But for what purpose?
In 2001, the idea was to seed life, and in the subsequent story 2010 we received the
message that all these worlds are yours, except Europa; attempt no landing there.
The aliens themselves were so incomprehensible that they never directly appeared in the films,
only their monoliths and effects did, only communicating directly with that one message,
and to a degree through what was David Bowman.
But there may be other options for a civilization to set up shop in a star system other than
to seed life through artificial panspermia.
Indeed life on earth shows no evidence of this kind of manipulation genetically, though
in the very earliest stages of it is an unknown.
Rather it may have been off limits to intervene.
Another reason a civilization might come here would be science.
If you have a developing civilization in a star system, or even a general trend towards
intelligence, then alien scientists may find that extremely interesting.
A true abiogenesis separate from their own, and that might drive them to set up a science
station to watch, but do everything possible to not affect it.
After all, that would be contamination, and the whole point would be to see a pristine
example of the formation of life and intelligence.
That may indeed be a great question in the universe for all that get to a level to wonder
about it.
Often it’s asked why aliens would care about us, we’d be ants to them, microbes even
less interesting than that, but this is a misguided viewpoint in that firstly our scientists
are scientists, they study ants, and just about everything in the natural world they
can taking precautions not to contaminate their experiments.
That may be universal.
How interesting is a scientific discovery if you’ve contaminated it.
At some point interference becomes an engineering project instead of a study.
But going by humans and how we are, If we found aliens, our scientists would do everything
they possibly could to learn whatever they could about aliens discovered from a distance
or closeby.
They’d jump at the chance and talk about not contaminating it with biases and microbes,
lest we not be able to learn as much as we could have had we not done that.
And most certainly, If we had some magic way to go see them directly, we would.
It would not matter how primitive they were, it’s an exploration of life in the universe
and we’d set up shop and watch if we could.
But not necessarily intervene, the prime directive after all.
So the idea that aliens wouldn’t be interested doesn’t make sense in the context of our
own civilization and our motives and behavior, yet you’ll often see it said.
We would be like ants to them.
Well, so what if we are, that still wouldn’t prevent them from being interested in the
ant hill call earth.
Though in fairness, sometimes people pour molten metal into anthills to make beautiful
sculptures crafted by ants locally driven to extinction of their colony via molten metal
poured by a human.
The artist destroys the subject in this case.
Not good if that ever happened to us somehow.
Another motive for a civilization to come here would be as a stepping stone to another
star system, a sort of rest stop that has plenty of water ice and useful materials that
they could use for resupply before moving on to their ultimate destination.
Perhaps the most famous story in this grain is Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, where
a craft passed through but ended up having no interest in us.
There are also unknown factors, it’s an alien civilization, it may have motives and
interests far different from our own and may not be clear at all just why they would be
here.
Least likely however is an invasion with the intent of conquest.
This is a very common trope in sci fi, but one that doesn’t entirely make sense in
that first you’d be damaging the planet you’re trying to take over by waging a war
with its natives, but you’d also have to target this world for some specific reason,
such as if we were building some dangerous technology that poses a threat to the rest
of the galaxy, something we are not currently doing.
What they likely would not do is come here to steal the resources, because space is full
of the very same resources but in a much easier access form locked up in comets, asteroids
and low gravity moons as opposed to high gravity planets that take a lot of energy to get the
materials into space.
But there is another possibility here.
While they may not want to destroy the inhabited planet in a system, they may have no problem
terraforming another member of the same system.
This gets into a question of ownership at large.
Aliens may have no concept of this, and may feel that any unclaimed exoplanet is open
for colonization.
They may not take the worlds of other species, but they may take worlds in that species’
star system that are unclaimed.
After all, there really isn’t that big of a difference between a von neumann probe sitting
in a star system utilizing the resources of its asteroids, and something similar colonizing
an uninhabited planet in a similar fashion.
This actually brings up an odd scenario however.
It really depends on how an alien sees the universe and its own expansion, but it may
be that star systems themselves are off limits if they have a budding civilization in them.
The reason is that while an iron age civilization won’t make use of the resources of its star
system, they are close enough to the technology needed to do that to envision that someday
they may become space faring.
If a non-interventionist alien civilization were to realize that, they might not steal
the resources of a star system, rather simply leaving them intact for the budding civilization
to use as they progress.
Think of it as an extended prime directive not just covering an inhabited planet, but
an entire star system that will eventually be inhabited.
This oddly is actually a viable solution to the Fermi Paradox, but somewhat different
from a normal zoo hypothesis scenario in that there would be no zookeeper civilization per
se, but a ranger civilization guaranteeing non-intervention on the scale of solar systems
to prevent the depletion of a star system’s resources before the civilization native to
it can make use of them and take its place among the galactic community.
In this situation, the great silence should be no surprise.
But someday, the silence will be broken when we head out there and make contact with the
rangers.
But not until then, before that we must remain in protected ignorance.
But herein is the halloween scenario.
At some point, a civilization may decide to come to the solar system not to invade earth,
but rather invade Mars.
Say an alien civilization shows up and begins to alter Mars into whatever they feel is an
ideal environment for them before we have a chance to colonize it ourselves.
This is highly unlikely for a number of reasons, not hte least of which is they would need
to literally show up right now by chance and start work since it seems likely we will have
a permanent presence at Mars within 50 years, if not less.
But to entertain it anyway, they might build an enormous civilization on Mars right before
our eyes and there is nothing we could do about it, at least with current technology
short of mounting nukes on gigantic rockets and launching them.
Not the greatest of plans however, since if you’re dealing with a more advanced civilization
than you are, then you’re not going to win a war against them.
We’d just have to sit and watch.
Perhaps more possible is that of an alien civilization that has not yet reached space
technology, a situation humans were in for longer than 250,000 years, and another technological
civilization sets up a colony in their star system.
When the primitive civilization reaches its age of telescope astronomy, their Fermi Paradox,
if they have one, would be solved instantly by looking at the other worlds of their system.
This would be alarming from the start, because they’d immediately have a boss that might
never have interfered with them before their space age, but still controls their immediate
space, meaning that they probably can’t explore space much themselves with the police
at the door.
I think the most spooky end of this scenario is what happens if the dominant advanced civilization
in this case never makes contact or says a word to the locked in civilization so long
as they never leave their world.
Stay at home, stay safe.
Venture out, and you might get their attention.
Don’t do it.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently envisioning the opposite.
What if the aliens came here, started terraforming Mars, and invited us along for the ride.
I’d imagine the first thing we’d do is set up franchise restaurants and introduce
the aliens to oyster bars, only to horrify the aliens who descended from analogues of
clams.
Thus the intergalactic unpleasantness begins and be sure to check out my books at your
favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations
into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.