Journal #35
February 16, 2009
Recently, Marshal Zeringue invited me to describe what I was currently reading for his blog.
For anyone who’s interested, the link: http://americareads.blogspot.com:80/2009/02/what-is-jack-mcdevitt-reading.html.
Readers frequently ask whether I’m pessimistic about the existence of aliens. And that’s often the adjective that’s used: pessimistic. I’ve never quite understood the enthusiasm for finding Martians. (Well, actually I have, but I don’t believe we’ve thought things out very well.) If we find anyone out there, the odds are quite good they will be technologically far superior to us. It’s hard not to conclude that the emptier the cosmos is, the safer it is.
I grew up with Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Startling Stories. Aliens everywhere. Venusians, Martians, Jovians, Neptunians. You couldn’t set down anywhere without finding natives with large snorkels. Then we got a closeup of another planet --I’ll never forget that first glimpse of the Martian landscape during what I’ve begun to think of as the Space Age-- and saw how bleak it was.
So okay. We figured out that you had to be orbiting in the biozone to produce life. The prospect for that other civilization moved to Alpha Centauri. But SETI was becoming a major player. By now we’ve been listening for more than half a century and hearing nothing more than our own heartbeat. I know what the explanations for this might be. But I‘ve always subscribed to Occam‘s idea that the simplest solution is probably the correct one.
It might be that life does not get started as easily as we’ve assumed. (We still don’t know how it happened.) Or it might be that shortly after you get electric lighting, you blow the place up. If it turns out we aren’t going to hear anything but echoes, these are the likeliest explanations.
We don’t like the idea. I’ve watched audiences get upset when I’ve suggested it. Called my imagination into question. Suggested I was a killjoy. But I wonder whether our instincts for romance and adventure don’t sometimes lead us a bit astray. And maybe never more than here.