A long time ago in a galaxy far away, the chances are that nothing happened and if it did, we are never likely to know. This book goes through every fallacious belief we have ever held about the possibilities of faster-than-light travel, transporter beams, wormholes, flying saucers and close encounters. It systematically builds them up and takes them apart.

To demonstrate how aliens are most likely not among us, or at least not in the manner we may expect, Rod MacDonald has created the Exordicans. They, he tells us, lived on a distant planet many millennia before Earth came to be inhabited. The planet civilisation developed to such an extent that interstellar space travel became possible.

Alongside the ability to choose more or less eternal life, this means that these 'people' can travel. They become the explorers of space but the circumstances allowing them this chance means they are the most introspective bunch ever to set off on a journey. The Exordicans travel in several converted asteroids and eventually end up here.

He details the changes their bodies and minds go through and reasons they might have for stopping off on Earth. Soon it becomes apparent that he is describing the familiar picture that is drawn by abductees around the world: the grey alien. He develops his arguments quite comprehensively in a series of chapters.

It is a learned and scientific approach that manages not to talk down to readers like me. It is an essay that chooses fact over belief but backs up his arguments in an enjoyable and entertaining way.

It is not a trivial approach and may well give SF directors cause to throw away their film scripts as he debunks practically anything ever made or wrote about the subject with suitable references to popular culture.

With two useful appendices about evolution and extending life you will now be armed with the knowledge to shoot down in flames anyone who dares to suggest that the alien encounters of 'Taken' are in any way realistic scenarios.

Despite all that it makes me wistful because with this knowledge backed up with solid science, I will no longer 'watch the skies' for ET or hope for a close but benign encounter. Read and enjoy but ‘Star Trek’ will never be the same again!

~ Sue Davies
SF Crowsnest.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alien Psychology paints a scenario for an alien arrival that wouldn't include faster-than-light physics, a staple of various other discussions about alien mind-form. Rather than sort through a mountain of ex-official reports and witness testimonies about now-familiar kinds of aliens and off-world thinking, the author begins from a simple premise: the speed of light can't be violated; hence, any aliens who might arrive here would be cold and pathetic drifters.

The author begins with fairly taut reasoning, but, just when I was expecting him to discuss the most credible of human-alien encounters, he dismissed most, including Roswell, as nonsense and began, instead, with a fictional idea of aliens who travel between stars by hiding themselves within propelled asteroids. Despite the fact that every several generations brings a seemingly impossible breakthrough in physics and our view of the universe, MacDonald seems to think that the Einstein limit is definitive, that no alien will ever surpass it.

In his speculative scenario, aliens bio-engineer humanoid robots with neither soul nor emotion – to do their menial work. He doesn't anticipate that aliens will try to make themselves obvious in order to nurture human awareness toward a higher form of cosmic awareness. Instead, he assumes that aliens would try to avoid human detection. MacDonald says he knows that if aliens were known to our military in the 1940's, we'd be hearing the military's anti-alien harangue by now and wouldn't have bothered with the Soviets. In concluding, he suggests that alien longevity may be a degrading experience and discusses ways to both detect and defend against an alien incursion.

~ George LoBuono, Author

We accept payment via: