They say that when NASA’s head of exobiology research read the first message, he fainted. They say that when he was revived, he picked up the paper on which the message was printed, read it through once, and fainted again. Whether Anderson Wiley actually fainted, the story became symbolic of the beginning of a new era. This was Mankind’s first contact with intelligent creatures from another star, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Monthly Archives October 2010
06 – The Wind
It was the sound of the wind that got me in the end. It blows over the abandoned houses and around the dead still cars that litter the highways, and listening to it is like voyeurism. It’s a kind of intimacy, the sound of wind flowing over the vacant works of man, as if this is what nature only does when no one is around to see.
05 – The Goats
Our purpose was to bring upon the earth a superior species of flying spider goat. It is easy to criticize with the advantage of hindsight what seemed at the time a faultless, if idealistic, goal – but I think if you examine honestly the problems that ensued, you will find that none could reasonably have been predicted, let alone prevented. The sad truth is that the flying spider goat was an inevitable development, and the consequences of that development correspondingly unavoidable.