From Middle America to the Ends of the Universe

Happy Wednesday and Happy New Year!

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions-if something is worth starting it’s worth starting regardless of the calendar-but I support people who do. And if your resolution is to read more indie science fiction in 2026? Even better.

As I mentioned last time, the book I’m currently writing has the unscintillating working title “Toffib War Book 1.”

Since you’re wondering, I can say the Toffib are non-human intelligent life-forms. Aliens.

I don’t write very often about aliens. The only other novel of mine with live aliens is Azureseas: Cantrell’s War. (The ones in Exploration 2127 went extinct a million years ago). Aliens also appear in a few short stories, such as “Return Blessing” (collected in Extravehicular Activities) and “The Ultimate Wager” (collected in Stage Separations). But most of my science fiction is set in futures where we’re the only intelligent life for thousands of light-years.

There are two reasons why.

Aliens would be alien

I don’t blame Star Trek for the paradigm of aliens being humans with facial prosthetics. The human imagination is limited. It’s much easier to envision aliens who behave like us and look like bipedal, thumbed versions of cats or dogs.

(And we can’t forget Star Trek gave us a silicon-based rock lifeform Spock mind-melded with).

Some parallel evolution can be handwaved - one of these months I’ll tell you why aliens will wear pants - but to paraphrase author Joe Haldeman, “If your aliens are less foreign than the Japanese, you’re doing it wrong.”

It takes time to write aliens that are truly alien. For example, the other day I spent five minutes coming up with this detai: the Toffib have shaded membranes instead of constricting pupils to protect their eyes from bright light. Multiply that by a hundred other details, of anatomy, physiology, and behavior. The time to write it right adds up.

Of course, that time would be well spent if I thought humanity will eventually encounter aliens.

My best guess is aliens are not out there.

Why?

Aliens should have discovered Earth by now

Star Trek’s aliens had a far more unbelievable feature than looking like people. The Klingons and Romulans, as well as more obscure aliens like the Gorn (and, if the animated series is canon, the Kzinti) were all on about the same tech level as Earth.

Why is this unbelievable? Because the galaxy has billions of stars like the sun, but older. Millions or even billions of years older. Which means life could have arisen on billions of Earth-like planets, and intelligent species arise on those planets, millions or billions of years ago.

If a species could explore the galaxy at even 0.1% of the speed of light, it would explore the entire galaxy within 100 million years.

Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Human biochemistry is too similar to the rest of Earth life for us to be descendants of alien settlers who’ve forgotten their origins. (Sorry, fans of Larry Niven’s novel Protector). And if all life on Earth was seeded by an alien species 4 billion years ago, we should be able to detect their transmissions and interstellar ships today.

Star Trek handwaved this possibility by having all its highly advanced aliens who’d progressed beyond the grossly physical realm. I forget the name of the pure energy beings who rigged the duel between Kirk and the Gorn captain - the Orgullians? But how did those energy beings behave when they had bodies and the same urges for life and expansion as us?

Which is a roundabout way of saying, it’s quite likely we are the first intelligent species in galactic history.

I’ve speculated about why in a number of blog posts. Forms of social organization required to get from pre-sapience to intelligence are rare among animals. Maybe Earth was incredibly lucky to have fossil fuels to bridge the energy gap between burning wood and splitting atoms (“Zombie trees liberated humanity from the Great Filter”). Maybe human beings were fortunate that ethanol is just poisonous enough (“Was the Great Filter beer?”). It’s a recurring and interesting question that I’ll keep coming back to., in blog posts and works of fiction.

(Including a possibility explaining not only the comparable tech levels of the Federation and its rivals, but also the interfertility of Vulcans and human beings. More on that another time).

Back to the Toffib

Summing up, the Toffib in my current project join the Banakhenner from Azureseas and the Octaliens from Exploration 2127 as some of my few intelligent aliens.

This project is still early. I'm looking forward to learning more about the Toffib as I write.

Which reminds me, I should get back to work...

Till next month,

Happy Reading!

Raymund