From: m (mt_2@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 05:24:06 MDT
--- Alintelbot@aol.com wrote:
> I liked James Gunn's "The Listeners" quite a bit; I
> thought Sagan's "Contact"
> was essentially lifted from it, with a few bolder
> ideas thrown in.
I have read both of these. Sure they are quite alike,
but actually there are lots of differences. I think a
lot of the similarities (long search, Arecibo,
political threats like funding cuts, religious
responses, etc) are what many thinking persons would
come up with.
I like Gunn's novel for the encyclopaedic quotations
and so on, (they represent a great amount of research
and appreciation of history on Gunn's part) and also
for the portrayal of MacDonald, (Chief of SETI
project)and his personal dilemmas, and the ruminations
of the scientists on SETI's chances.
Gunn's novel annoys me somewhat, though, for its
treatment of women. All of the scientists are males
(and all the politicians), females are restricted to
subsidiary roles. I suspect this reflects the time it
was written (early seventies, I think).
> Neither
> novel impressed me that much; the aliens were simply
> too _human_. Or at
> least their motivations were.
In The Listeners the aliens were bipedal, but also
winged (maybe), and oviparous. Their technology seemed
only somewhat more advanced than ours. Type I for
sure. They are not able to be our saviours, in fact
they were unable to save themselves. Their motives are
partly a desire to be remembered.
In Contact, I admit, one of the aliens appears as
human, but this is admitted to be a reassuring
disguise. The aliens leave most of our questions
unanswered, and (in the book) scientists are left to
their own devices again. Wormhole traffic systems seem
like pretty advanced tech (I give them a Type 1.5 at
least :-) ). Sagan's aliens are more nearly the High
Tech Celestial Benefactors.
So, the aliens in both have this degree of "humanity":
desire to communicate (but otherwise , what would be
the point of the stories), some desire to pass
something on to humans, and identification with other
intelligent beings.
> Perhaps the best "first contact" novel I've read is
> Whitley Strieber's Majestic
[...]
> But the aliens in it--or,
> at least, their insinuated presence--is what makes
> this one work. They're
> genuinely "other," not high-tech versions of
> ourselves, which is a common
> pitfall in mainstream SF.
Indeed they are as alien as insects. However they
*still* seem to regard us as worth bothering with (or
just bothering!)in some way or another. They are not
aloof super-intelligences.
Mike
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