From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2001 - 03:57:44 MDT
On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 07:49:14PM -0700, Nathan Woods Currier wrote:
> >
> >And in case I missed something earlier in the conversation, is there some
> >specific referent to "those reports", or is it a generic for all the
> >popularly-known reports lumped together?
>
> If by "aliens" you mean the Little Grey Men of standard UFO
> lore, then 5% doesn't seem totally unreasonable... I would guess somewhere
> around 1%. The key is to drop the assumtion that they are aliens, and
> consider the slight possibility that they might be genetically engineered
> future humans coming back in time to study us Neanderthals.
Naah.
If you examine the "eye-witness" accounts of meetings with the Greys
and the other guys with an open mind, you will notice after a bit that
the whole thing reeks of the Fair Folk -- sidhe, elves, what have
you. In fact, most of those alien abduction stories are dead-ringers
for what would, a century or more ago, have been "away with the fairies"
stories. Forget little girls with wings at the bottom of the garden;
in traditional western/northern European folklore the fair folk tended
to kidnap mortals and abuse them greivously, did weird things to them
against their will and for no obvious purpose, and came in a variety of
sizes and flavours that rather oddly resemble these aliens.
I put the whole alien abduction shtick down to old folklore about elves
and goblins and wee things that go bump in the night popping up under
a fresh coat of paint and a new wave of mass delusion.
I mean, what kind of alien would travel hundreds of light years to visit
us, only to announce their presence by giving Whitley Streiber a rectal
exam?
-- Charlie
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