LNH: War Without Worlds #3

[Saxon Brenton]

On Tues 10 Jan 2006 Martin Phipps (martinphipps2 at yahoo.com) wrote:

>You do realize that having aliens at all is pure science fiction and
>not "hard" science, right?

We'll have to agree to disagree on that.  As I've said, I'm of the camp
that thinks aliens won't look like humans or have compatible genetics
(although you expressed the latter better) and probably won't be
turning up to pay us a visit because of the logistics of interstellar
travel and the probablilities of them being oxygen breathers like
us - but I do think they exist.  To paraphrase from the short
story 'Gernsback Continuum': "I can buy aliens, but not aliens that
like like refugees from fifties saucer movies."

>Would they even have the right equiptment?  By default
>you would expect aliens to reproduce asexually in which case the aliens
>wouldn't even be male and female and there'd be no possibility of a
>natural "cross" occuring.  Which, of course, explains why Kirk never
>bothered to use a condom.

<smirk>  One of the stories that I had been noogling with had an
alien excahnge student in net.ropolis who while very human-like, had
a reporductive sytstem that was based on electrochemical stimulation
rather than phyiscal constact.  'He' found earthling sex highly amusing.

---
Saxon Brenton     Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au

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