Maybe being a science fiction geek is inevitable if your last name is Einstein, but I am fascinated by the idea of travelling through space. Or not so much the idea of travelling, as the idea of arriving… of finding entire words full of life. Why, then, haven’t I learned to SCUBA dive?
There is nothing more alien within close reach than our own seas. The moon is a barren rock, and there isn’t much evidence of strangers in strange lands on Mars, either. But the seas are teeming with the most unexpected and beautiful creatures. Why aren’t we as fascinated with them as we are with the dinosaurs, with space? What does it say about our need for fantasy, that we are so much less interested in what is almost within grasp than with what is so far beyond our reach? 
Why isn’t there more deep sea fiction? Is it because it seems such a great defeat, that we still can’t reach the open floor? Or because the era of the sea monster is gone? Do things only interest us if they are threatening?
That’s always been the science fiction writer’s dilema… will the aliens, when we finally find them, be friend or foe? Looking around, it seems doubtful that they will be either. More likely, they will turn out to be wonderous things who don’t use language as we use language and so, like the Echizen jellyfish, we will know only as beautiful oddities.
We are strange creatures to imagine that the only intelligence is one that uses words.
Posted by sarahemc2 
