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Earthmen and Strangers Robert Silverberg Dell ISBN: 155785081X
INTRODUCTION The first thing every child learns is that he is not the entire universe. It comes as a shock, even though the discovery is gradual. As a baby's awareness grows, he realizes that at least one other human creature exists—his mother, that large, warm, protective object that is always nearby. Later comes the discovery of other relatives: father, sister, brother, uncle. The doctor, grandparents, friends, all become part of the picture for the child, and he realizes that the universe beyond his fingertips is quite a crowded place indeed. Then he finds out about strangers. Strangers are those who do not fit into the family circle, people who cannot be recognized, whose existence is an uncomfortable mystery. Until he has met his first stranger, the child has known nothing but love. Now comes a challenge; for the stranger, being a stranger, does not necessarily love the child. Ties of family and friendship do not exist, and some other relationship must be developed. Most children learn how to get along with strangers well enough. They find out that it is possible to make friends with certain strangers, and that it is wise to keep away from others. And they make the discovery that for the rest of their lives they are going to be encountering strangers every day. Their happiness and success will depend on their skill at dealing With these strangers, who may be different from them in ways of thinking, in color of skin, in outlook. Growing up, then, is a process of collisions with strangers, and a test of maturity is the ability to handle such collisions. Not only children but whole planets eventually discover that they are not the entire universe. At least, so the science-fiction writers have been saying for many years. They look to the stars for the strangers, people of other worlds, who one day will intrude on the so-far private existence of mankind. We have never yet encountered people of other worlds, of course—not in any way that can be satisfactorily documented, that is. But the sky is full of stars, and some of those stars must have planets, and it seems likely that in an infinity of worlds there must be intelligent life besides that on Earth. We are not alone, say the science-fiction writers. Making that assumption, they go on to examine it. What will it be like when we encounter the people of other worlds, the alien life forms that await us in the galaxy? Will we find ourselves trampled under the heels of conquerors? Or will we be the conquerors ourselves, destroying other civilizations in space as we have done on our own planet? What strange emotional experiences will befall the first men who confront alien creatures? What conflicts will there be, what philosophical upheavals, what catastrophes and triumphs? Science fiction attempts to answer these questions. The contact between man and alien has been one of its central themes since its dawning, The title of a famous early novel by H. G. Wells indicates one possible outcome of that contact: The War of the Worlds. Other writers have told of more peaceful meetings, even love, between earthmen and strangers. Nine stories of contact with extraterrestrial beings are assembled here, offering nine different approaches to that relationship. But what if we are alone in the universe? What if it turns out that the other worlds of the galaxy are as lifeless as the voyage of Mariner IV has indicated Mars to be? Are all the speculations of science fiction worthless, then? No. Because the science-fiction writer, in the final analysis, is never really writing of other worlds and other times. Behind the futuristic trappings of his stories lies a more earthbound core. For the science-fiction writer, no matter how vaulting his imagination may be, is still a man of twentieth-century
Earth. He has never visited another planet nor lai