Earth-bound first contact or alien encounter stories have become quite a tradition in Science Fiction literature and films. They usually fall in two broad categories: The visitors from outer space are here to conquer us or they are here to uplift us. They are here to steal our resources, probe our bodies, have sex with our women, possibly eat us;
or they are here to make us good citizens of the Galaxy in a sort of cosmic Big Brother program
to stop our wars, mediate our petty bickering, reverse the environmental damage we have wreaked, and end talk radio (which has been polluting the airwaves of outer space) as the first step towards an enlightened intelligence. The former began, I suppose, with H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds,
and continues on to this day, being particularly popular in film and television.
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke is a major example of the latter in literature,
as Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still
and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind are major examples in film.
This portraying of aliens from outer space as either naughty
or nice
(as if they were kids on Santa’s list), leads one to believe that they are but stand-ins or metaphors for either deep human fears of the “other” and the unknown, or a deep human yearning for salvation from ourselves at the hands of a greater power, our hands being so small and inadequate. If you are looking for either one of those two sub-genres of a sub-genre of a genre — then you are holding the wrong book in your hands.
It has always seemed to me, given the vastness of the universe, that aliens from outer space consciously deciding, for whatever reason, to come to Earth, which orbits a rather backwater sun in an unexceptional galaxy,
is so highly unlikely as to be absolutely improbable if not completely impossible. If it ever happens it’s much more likely to be a matter of pure chance, a not-happy accident as spacefaring aliens just stumble upon us, as one stumbles upon a rock sitting inconveniently in the middle of a trail. It is the latter case that forms the basis for Traveling in Space. If I had chosen the former case, Traveling in Space wouldn’t exist and you would probably now be holding in your hands yet another novel about a galactic empire, a dastardly villain, and a stalwart hero.
The aliens in Traveling in Space are neither nasty nor particularly nice. What they are is curious. They are factfinders, what we call scientists, on a mission of discovery and a search for knowledge, which is their greatest passion next to a deeply held love of Life. Not their individual, personal lives, but Life itself in all its manifestations, especially their own sentient, cognizant Life. This primary passion dictates their secondary mission, which is to seed their life onto any suitable planet they happen to find. Lest you suddenly think Traveling in Space will become a novel of conquest by either war or sex, put your worries aside. The mere fact that they find Earth already occupied makes it unsuitable for them — a true mark of their alien nature.
The aliens in Traveling in Space simply call themselves Life, the planet they come from they call The Living World, and the huge starship they travel in is referred to as a lifeship. This nomenclature is quite understandable when you consider that these aliens are under the impression that they are the only life in the universe and thus are the matrix of Life. It is an impression rather rudely shattered when they “stumble” upon the Earth and its occupants, which they dub, “Otherlife.”
What happens after this stubbing of their collective consciousness is the story of Traveling in Space. It is a story told completely from the point-of-view of the aliens, a “people,” if I may use that term, not perfect, but perfectly situated and full of perfect curiosity to study the Otherlife; to observe and comment on them and their “alien” nature and culture, which includes such strange things as marriage, intoxicating drinks, weapons of minor and mass destruction, the gleeful inhaling of toxic substances, two-parent families, layered language, genocide, non-nude bathing, and — the strangest thing of all — religion.
For alienness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Steven Paul Leiva
Los Angeles, CA
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