8/15/2023 0 Comments Space operaLife isn’t difficult, it isn’t picky, it isn’t unique, and fate doesn’t enter into the thing. ![]() The Rare Earth Hypothesis means well, but it’s colossally, spectacularly, gloriously wrong. Enjoy the coffee in Italy, the sausage in Chicago, and the day-old ham sandwiches at Los Alamos National Laboratory, because this is as good as high-end luxury multicellular living gets. Call it fate, if you’re feeling romantic. It’s all just happy coincidence, darling. It’s highly unlikely that each and every one of the million billion events that led to life here could ever occur again anywhere else. You’ve gotta get yourself a magnetosphere, a moon (but not too many), some gas giants to hold down the gravitational fort, a couple of Van Allen belts, a fat helping of meteors and glaciers and plate tectonics-and that’s without scraping up an atmosphere or nitrogenated soil or an ocean or three. It’s not all down to old stars and the rocks that love them. Organic life is so complex that even the simplest algae require a vast array of extremely specific and unforgiving conditions to form up into the most basic recipe for primordial soup. One of the most popular is the Rare Earth Hypothesis, which whispers kindly: There, there, Enrico. Fermi’s plaintive cry of transgalactic loneliness. Many solutions have been proposed to soothe Mr. If you’ve never heard this catchy little jingle before, here’s how it goes: given that there are billions of stars in the galaxy quite similar to our good old familiar standby sun, and that many of them are quite a bit further on in years than the big yellow lady, and the probability that some of these stars will have planets quite similar to our good old familiar knockabout Earth, and that such planets, if they can support life, have a high likelihood of getting around to it sooner or later, then someone out there should have sorted out interstellar travel by now, and therefore, even at the absurdly primitive crawl of early-1940s propulsion, the entire Milky Way could be colonized in only a few million years. Somewhere in between discovering various heretofore cripplingly socially anxious particles and transuranic elements and digging through plutonium to find the treat at the bottom of the nuclear box, he found the time to consider what would come to be known as the Fermi Paradox. Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb. And the fate of Earth lies in their ability to rock. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny-they must sing.ĭecibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have been chosen to represent their planet on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick, and electric guitars. ![]() This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And if they fail? Sudden extermination for their entire species. And if a new species should wish to be counted among the high and the mighty, if a new planet has produced some savage group of animals, machines, or algae that claim to be, against all odds, sentient? Well, then they will have to compete. Species far and wide compete in feats of song, dance and/or whatever facsimile of these can be performed by various creatures who may or may not possess, in the traditional sense, feet, mouths, larynxes, or faces. Once every cycle, the great galactic civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix-part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Valente's science fiction spectacle, where sentient races compete for glory in a galactic musical contest…and the stakes are as high as the fate of planet Earth.Ī century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. ![]() The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets the joy and glamour of Eurovision in bestselling author Catherynne M.
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