Millions And Billions Of Aliens

Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION A SUN INVISIBLE NOTES TOWARD A DEFINTION OF RELATEDNESS IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 263-265.

Will extra-solar intelligences be too psychologically and culturally alien for communication and mutual comprehension? Noah Arkwright informs us that billions are but millions are not. Human beings interact with the millions, not with the billions. This reads like a rationalization by an sf author who wants to write about aliens that look different but speak and think the same. However, in various works, Poul Anderson gives us human-like and some very unhuman-like aliens. The psychology of the Ythrians is derived from their biology as intelligent flying carnivores. The Technic History also includes the tripartite Didonians. In Anderson's single-volume future history, Genesis, organic life is rare but post-organic intelligences traverse interstellar distances. If you dislike one of Anderson's set of fictional premises, then read another!