Coya Conyon befriends Ythrians. She learns about their psychologies and individual differences. They "...trade music, memories, and myths..." (p. 641) She sees aerial dances. They see ballet. Ythrians are awkward walking but graceful flying. Will inter-species communication be that easy? The British sf author, Bob Shaw, thought not and never showed different species in conversation.
Theoretically, it could begin in our lifetimes at least at long distance. Contact not just with another civilization - like European explorers or missionaries arriving in India or China - but with another rational species, the product of an entirely separate evolution in another environment, will surely be the biggest ever external input to human consciousness. Its content is entirely unpredictable and I expect it to be completely unlike what anyone has imagined. However, I would like to be proved right or wrong soon.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with Bob Shaw. I don't expect humans learning how to communicate with non-humans to be easy, but neither would I expect that to be impossible. Two such species could make a start by learning how they do simple arithmetic (1+1=2, 1+2=3, etc.). H.B. Piper, in his ingenious story "omnilingual" shows how human archaeologists managed to decipher the writings of an extinct race. Anderson also touched on that idea in "The Word to Space."
Happy New Year! Sean
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