At This Hour

John Milton wrote a sonnet beginning: "Cromwell, our chief of men..." (here)

William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet beginning: "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour..." (here)

Let me add: "Anderson, our chief sf writer...," "Anderson! You should be living in this century..."

I have heard or read that there is evidence that:

there are large asymmetrical objects in orbit around a nearby star;

there is a Dyson sphere around another star (these might be the same story);

there are energy traces in space that might have been left by warp drive spaceships.

If any high tech is active nearby, then it should be detectable. A relativistic spaceship approaching light speed would have to be visible as a massive artificial energy source. Is it possible that humanoid aliens will arrive soon in FTL spaceships and incorporate Earth into an interstellar empire? I do not think so if only because nothing ever happens as it had been imagined, e.g., the first Moon Landing. We have not met Selenites or Martians, Barsoomians or Malacandrians, or discovered an oceanic Venus but we might just possibly be starting to move into space at last. Let me do two things:

(i) confidently predict that no humanoid aliens will arrive in our lifetimes;

(ii) acknowledge that I could be proved wrong about this tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what kind of sf would Poul Anderson be writing if he were still at work today?