Human And Nonhuman

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE.

At the waterfront:

"Warehouses bulked behind wharfs where a medley of craft lay tied and a hodgepodge of persons, human and nonhuman, bustled about." (p. 294)

We have become accustomed to interactions between human and nonhuman persons in some kinds of fiction in too many works to list here: aliens with human beings in sf; goblins, elves etc with human beings in works of fantasy by Anderson, Tolkien etc. Does this kind of interaction occur already elsewhere in the universe?

Brian Aldiss argued in an article or introduction that it had been believed that the Terrestrial environment was inhabited by gods, fairies etc but it is not, then it was imagined that the Solar System was populated by Martians, Venerians etc but it is not, then sf writers and readers continued to imagine that extra-solar planets were inhabited - but they are not? It is now known that planets are common but how often does unicellular life emerge, then become multicellular, conscious, intelligent, civilized and technological and, if life does develop through all of those stages, then for how long after doing all of that does it continue to exist?

I (fairly) confidently predict that, if there are intelligences elsewhere and if we come into contact with them, then they will be unlike any aliens that have been imagined so far. I base this prediction partly on past experience: the real Moon landing was very different from the fictional ones etc. Beings that we can communicate with? Maybe. Beings that we can bustle about with on a waterfront? Maybe less likely.