The Alori are a strange threat. If they had their way, there would be no interstellar travel and they themselves would never have left their home planet although they have taken the opportunity to colonize a few more. They travel through space only to prevent others from doing so, surely a forlorn hope in view of the amount of inter-system travel already going on and by a number of species?
What is a credible threat? We would be subordinated by the Merseians or enslaved and eaten by the kzinti. But these scenarios presuppose both (i) many intelligent species and (ii) faster than light travel. There are reasons to think that (i) is unlikely while (ii), of course, is (currently) theoretically impossible.
We seem to be threatened only by ourselves although, of course, anything can change. A spaceship might arrive tomorrow - although I think that, when the unexpected does happen, it is also the previously unimagined.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
You could have mentioned a few scientists seriously think some kind of FTL drive might be theoretically possible (such as the work of Alcubierre). Granted, even if a FTL drive came to be theoretically possible, making it an engineering actuality could be even harder to achieve. Dang!
Ad astra! Sean
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