kathleen_dailey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kathleen_dailey) wrote2023-07-14 07:53 am
kathleen_dailey) wrote2023-07-14 07:53 am
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The Possibility of Life
The New Republic has posted an intriguing review of The Possibility of Life by Jaime Green.
One interesting point (among many) that the reviewer makes is the author's attention to the TNG episode "The Chase." For years, Trek fans have pointed out that the episode doesn't portray the origin of all intelligent life--only the origin of humanoid life. (In TOS, for example, we saw several non-humanoid species, such as the Horta, the Organians in their true form, and the Tholians.) Still, as Green is quoted as saying, "A truly alien alien is so incomprehensible that stories about them just become stories about human beings."
According to the reviewer, "In [Green's] telling, novels, short stories, films, and TV shows about extraterrestrials resemble folktales: They give us myths and archetypes that explain an unexplainable world to the people who live in it." That may be a truism to fans, but it's nevertheless what inspires many of us to write fiction.
The reviewer concludes with this:
"The Possibility of Life is a clear, clean, unsparing signal from a writer of rare communicative power that, even if we are alone in the cosmos, so is everyone else. So we keep looking together, keep hoping together, having conversations with friends who might never answer back, might not be there at all."
I hadn't heard of this book until I saw the review, but it's about one of my favourite topics (not to say obsessions), and I'm eager to read it.
One interesting point (among many) that the reviewer makes is the author's attention to the TNG episode "The Chase." For years, Trek fans have pointed out that the episode doesn't portray the origin of all intelligent life--only the origin of humanoid life. (In TOS, for example, we saw several non-humanoid species, such as the Horta, the Organians in their true form, and the Tholians.) Still, as Green is quoted as saying, "A truly alien alien is so incomprehensible that stories about them just become stories about human beings."
According to the reviewer, "In [Green's] telling, novels, short stories, films, and TV shows about extraterrestrials resemble folktales: They give us myths and archetypes that explain an unexplainable world to the people who live in it." That may be a truism to fans, but it's nevertheless what inspires many of us to write fiction.
The reviewer concludes with this:
"The Possibility of Life is a clear, clean, unsparing signal from a writer of rare communicative power that, even if we are alone in the cosmos, so is everyone else. So we keep looking together, keep hoping together, having conversations with friends who might never answer back, might not be there at all."
I hadn't heard of this book until I saw the review, but it's about one of my favourite topics (not to say obsessions), and I'm eager to read it.