 
## From This Green Earth

## Essays on Looking Outward

Collected Essays, Volume 2

### Sylvia Engdahl

Copyright © 2019 by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

(except where earlier publication stated)

All rights reserved. For information, write to sle@sylviaengdahl.com. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be resold, given away, or altered.

This ebook edition distributed by Smashwords

Cover photo © by Can Stock Photo / ryanking999

Author website: www.sylviaengdahl.com

Note: The essays in this book do not need to be read in order; they are independent. You can return to the Table of Contents from the end of each essay..

Contents

Introduction

Essays

Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century (2012)

Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing (2019)

Breaking Out from Earth's Shell (2019)

Space and Human Survival (1994)

Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil's Relevance Today (2017)

Is It Time to send Humans to Mars? (2019)

Space Age Mythology Revisited (2017)

Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars (2017)

Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War (2019)

The Mythopoeic Nature of Speculation About ETs(1974, 2017)

The Significance of Belief in UFOs (1995)

The Meaning of Gaia in Space Age Mythology (1995)

From the Journal of an Alien Observer (1970)

Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal's Wager (2017)

Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

Epilogue: Space Quotes to Ponder

About the Author

Excerpt from The Planet-Girded Suns

Introduction

This book contains all the essays I have written about space. Most of them were in an earlier ebook, _Reflections on the Future_ , which with the addition of more essays would have been too long and which has been replaced by separate books on different topics. However, it includes four new essays and an Epilogue containing the quotations from my Web page "Space Quotes to Ponder." Because the first book covered a wide variety of subjects it didn't reach many space advocates, and I hope that this one will.

I have been a strong believer in space flight since 1946, and have seen our society's enthusiasm for space rise and fall. Like many others aware of the vital importance of space activity to humankind's future, I have been stricken with despair over the loss of momentum after the moon landings and the failure of the public to recognize the danger of remaining confined to a single planet. My personal interest has been less in space technology than in our need to become a spacefaring species, and the slowness of progress toward that both frustrated and frightened me.

Then, in 2012, my view of this slowness suddenly changed. While updating my book _The Planet-Girded Suns_ I was stricken by the analogy between our era's new perception of space and that of the seventeenth century, when the knowledge that the stars are suns surrounded by worlds was first absorbed. It was an emotional shock to the people of that time to realize that they didn't live in a safely-enclosed crystal sphere embedded with lights placed there for human benefit, and it took many years for them to adjust. It dawned on me that the situation today is comparable. Though for centuries the public has known that the universe is vast, until the first space flights they expected no contact with it. They were not required to imagine what it might mean to leave Earth, or to be vulnerable to visitation from elsewhere. It is not surprising that many shrink from that awareness, subconsciously if not consciously. What has seemed to be apathy toward space is in reality suppressed apprehension. I had suspected this several years earlier, but not until I recognized the historical precedent did I realize that it's a normal and inevitable reaction we have no need to worry about.

Some of the essays in this book were written before I understood this, others after. Because they are all independent, there may be some repetition of the idea. I feel it cannot be expressed too often, for space supporters tend to be skeptical of it—they have no such underlying feelings themselves and do not grasp their power over the general public. Actually, it is a very optimistic idea; it reveals that our slow progress in space does not mean that something has gone wrong. The public has never been behind any major advance in human history. The significant developments have always been made by minorities whose vision was not widely shared. And we see this now that entrepreneurs are at last moving us forward, setting goals that the taxpayers should never have been expected to underwrite. As space advocates, we should rejoice in the knowledge that this is how progress works, and will continue to work in the future as step by step, we move outward toward the stars.
Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century

(2012)

_The following essay is a slightly-revised version of the Afterword to the updated edition of my nonfiction book_ The Planet-Girded Suns. _It was published online in_ The Space Review _on July 23, 2012. An update from the 2016 edition of the book has been added to the end._

## *

Like most space advocates, I have long been discouraged by the slowness of our progress in becoming a spacefaring civilization. I have sought desperately for a way to combat the widespread indifference to that goal.

But is it really indifference? Early in this century I came to believe that the past four decades' waning enthusiasm for space travel on the part of the general public is due to something deeper than that. I think, as I said in a 2006 essay at my website, that it is a matter of unconscious fear. In revising my 1974 book _The Planet-Girded Suns_ for its 2012 republication, I became more than ever convinced that this is true—and yet I now feel that our society's current ambivalence toward space may not be the tragedy that I once thought. In historical context, it can be seen as a natural and predictable stage of human progress.

In the seventeenth century, all but an exceptional few resisted the idea of a universe full of solar systems because it shook the foundations of the safe, stable world they knew. The root of their resistance was fear. It is widely recognized that the men in high positions, both religious and secular, were afraid that upsetting the established conception of the physical world would undermine their authority; but it is not that fear to which I'm referring. More fundamental was people's instinctive, inner suspicion that if the universe was larger and less orderly than had been supposed, there was no knowing what threats it might hold.

But this fear eventually faded. The innate human desire to know more of the stars is powerful, and by the eighteenth century the intelligentsia, having gotten used to the idea of many solar systems, were envisioning them with yearning as an embodiment of God's glory. There was, to be sure, a countercurrent; Pascal's admission, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me," is merely the earliest expression of a human reaction that is widespread, though seldom acknowledged. But in Pascal's time and long after, humans were insulated from the universe by a gulf assumed by most to be unbridgeable. For two and a half centuries the same picture prevailed: stars are suns; some or all of them are surrounded by planets, at least a few of which are similar to, or better than, ours; their inhabitants may be the equivalent of angels; and however much we long to see those worlds, they are—by mortals, in any case—inaccessible.

And then, around the middle of the twentieth century, the foundations of humankind's worldview were shaken again. Gradually, by a growing proportion of the population, it was recognized that extrasolar worlds may not be inaccessible after all.

In past eras the distant reaches of the sky had been associated with Heaven; even people who didn't believe in a physical Heaven had absorbed that emotional connotation from the collective unconscious of their culture. The worlds of the stars had been idealized. There had been no reason to imagine devils there—none of the speculators who viewed them as the homes of the angels, or races as superior to humans as angels, had considered the possibility of devils. In any case, the speculation was all very abstract. It had little to do with real life.

Early in the twentieth century science fiction writers, and a few far-sighted writers of nonfiction, began to envision travel between the stars; but the public perceived that as fantasy. The vast majority, if exposed to it at all, did not incorporate it into their conception either of the real universe or of the future of their descendants. The shock of the technologies produced by World War II, however—the V-2 rockets and the release of atomic energy—weakened the distinction between imagination and reality. It is not a coincidence that the first UFO sightings were reported less than two years after the war ended, or that they were followed by the alien invasion movies of the 1950s, which were not, as is commonly said, veiled expressions of Americans' fear of attack by the Soviet Union, but rather the stirring of an unconscious recognition that the universe is very much vaster, and more scary, than most people like to think.

That recognition was effectively suppressed by Hollywood's portrayal of evil aliens in forms that could be written off as nonsense not meant to be taken seriously. But with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and ultimately with Apollo 8's voyage to the moon in 1968, the public was suddenly jolted into awareness that our access to space—and correspondingly, interstellar travelers' access to Earth—is real.

Much is said about the positive effect of the photos of Earth obtained by Apollo 8, which for the first time showed our planet as a globe, a fragile refuge amid barren surroundings, and thereby launched the environmental movement. The concomitant negative impact—the spread of gut-level knowledge that space is an actual place containing little that's familiar to us and perhaps much that we'd rather not meet—is not spoken of. But it may be no less significant. Could this be one of the reasons why interest in space died so soon after the first moon landing, resulting in the cancellation of the last few planned Apollo missions?

It is undoubtedly the cause of the rise of belief in UFO contacts; and the experience of being abducted by aliens—which in most cases is neither faked nor a manifestation of mental illness, but a perception that emerges in a form indistinguishable from memory—is, in my opinion, an unconsciously-formed metaphor for the unknown terrors that may await us in space. In the past few decades such submerged worries have spread to a wider and more literal-minded segment of society, even to some who consider themselves space enthusiasts. The decline of positive space imagery in science fiction movies and corresponding rise of fantasy and disaster films reveals that space is less appealing to the public, and its nameless potential evils are more frightening, when the universe is open to humans than it was when it could be viewed as an unreachable realm.

This explains much that has been puzzling to space advocates, who have long sought an answer to what happened to the vision that offered such promise and evaporated so suddenly. Expansion into the new ecological niche of space is clearly a new stage of human evolution, yet after brief acknowledgement at the time of the first moon landings, our society as a whole has been blind to this . . . or perhaps not. Perhaps underneath people know it all too well. Even space supporters often feel no urgency about bringing offworld settlements into existence; many dream of them as symbols of a hopeful future, but some dreamers, like almost everyone else, may be reluctant to take the plunge. Relatively few individuals really enjoy the thought of being on the cutting edge of a major step in human evolution, for who knows where that may lead? At the time of Columbus, uneducated people thought adventurous ships would fall off the edge of the world, a prospect they viewed with great dismay; others (according to legend), knowing the world extended beyond their maps, marked the edges with the warning "Here Be Dragons." Figuratively speaking, most people of our time may feel the same way about space exploration.

As members of the baffled minority have bitterly noted, we have spent forty years aimlessly circling Earth in low orbit, with no commitment to venture any further. The false dawn that science fiction author Robert Heinlein postulated as a mere fictional device, not intending it as prophecy, has ironically proven to be a truer portrayal of the post-Apollo era than the vision of space travel by which he and his readers were inspired. By now some people are even claiming (or perhaps hoping?) that the moon landing we once achieved was a hoax. No one who watched that landing foresaw such an outcome; of all the predictions that might have made about the near future, the cessation of exploration would have seemed the least likely. And yet, seen with hindsight, it is not strange.

The assimilation of awareness that this planet is not isolated from the universe is a far more profound upheaval in human thought than the one that aroused so much opposition in the seventeenth century. People of that era were uncomfortable with the idea that the earth moves around the sun, and the sun is only one of many; but they did not suppose that this might have an impact on their personal lives or those of their grandchildren. The idea of contact with other worlds is another matter entirely. Whether we go there or their inhabitants come here, a major shakeup of Earth's civilization is inevitable. Writers who have contemplated this issue have been warning about "culture shock" for a long time, and more recently some have begun to suggest that the notion of hostile aliens may not be as silly as was once assumed. Either way—and even, or perhaps especially, if explorers were to encounter some incomprehensible presence in space that does not fit our present conception of "aliens"—the ways of thinking based on millennia of human tradition would be shattered. Without that foundation the average person's life would be in shambles.

These are not new ideas; they have been discussed for years, both by serious science fiction and by nonfiction, in speculation about the consequences of actual alien contact. But the average person is not a reader of either, and those who do read them—members of the minority attracted to the challenge of space—do not realize how much emotional impact such underlying implications have already had on the population in general. Most people do not want to contemplate the significance of an open universe. They do not let uneasiness about it into their minds; but underneath, as the collective unconscious of humankind absorbs the knowledge, they grasp it, and react with dismay disguised as apathy. It does not occur to them that they might be disturbed by the prospect of space exploration. Rather, they believe that although in theory they want humankind to reach new worlds, it's of low priority compared to the problems of here and now.

Thus the excitement that prevailed at the time of the early Apollo flights was overwhelmed by the emotion aroused by the sight of Earth's beauty and fragility as seen from space, and the focus of the majority turned inward. "Earth must be protected," became the watchword. Protected against what? The threat of nuclear war had been seen with alarm for the past quarter of a century; the competition with the Soviet Union to reach the moon was, after all, a response to that threat. The threat to the environment, though newer, was recognized by some and would eventually have become apparent without the impetus provided by the moon flights. But the sight of Earth as a globe aroused more than the realization that Earth's environment is fragile. It created awareness that Earth itself is _vulnerable_ —vulnerable to whatever strange threats may exist beyond our present knowing. Beyond what we want to know. And the further humankind ventures into space, the more likely we are to find out.

So the public, without conscious recognition that anything more than economics underlies its reluctance to fund more space expeditions, has succumbed to what perplexed space advocates have interpreted as indifference. It is, I believe, the opposite—far from lacking emotion about other worlds, most people who are in no hurry to see a human presence established there are suppressing ambivalent emotions of extraordinary power. Nothing less can explain the vehemence with which some reject any suggestion that extraterrestrial resources would be of inestimable value in preventing the depletion and pollution of our home planet. Nothing less can account for the fact that Earth-worship has become a religion—sometimes even in the literal sense—to many, or the claim that it is not merely foolish, but morally wrong to advocate the spread of humankind beyond the one small world that overpopulation would otherwise eventually ruin.

What people feel most strongly about does usually find religious expression, and because contrary to a common misconception, traditional religions do not oppose belief in extrasolar worlds, the notion that Earth is the only place of value in the entire universe has given rise to a new one. To be sure, there is an alternate form of moral opposition to interest in new worlds. Ever since space travel became feasible some have opposed it on the grounds that with it, we would be bound to destroy native races elsewhere. In popular culture this, the reverse of the alien invasion idea, is reflected in the hit movie _Avatar_ , in which humans are portrayed as evil invaders of an alien paradise. The fallacy in the film is not the theme that taking over an inhabited world would be wrong; of course it would be—no modern space advocate would countenance establishment of enclaves on inhabited planets. (Attitudes have changed radically since Heinlein's fiction did so.) Only rationalization of the fear of unknown realms causes people to emotionally accept the premise that this would happen.

I sometimes wonder if the widespread conviction that the public no longer cares about space may also be a rationalization. After all, if the public has lost interest, then one need not question one's own reluctance to support space programs—even if underneath one feels a conflicting impulse to rejoice in the awesome spectacle of a launch. A politician need not feel any obligation to fund them, no matter how many activists explain why they should be funded. When a candidate for the 2012 presidential nomination proposed returning to the moon, the other candidates did not argue against the idea; they simply ridiculed it. Ridicule is a convenient weapon against buried feelings that one does not dare to acknowledge.

Over and over during the past four decades, space advocacy organizations have flared up, shown promise, and then died; only a few have lasted and their membership has never approached a fraction of the people belonging to environmental organizations. Time and time again space projects have been initiated, only to be cancelled before they came to fruition; even robotic Mars exploration, about which the public did show enthusiasm, has now been cut back. Nominal space supporters may well be influenced by the same inner apprehension as the rest of the population. There are, of course, many dedicated activists who have done, and are still doing, everything in their power to get us off the ground; but support for them has been ephemeral.

We are driven by the urge that impelled generations of our forebears to dream of other worlds, and yet whenever we are on the verge of a step toward them, we pull back. My own expectation of seeing a human base on Mars within my lifetime has waned from certainty in the Apollo era to mere hope, to doubt, to despair, and finally to resignation. Yet as I have said above, I do not now view this as tragic. A tragedy is a turn of events that should have been avoidable, and I no longer believe that the present hiatus in space travel could have been avoided. When in updating _The Planet-Girded Suns_ I reread it after passage of time, I was struck by the parallel between the cusp of the twenty-first century and that of the seventeenth; and I see that our slow progress toward becoming a spacefaring species is no less a stage of human evolution than any other overpowering change of perspective. Stages of evolution cannot be skipped or hurried; that, after all, is a major theme of my novels.

To be sure, the stage dealt with in one of those novels—the Critical Stage described in _The Far Side of Evil_ —is characterized by great danger. When I conceived the story (in 1956) and wrote it (in 1970), I seriously believed its premise that the point in history at which a planetary civilization develops space travel capability coincides with the point at which it becomes capable of self-destruction, and that the two are mutually exclusive alternatives. By the time I revised it for republication in 2003, our lack of commitment to space had forced me to realize that the Critical Stage lasts longer than the few years I originally assumed, and to the danger of nuclear war I added mention of such threats as pollution, depletion of resources, and widespread terrorism. I still believe that humankind will remain in peril unless and until we make the effort to expand beyond this world. But I do not think that doing so is merely a matter of talking the public into it.

While this is a discouraging realization, in another sense it is cause for hope. It shows that nothing has yet gone wrong, that our retreat from the outward thrust begun by the first flights to the moon is not a sign of human failing, but a normal and inevitable reaction to those flights. Just as it would have been irrational to expect most contemporaries of Bruno or Galileo to embrace a new conception of humankind's place in the universe, it is unreasonable to expect it of ours. It takes time for a culture's fear of the unknown to fade.

Yet it does fade, and the human longing to reach the stars is stronger and more lasting than the hesitancy brought on by frightening new worldviews. People were drawn to ideas about stars long before the concept of solar systems arose. We have gazed at them since the dawn of history, and nothing short of a fundamental change in human nature could make us turn away. This is not the place to discuss my conviction that the collective unconscious of humankind contains perceptions of reality not acquired through experience, and that the sky has—in all cultures—been a symbol of human aspiration precisely because our future survival depends on going there. Understanding of our present situation does not depend on belief in destiny. It is enough to compare the predominant feelings toward space of the eighteenth century with those of the early seventeenth, and those of the 1960s with those of the 1930s, to see that a sense of relationship to the stars always returns.

To some space advocates, especially those young enough to hope for personal involvement in establishment of an offworld settlement, what I've said here may seem unduly pessimistic. It's natural to shrink from awareness of what one cannot have. Many who once believed in orbiting space colonies abandoned the idea from frustration when it became apparent that it wasn't in the cards for such colonies to be built in the immediate future, just as in the late nineteenth century people stopped envisioning extrasolar worlds when they stopped believing that they would see them on the way to Heaven when they died. No doubt frustration, as well as fear, has played a part in the public's loss of interest in space.

Possibly I see now what I did not see earlier only because I am past the age of hoping that I will live to watch humans travel beyond the moon (or even that far, unless a privately-funded expedition gets there). Yet to me it is reassuring to realize that, barring some major disaster to Earth's civilization, the present unwillingness to accept the challenge of space will pass. That it is not a aberrant prolongation of the Critical Stage as I have long feared, but simply a pause to prepare humankind for the momentous journey ahead.

## *

POSTSCRPT, JULY 2016

Reading this essay four years after its first publication, I feel more than ever that what I have said explains the reluctance of the public to support a major effect toward human expansion into space. The danger in confining our species to a single planet despite the possibility of worldwide disaster is too obvious for me to doubt that there are deep-seated psychological reasons for the public's refusal take it seriously. Perhaps, in addition to the factors I have already mentioned, people do not want to think to think this danger is real, and are therefore unwilling to acknowledge it by accepting the need for an offworld presence. And yet a great deal is said about threats to Earth, and the majority of the people most concerned about them are the ones least apt to push for space colonization. So underneath, suppressed fear of the vast unknown universe must be stronger than worry about asteroid strikes, nuclear war, excessive climate change, or runaway biotechnology.

But now, there is greater cause for optimism about progress in space than there was four years ago. Now, privately-owned ships are delivering supplies to the space station, manned flights are soon to follow, and a privately-funded mission to Mars is in the planning stages. This is the first truly promising development since the Apollo era. I have always known that private investment alone could bring about a real breakthrough, but I feared that investors would not grasp the enormous economic potential of space activity and extraterrestrial resources until far in the future. I'm thankful that it has proved to be a mistaken fear.

And so I feel sure that we are on track, and that the gradual extension of our species' range will occur just as it always has, through the efforts of individuals who take risks for the sake of what they personally believe, or hope to gain, and thereby bring about gain for all humankind. That is how it has worked in the past—with the earliest tribes that ventured beyond their territory, with the explorers who sailed from Europe to the New World, and with the later pioneers who migrated to the American West. It is not necessary for society as a whole to support such efforts. Had widespread enthusiasm been needed for Columbus to sail, he would never have left Spain. It is only looking back that we see the full value of what individuals strive to do, and this will be as true of progress in space as it has been on our home world.

A colony on Mars may not be established in my lifetime, but I am confident that it will be during the lives of most people who are now living. Whether they like the idea or not does not matter, any more than public opinion mattered at the time Bruno first suggested that there are planets circling other suns. Ultimately we will reach some of those exoplanets, and long before we do, spacefaring will seem as natural and desirable as air travel does today. In the light of human history, we need not be discouraged by the fact that the time is not yet ripe for this outlook to prevail.

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Thoughts on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Moon Landing

(2019)

I posted this essay at my website on July 20, 2019. It is more optimistic than anything I could have written ten years previously—progress, slow as it may seem, does occur.

## *

Half a century ago it was widely recognized that the first moon landing marked a new era, an era when, having taken the first step toward becoming a spacefaring species, we would never again be confined to one small planet. And yet, to the dismay of a good many of us, our confidence proved to have been premature. After five more moon landings in close succession we haven't ventured beyond low Earth orbit. What went wrong?

I believe nothing went wrong—our only mistake was in our expectations. Apollo 11 was, and always will be, an unsurpassable milestone in the history of humankind. However, it set precedents that left us with false assumptions: not only an overly-optimistic idea of what would soon follow, but misconceptions about what it would take to establish an expanding human presence in space.

Apollo 11's success was the result of a necessarily huge and expensive tax-funded project, which could not have been launched without public support. And so we assumed that future advances would always be achieved by large tax-funded projects and that public support would therefore always be needed, and could be obtained. But human progress does not ordinarily happen in that way.

If Columbus and other explorers who sought to reach new lands had needed support from the public, they could never have set sail. The settlement of those lands, though chartered and sometimes initially financed by European governments, was expected to be profitable and did not depend on the approval of the population left behind. By definition, pioneers in any field of endeavor are people with exceptional vision that is not shared by the majority of their contemporaries. It is no coincidence that we're at last moving forward in space now that private companies are taking over, something that would not have been possible without a long period of low-orbit preparation. Nor is it surprising that in regard to ambitious plans for larger projects made by NASA, the availability of sufficient funding is questionable.

Yet the Apollo program did get funded. The public did support it. Thus space advocates expected that this would continue and were puzzled and disappointed when it did not. It's generally said that the public's real enthusiasm had been for winning the Cold War and that once we had beaten the Russians to the moon people lost interest; and as far as the appropriation of funds by Congress is concerned, that's probably true. But I think it's a good deal more complicated than that.

Twenty-five years ago—halfway into the hiatus that's now ending—I taught an online Media Studies course on the Mythology of the Space Age [*]. At that time there was still strong interest in space if not in the provision of funds, and it was evident that a new mythology comparable in significance to ancient mythologies was emerging—which to me was a very hopeful sign. I focused the course on the optimistic view expressed in pop-culture space fiction, in contrast to the gloom that pervaded portrayals of future Earth. Since then, however, the darker side of Space Age mythology has become more prominent while the bright side has diminished. There are, of course, a great many people whose desire to see humans explore beyond this planet has not weakened. But a smaller percentage of the population now welcomes the thought that we are part of a vast and mysterious universe.

One form of evidence for this is the increase in pessimistic space movies, as opposed to the primarily upbeat ones of the seventies and eighties. Another is the widespread exaggeration of environmental concerns, especially the illusion that Earth can remain unchanged from generation to generation and that we can keep it that way, even to the extent of controlling its climate. And still another is the decline of public support for real space programs, which has frustrated space advocates for nearly half a century—contrary to common belief, that decline wasn't due to boredom or apathy. Until recently I did not grasp the ambiguous nature of the mythology that was developing. I now feel that many people's enjoyment of space fantasy was a matter of whistling in the dark.

According to one anthropological theory of mythogenesis, the one I personally favor, mythology serves the adaptive purpose of helping people confront the environment in which they perceive their culture to exist. If the perception of the extended environment changes, mythology not only changes but goes through a period of upheaval. When the first photos of Earth as a globe made clear that our world, not just in science textbooks but in reality, exists within a seemingly-endless expanse of empty space, they produced an emotional shock. In part, this was good; people became aware that Earth is beautiful and should be protected from wanton destruction. And some were elated by the possibility of venturing into new regions.

But other people withdrew, telling themselves either that nothing beyond our planet matters, on one hand, or on the other, that space travel was merely a fascinating new game to watch. Then came the moon landing, after which it could be dismissed as a game no longer (although some have tried by claiming that the landing never happened). Though it took awhile for this reaction to set in, the eventual result was a shift in mythic views of the future.

At first, people inwardly disturbed by what Pascal famously described as "the eternal silence of these infinite spaces" had nevertheless been drawn to space and had joined the enthusiasts in looking at it as a pleasantly exciting setting for stories; thus optimistic science fiction movies were popular while at the same time, the moon was abandoned. Until the _Challenger_ disaster, which brought to the surface subconscious feelings that had been building up since Apollo, the potential terrors of the unknown were deemphasized; and the idea that if we could travel in space then visitors from elsewhere might also do so was dealt with by everyone but UFO believers through the portrayal of such aliens as friendly.

Gradually, however, this comforting outlook faded. Aliens are now depicted as dangerous; some scientists have begun to say that we shouldn't attract their attention by sending SETI messages. Space activity arouses less interest than it once did, even among children, and the majority of citizens bury their heads in the sand with regard to the fact that a single planet's resources cannot possibly support its population forever. For escapist entertainment, most now look to pure fantasy about magical realms rather than wishing "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." Unconsciously if not consciously, they would prefer not to think about what lies beyond our home world.

I have come to realize that we should have never have expected it to be otherwise. For the vast majority of humankind, apprehension always has been the underlying reaction to new awareness of our place in the universe. In my essay "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century" (available at _The Space Review_ , at my website, and in this book as well as in my book _The Planet-Girded Suns_ ) I compared our present situation to the seventeenth-century spread of knowledge that Earth was not the center of the universe and the stars were not mere lights fixed to a surrounding crystal sphere. That took people a very long time to absorb. And though our forebears did absorb it and became fascinated by the idea of inhabited worlds orbiting other suns, they did not connect that idea with everyday reality. They didn't expect those worlds to have any impact on the inhabitants of this one, let alone imagine that someday mortals might leave it.

Not so today, when for better or for worse, the prospect of contact with the wider universe is before us. And I'm sure that ultimately Space Age mythology will attenuate the terror of it and enable our culture as a whole to meet it with confidence—the metaphors of myth are, after all, the means by which humans deal with the unknown. I cannot guess when this will happen, but I now see that it need not be soon. Though it is not possible to convince today's taxpayers of the importance of space, it is not necessary, either.

Movement outward from this planet is not as dependent on public support as I and other space advocates once thought; entrepreneurs are beginning to take the initiative, as has happened in every other area of ongoing progress. In all probability the first ship to Mars will be launched not by the government but by Elon Musk. This is how human advance works. Of necessity, it depends on individual vision, for instinctively people sense that survival of our species (or any species) depends on new ventures being made by a few before the entire population can safely commit to them.

Thus new conceptions of reality are always embraced by a farsighted minority before being widely accepted, and the key to acceptance is not persuasion, but time. The fact that fifty years of marking time have passed since humans first set foot on the moon is cause not for pessimism, but for gladness that so much of the time is now behind us. We are on track, and in due course, when travel to the moon and Mars becomes routine, mythic expressions of our place in the universe will again serve to inspire the widespread feeling that this is how the future will be, and was always meant to be.

* Science Fiction and Space Age Mythology, a Media Studies course offered in 1994 and 1995 by Connected Education, a pre-Internet online conferencing program directed by Paul Levinson, for graduate credit from the New School for Social Research. The "lectures" for it are online as The New Mythology of the Space Age..

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Breaking Out from Earth's Shell

(2019)

Long ago people literally believed that an invisible, transparent shell surrounded Earth to hold up the stars. After that theory was discarded, the shell remained in a figurative sense, for Earth was thought to be forever isolated from the rest of the universe. Some people are comforted even today by this illusion, although it's time for humankind to break free.

## *

Since the dawn of history humans have been drawn to the idea of reaching the heavens. Most cultures' gods were presumed to dwell there. The stars have always symbolized mankind's highest aspirations. They were, however, viewed as inaccessible, except perhaps by souls after death.

According to the worldview universally accepted in Europe prior to the seventeenth century, the realm of the fixed stars (as distinguished from planets) was literally perfect and unchanging. The stars were thought to be embedded in an invisible sphere—a shell—that encircled Earth, for if they were not attached to something, would they not fall? Contrary to a common misconception, the theory that Earth is not the center of the solar system. was not resisted because of any sense of demotion from the place of prime importance, or even because of conflict with the Bible—actually, it would not have aroused much opposition if the authorities of the time had not realized, more than fifty years after its publication, that it opened the door to questioning the nature of the stars. Copernicus himself never doubted the accepted theory; to him, they were still firmly attached to a crystal sphere surrounding the sun.

However, near the end of the sixteenth century the philosopher Giordano Bruno, a strong advocate of the Copernican theory, suggested for the first time that the stars are not mere lights in the sky, but suns with planets of their own. Although that was not his only heresy, many scholars believe it was the primary reason why he was burned at the stake, and why, after his books were banned, supporters of his astronomical ideas called themselves Copernicans instead of mentioning his name. Rearrangement of the solar system was a relatively minor issue compared to the upheaval in both science and religion caused by denial of the stars' perfection.

To people who had believed themselves safely enclosed within a perfect sphere, beyond which lay Heaven, the idea of a universe full of suns at random distance from Earth was extremely upsetting. As John Donne put it in these famous lines from his poem "An Anatomy of the World" (1611), it removed all coherence from their worldview.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out,

The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world's spent,

When in the planets and the firmament

They seek so many new; they see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

All just supply, and all relation.

This was not a foolish or naive reaction. Human thought is dependent on a stable foundation on which to rely. Psychologically, people are cast adrift if their basic premises are questioned, and this is an adaptive trait since without anchors it would be impossible for a society to function. Change must come gradually, through the exceptional few who are able to discard the outlook of their contemporaries. Once they do, a new outlook spreads—but that takes time.

Over time, people became reconciled to the loss of an immutable order in the universe, and by the late seventeenth century those with enough education to care about astronomy envisioned countless suns, all surrounded by planets which, like those of our own solar system, were assumed to be inhabited. Some thought they were the homes of angels or the souls of the dead, but the belief that they were inhabited by mortals superior to ourselves soon predominated. The one thing everyone agreed about was that they were not without tenants. It had formerly been believed that the heavenly bodies existed for the benefit of mankind, so since distant suns and planets were of no apparent benefit to us, it was reasoned that they must have been made for other mortals. It was taken for granted that God would not have created a "useless" world. This was not questioned until the middle of the nineteenth century, when after hot debate the conviction that all extrasolar worlds have inhabitants still prevailed. Not until early in the twentieth was it abandoned.

Ironically, we now know that uninhabited planets are not useless—it may well become possible for us to colonize them. They may prove to be our salvation when the resources of Earth are gone. But of course in earlier centuries that possibility did not occur to anyone.

For more than three hundred years it was believed, by educated people at least, that solar systems similar to ours exist. This is known because they are referred to in the writings not just of astronomers but of many well-known people such as Benjamin Franklin as well as in the popular magazines of the day, sermons, and even in textbooks for children. Also, a great deal of poetry, some of it book-length, was written about spectacular suns and their planets. Imaginary voyages through space appear in even in poems by major poets such as Milton, Shelley, and Byron.

These were spiritual voyages, not journeys in spaceships. For example, at the time of Newton's death it was often suggested that he might see distant planets on his way to Heaven. Many people longed to visit the worlds so frequently talked about, and doing so in an afterlife was the only route they could imagine. As late as the 1870s the American poet Henry Abbey wrote:

Death, that dread annulment which life shuns,

Or fain would shun, becomes to life the way,

The thoroughfare to greater worlds on high,

The bridge from star to star. Seek how we may,

There is no other road across the sky;

And, looking up, I hear star-voices say:

"You could not reach us if you did not die."

But the longing for a closer look at other worlds was not shared by everyone. Searches for information about it turn up only what was written by those who were interested in cosmic space. Most people who heard of distant solar systems may not have been interested, may even have been disturbed by the thought. The French philosopher Pascal famously wrote, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me," and he can hardly have seen alone in feeling that way. It was not an issue people needed to be concerned about. Earth was, after all, safely isolated from the larger universe, as far as they knew. No one supposed that there could ever be actual contact could between worlds; it was as if an invisible shell still enclosed our own..

It is likely that the poet William Wordsworth's feeling about space was—and still is—more typical than that of the space enthusiasts. He was knowledgeable about astronomy and enjoyed watching the stars with his sister and friends. But he is best known for his love of nature. When in his famous poem "Tintern Abbey" (1798) he wrote:

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth. . . .

was he considering the stars a part of nature? There is no indication in the poem that he was, yet it seems unlikely that he would have used the phrase " _from_ this green earth" rather than the more common " _on_ this green earth" if he had never looked outward, thinking of Earth as part of the larger natural universe. And in fact in another poem be wrote, "The stars are mansions built by Nature's hand."

Be that as it may, it was Earth alone that he cared about. In "Peter Bell," describing his return from a fantasy space journey, Wordsworth revealed an outlook that is shared by many today, more than two hundred years later.

Swift Mercury resounds with mirth,

Great Jove is full of stately bowers;

But these, and all that they contain,

What are they to that tiny grain,

That darling speck of ours!

Then back to Earth, the dear green Earth;

Whole ages if I here should roam,

The world for my remarks and me

Would not a whit the better be;

I've left my heart at home.

See! there she is, the matchless Earth!

There spreads the fam'd Pacific Ocean!

Old Andes thrusts yon craggy spear

Through the grey clouds—the Alps are here

Like waters in commotion. . . .

And see the town where I was born!

Around those happy fields we span

In boyish gambols—I was lost

Where I have been, but on this coast

I feel I am a man.

The last few lines say it all: for the vast majority of people, their very identity depends on their presence on Earth. To leave it in fantasy is one thing, but to be aware that people can really leave, really venture into unknown regions, puts a whole new face on facts that have been known for centuries. And when astronauts do leave, even they are often more deeply moved by the sight of "the dear green earth" from a distance than by the beauty of the stars. Though astronauts are exceptional individuals who enjoy space flight and long to explore the universe, those are not the emotions the public vicariously shares.

The farther we go in space, the further removed space travel is from theory, the more evident this will become. In Wordsworth's time and for two centuries longer, the idea that there might be peril in space didn't occur to people. Their knowledge of the universe was very abstract. Even the few brief mentions of traveling to the stars that appeared in the late nineteenth century did not suggest that it would be dangerous, and certainly there was no suspicion that the presumed inhabitants of other worlds might not be friendly. That notion was introduced by H. G. Wells' 1897 novel _The War of the Worlds,_ which was viewed as pure fantasy until a 1938 radio dramatization was broadcast in the form of a news report, nearly causing a panic. Science fiction of the 1920s was read only by those especially interested in it. However, starting in the 1930s, the hit comic strip and radio adventures of Buck Rogers forever changed the public's perception of space. It became the scene of violent action and exciting new concepts, and the development of V-2 rockets in World War II led to a suspicion that there might possibly be some truth in them.

Thus the first UFO sightings, which occurred in 1947 and were immediately associated with extraterrestrials, were followed by countless alien invasion films in the 1950s. It is often said that these movies were actually about the Cold War, and no doubt their plots were influenced by it; but I believe that underneath, they reflected the public's new realization that space may hold terrors. These films featured ridiculously-portrayed aliens and some were intentionally humorous, which suggests that viewers wanted to think that the whole idea of danger from beyond Earth was silly. When the development of satellite technology began to show that space travel is not silly, their popularity waned. People turned their attention to the competition in space, which really was connected to the Cold War. After America won they could no longer be distracted by it, and the worries suppressed so long began to surface along with growing anxiety about our own ventures into the unknown.

At the time of the Challenger disaster I was astonished by the widespread public feeling that it meant space travel shouldn't be undertaken, and especially that the civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe shouldn't have been "sent" into space, as if she hadn't been chosen out of thousands of applicants who vied for the chance to go. The supposition, sometimes even explicitly stated, that she hadn't known it was dangerous was an insult both to her courage and to her intelligence. Who could possibly be unaware that riding in a spacecraft propelled by rocket engines and boosters providing 7.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff involves risk?

Perhaps previous space flights had been viewed with a sense of detachment, as if they were science fiction. But I now think there was more to it than that. It would simply not have been rational for anyone ever to think space travel isn't dangerous; the evidence that it's unsafe could hardly have come as a surprise. And even if it did, dangers involving far greater numbers of people, such as those of early aviation, had been accepted by the public without question. No one said that pilots shouldn't be allowed to take off in primitive planes, although the crash rate was extremely high. Planes, however, did not get very far from the ground. There was no possibility that improved ones would leave the planet and enter unknown regions beyond. I suspect that the realization that space travel is _real_ came not with the tragedy of _Challenger_ , but with the Apollo moon flights, and that _Challenger_ brought to the surface unconscious feelings that had been building up for a long time. Underneath, people were troubled not by the danger to the astronauts but by the potential perils of contact with the wider universe. The Challenger disaster was merely the trigger for expression of the public's growing uneasiness about spacefaring.

As in the seventeenth century, for people to shrink from the necessity of revising their perception of our environment (our total environment, not the mere biosphere) is normal and adaptive for our species. If everyone's orientation shifted suddenly, society would disintegrate. Civilization depends on the ability to make plans knowing that for the short term, tomorrow will be like today. Thus changes in outlook come slowly, first in a few visionaries, later in one generation after another as minds open to new awareness. Mass media, a recent phenomenon, will speed up the process but cannot make it happen overnight. If anything, real-time mass media events such as the moon landings produce more shock than lasting transformation.

So it can't be expected that the public will be quick to support future space activity. We should not be surprised if more interest is shown in science fiction movies than in real flights. Inwardly drawn to the thought of venturing outward but unable to break away from the safe and familiar, people tell themselves that the fiction they enjoy is just entertainment, not be taken seriously. And science fiction is sometimes criticized for promoting unrealistic dreams.

Will we always be bound to Earth, then? Of course not. Evolution is slow, but it can't be halted. Humans have been seeking new lands to settle since for millennia, first new villages, and eventually new continents. The negative expression of this instinct has been the urge to expand a group's territory through war, which hopefully most us have outgrown since the time when young men dreamed of glorious conquest. On the positive side, there has always been a desire of ordinary people to , even at the cost of hardship. For some time it has been evident that Earth has, or soon will, run out of vacant land. How could there not be an impulse to go beyond, quite apart from the plain fact that a species that fails to move beyond the niche in which it has evolved must be periodically decimated or else fall victim to extinction? In the long run, how could humankind fail to follow that impulse?

The dream of extending our species' range beyond the world on which we evolved is hardly something so trivial as entertainment, however much entertainment may be derived from it or how gradually it is absorbed. It is an often-unconscious expression of the deep-seated instinct present in all species to expand their ecological niche, an adaptive response to the ever-present threat of extinction. It has become trite and unfashionable to compare movement beyond Earth to the movement of life from the sea onto land, as was done during the Apollo era, but that comparison is still valid.

These are not new ideas—space advocates have been expressing them for years. Why then have so many lost sight of them and become discouraged? I think it is because in our era people are so used to rapid change, and to instant gratification of their wishes, that they have lost all sense of the evolutionary timescale. A dream is not unrealistic merely because it is not achieved within one's own lifetime or even that of one's grandchildren. Enthusiasm for one ambitious space dream after another has died out when its supporters came up against the fact that they wouldn't live to see it fulfilled—a reaction that strikes me as all too close to "sour grapes." As has often been pointed out, settling space is not as simple as picking up stakes and moving one's family westward. It requires a very long lead time. During that time, the clock would stop if there were no far-sighted dreamers willing to pay the price of personal disappointment in order to keep it going. The more followers they can attract by offering entertainment, the better; but to suppose that their motivation has no deeper roots is to ignore the essence of what enables our species, or any species, to thrive.

Sooner or later, like an eaglet destined for flight, humankind will break through the invisible shell in which our planet has been confined. It is happening now with the advent of commercial space flight, and the minority with far sight will carry us forward despite reluctance on the part of the majority. In times to come men and women will travel far from this green earth. And then, with our ancestral home at last open to the universe, we will discover our place among the countless worlds of the stars.

Go to the Table of Contents

Space and Human Survival

(1994)

The essay below is a statement that I originally wrote in 1994 for the students in an online Media Studies course I taught for Connected Education about Space Age Mythology. (I've since made a few minor modifications.) It wasn't part of the course material, but simply explains personal views I have often referred to in online discussions. It has been posted my website since 2001 and has been read by many space advocates who aren't familiar with my novels.

## *

Until space travel became a reality, the reason most commonly offered for believing our survival depends on it was that our species will need to move elsewhere in order to survive the ultimate death of our sun, or the possibility of our sun turning into a nova. Scientists now believe that these specific scenarios won't happen; but the sun will eventually become a red giant, which as far as Earth is concerned, is an equally disastrous one. This is not of such remote concern as it may seem, as I will explain below. However, it surely is a remote _event,_ billions of years in the future, and I don't blame anyone for not giving it very high priority.

A more urgent cause for concern is the need not to "put all our eggs in one basket," in case the worst happens and we blow up our own planet, or make it uninhabitable by means of nuclear disaster or perhaps biological warfare. We would all like to believe this won't happen, yet it is hardly an irrational fear. Peace with Russia may have drawn attention from it, yet there are other potential troublemakers, even terrorists; the nuclear peril is not mere history. Furthermore, there is the small but all-too-real possibility that Earth might be struck by an asteroid. We all hope and believe our homes won't burn down, and yet we buy fire insurance. Does not our species as a whole need an insurance policy?

Even Carl Sagan, a long-time opponent of using manned spacecraft where robots can serve, came out in support of space colonization near the end of his life, for this reason; see his book _Pale Blue Dot._ And in an interview with Britain's newspaper _Daily Telegraph_ , eminent cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, "I don't think that the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet." Hawking is more worried about the possibility of our creating a virus that destroys us than about nuclear disaster. However, he said, "I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

My novel _The Far Side of Evil_ is based on the concept of a "Critical Stage" during which a species has the technology to expand into space, but hasn't yet implemented it, and in which that same level of technology enables it to wipe itself out. The premise of the book is that each world will do one or the other, but not both. I have believed this since the early fifties, when there was real danger of nuclear war but no sign of space travel. When the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, my reaction was overwhelming joy and relief, because I thought that at last our energies were going to be turned toward space exploration. I felt that way through the era of Apollo. Since Apollo, as public support of the space program has waned, my fears have grown again, because I don't believe that a world turned in on itself can remain peaceful. A progressive species like ours has a built-in drive to move forward, and that energy has to go somewhere. Historically, when it was not going into mere survival or into the exploration and settlement of new lands—which is the adaptive reason for such a drive—it has gone into war.

This is the price we pay for our innate progressiveness. I know that it is now fashionable to deride the concept of progress, and certainly we cannot say that progress is inevitable. It surely doesn't characterize all change in all areas of human endeavor. Nevertheless, overall, the human race as a whole advances; if it did not we would still be cavemen. This is what distinguishes our species from all others. And like it or not, this drive is inseparable from the drive toward growth and expansion. Many successful species colonize new ecological niches; this is one of the fundamental features of evolution. When a species can't find a new niche, and the resources of the old one are no longer sufficient, it dies out. If the resources do remain sufficient, it lives, but is unchanging from era to era. There are no cases in biology of progressive evolution unaccompanied by expansion.

Thus it will ultimately be essential for us to colonize space. People sometimes object to the term "space colonies" on political grounds and for this reason NASA, along with some others, prefers the term "space settlements." The objection, however, strikes me as invalid. To be sure, "colonization" does have some bad associations, since on Earth it always involved taking over the land and/or culture of indigenous inhabitants—but that is precisely what a space colony would _not_ do! Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, advocates colonizing _inhabited_ planets, even if we should ever find any. The idea of expanding into space is to abandon our dependence on zero-sum games. A more accurate precedent for the term "colonize" in the space context is its meaning in biology: the establishment of a species' presence in a new ecological niche.

Earth's eventual shortage of resources is an even more crucial reason for expansion into space than the danger of its destruction. It's obvious that this planet cannot support an expanding population forever. Most people who recognize this fact advocate population control to the extent of "zero population growth." I do not; I believe it would be fatal not only for the reason explained above, but because if it could be achieved it would result in stagnation. I do not want a world in which there can be no growth; growth leads to intellectual and artistic progress as well as to material survival. Furthermore, I do not believe it could be achieved. The built-in desire for personal descendants is too strong; that is why our species has survived this long, why it has spread throughout the entire world. Moreover, the biological response to threatened survival is to speed up reproduction, as we can see by the number of starving children in the world. If we tried to suppress population growth completely, we would have either immediate violent upheaval or a period of dictatorship followed by bloody revolution. Ultimately, we would reduce the population all right; we would decimate it. That may be "survival" but it's surely not the future we want.

We do not want even the present restriction on resources. Currently, some nations live well while others are deprived, and it's asserted that even those with the best access to resources should stop using them up—the underdeveloped nations, under this philosophy, are not given the hope of a standard of living commensurate with the level our species has achieved. Will the Third World tolerate such a situation forever? I surely wouldn't blame them for not wanting to. And neither do I want the rest of the world reduced to a lower level of technology. Even if I had no other objection to such a trend, the plain fact is that a low level of technology cannot support the same size population as a high level; so if you want to cut back on technology, you have to either kill people outright or let them starve. And you certainly can't do anything toward extending the length of the human lifespan. This is the inevitable result of planning based on a single-planet environment.

If there is pessimism in Earthbound science fiction (which its most outstanding characteristic), these truths are the source of it. I have not seen any that denies any of them; pop-culture SF films reveal that what people grasp mythopoeically about such a future involves catastrophic war, cut-throat human relationships in overcrowded cities, and a general trend toward dehumanization. To give only a few examples, _Soylent Green_ postulates cannibalism and _Logan's Run_ is based on the premise that everybody is required to die at the age of thirty. The destruction of the world's ecology is a basic assumption of such fiction—which is natural, since in a contest between a stable biosphere and personal survival, humans will either prevail or they will die.

Myths showing these things are indeed part of the response to a new perception of our environment: the perception that as far as Earth is concerned, it is limited. (A basic premise of the course during which this was written was that all myth is a response of a culture to the environment in which it perceives itself to exist.) But at the rational level, people do not want to face them. They tell themselves that if we do our best to conserve resources and give up a lot of the modern conveniences that enable us to spend time expanding our minds, we can avoid such a fate—as indeed we can, for a while. But not forever. And most significantly, not for long enough to establish space settlements if we don't start soon enough. A significant human foothold in space is not something that can be gained overnight.

I have called this stage in our evolution the "Critical Stage"; Paul Levinson (who was the Director of Connected Education, the organization for which I taught the course during which this was written) uses different terminology for the same concept. He says that we have only a narrow window to get into space, a relatively short time during which we have the capability, but have not yet run out of the resources to do it. I agree with him completely about this. Expansion into space demands high technology and full utilization—although not destructive utilization—of our world's material resources. It also demands financial resources that we will not have if we deplete the material resources of Earth. And it demands human resources, which we will lose if we are reduced to global war or widespread starvation. Finally, it demands spiritual resources, which we are not likely to retain under the sort of dictatorship that would be necessary to maintain an allegedly sustainable global civilization.

Because the window _is_ narrow, we not only have to worry about immediate perils. The ultimate, unavoidable danger for our planet, the transformation of our sun, is distant—but if we don't expand into space now, we can never do it. Even if I'm wrong and we survive stagnation, it will be too late to escape from this solar system, much less to explore for the sake of exploring.

I realize that what I've been saying here doesn't sound like my usual optimism. But the reason it doesn't, I think, is that most people don't understand what's meant by "space humanization" (a term current at the time this was written that has since fallen out of use). Some readers are probably thinking that space travel isn't going to be a big help with these problems, as indeed, the form of it shown in today's mythology would not. Almost certainly, they are thinking that it won't solve the other problems of Earth, and I fear all too many may feel that the other problems should be solved first.

One big reason why they should not is the "narrow window" concept. The other is that they _could_ not. I have explained why I believe the problem of war can't be solved without expansion. The problem of hunger is, or ultimately will be, the direct result of our planet's limited resources; though it could be solved for the near term by political reforms, we are not likely to see such reforms while nations are playing a zero-sum game with what resources Earth still has. Widespread poverty, when not politically based, is caused by insufficient access to high technology and by the fact that there aren't enough resources to go around (if you doubt this, compare the amount of poverty here with the amount in the Third World, and the amount on the Western frontier with the amount in our modern cities). Non-contagious disease, such as cancer, is at least partially the result of stress; and while expansion won't eliminate stress, overcrowding certainly increases it. The problem of atmospheric pollution is the result of trying to contain the industry necessary to maintain our technology within the biosphere instead of moving it into orbit where it belongs.

What about the growing problem of international terrorism? Unfortunately, it is exactly what can be expected in a Critical Stage civilization: one that has outgrown its home world but has not yet directed its energies into moving beyond, and in which the evil actions of a few individuals can affect the entire planet. In one way this is a hopeful view; it reflects my belief that the threats we face are not signs of something having gone wrong with our species' evolution, but natural ones with which we must deal. But time is running out. To let the fight against terrorism distract us from developing space technology would, in my opinion, be self-defeating, just as would attempting to solve other worldwide problems while remaining confined to Earth.

In short, all the worldwide problems we want to solve, and feel we should have solved, are related to the fact that we've outgrown the ecological niche we presently occupy. I view them not as pathologies, but as natural indicators of our evolutionary stage. I would like to believe that they'll prove spurs to establishing a human presence in space. If they don't, we'll be one of evolution's failures.

But by establishing a presence, I don't necessarily mean exploring and settling other worlds

## *

When we think of space exploration, we usually think of its goal as "To seek out new life and new civilizations, to go where no [hu]man has gone before." That's what excites us and inspires awe, in some of us at least, and that's certainly the fountainhead of our mythology. Personally, I believe that from the evolutionary standpoint the joy of exploration is a built-in factor for preservation of the species, just as is the joy of sexual love. But, as our feelings about sexual love mean much more to us than biology and have been the source of many great achievements of our civilization, our exploratory instinct means more than survival. The discovery of new lands has always led to a renaissance in the arts and in intellectual progress, and the same will be true of expansion into space. This process is an aspect of our creativity. We do not explore because we want to survive, any more than we make love because we want to survive; survival is only a byproduct.

However, at this stage of our evolution we have run into a problem with the process. Columbus explored because of his personal urge to do so, and both the Renaissance and human survival followed. (Explorers of some sort were essential to survival—imagine what would have happened if our species had been forever confined to the single site where it diverged from its hominid ancestors.) It was difficult for explorers to get money for ships, but each had to talk only one backer into it; Columbus, according to legend, convinced Queen Isabella. Settlers could move into new lands with their personal resources alone, as Americans did when they loaded their belongings into wagons and set out on the Oregon Trail. Both explorers and settlers were laughed at by people who didn't share their views; it didn't matter. They went anyway. It wasn't necessary for their culture as a whole to decide that it wasn't a waste of money

Not so with space humanization. We can't rely on the drive toward exploration because, by the population at large, it's not considered a top priority. It never was, in any society. If the people of Columbus' time had had to vote to tax themselves in order to fund his ships, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere; most of them felt he would fall off the edge of the world, and even the educated minority, who knew better, felt there was better use for their money. Even in that era, the most altruistic would no doubt have preferred to give Isabella's jewels to the poor. There were some myths, travelers' tales, about riches to be found in new lands; but just as in our time, rational, hardheaded skepticism ruled the majority.

Yet purpose as expressed in mythology is the opposite of rationally-derived purpose. Mythology reflects what we feel, not what we know consciously. Thus Space Age mythology shows us why we would like to explore space, but not why the majority should be willing to pay for it. It shows our dreams, but not what science reveals as the concrete advantages. People who enjoy the mythology don't need hardheaded justification (though even they are often unwilling to vote on the basis of their feelings), while those who don't enjoy it are apt to judge the whole issue of space humanization on the basis of admittedly-impractical mythic metaphors.

It is true enough that we can't solve the problems of Earth by setting forth in starships like the _Enterprise,_ or by interplanetary travel at all. From an economic standpoint, a trip to Mars is not the best way to begin the process of expansion (though it's certainly a later goal, and I support doing it first on the grounds of its effect on the public imagination).The basic ideas of space humanization are (a) to make use of _extraterrestrial resources_ to supplement those of Earth; (b) to _move heavy industry_ off Earth, where it pollutes and where energy is expensive, into orbit, where energy is cheap; and (c) to provide large areas of _living space_ to which people can eventually move (not to "ship extra people into space," which as critics are quick to point out, would not work, but to make room for new people to be born without increasing Earth's population). Only in this way can we get the resources we need _both_ for preserving Earth's biosphere _and_ for eventually building starships.

If you have not heard of this scenario before, it's likely to strike you as impossible, impractical, or prohibitively expensive, if not all three. It certainly isn't what mythology has thus far prepared us for. And yet, we have had the technological capability to begin this process since the late 1970s and it's not nearly as costly as the exploration of a planet without prior space industrialization. The key to it is that we wouldn't try to lift the components of space habitats up from Earth. We would use raw materials from the moon and asteroids, and build solar power satellites in orbit. The power would then be beamed to Earth, where it would be cheap enough to lift the Third World out of poverty (many people in the Third World spend a large share of their time and/or income on _firewood,_ and in so doing, destroy forests). Products of space-based industries would be shipped _down_ to Earth, not lifted up out of its gravity well. Some scientists feel that enough food could be raised in orbit to ship food down, as well. And meanwhile, the space-dwellers producing all these things cheaply for Earth would be getting rich, because they would not be citizens of Earth nations; they would be citizens of their own orbiting colonies, entitled to the full proceeds of their labor. Eventually, they would be rich enough to fund interstellar expeditions. And their living conditions would not be what you're imagining if you're picturing Deep Space Nine. Orbiting colonies—probably the most difficult concept to understand if you haven't seen any of the artists' renditions—would be little worlds built from extraterrestrial materials, with the living space on the _inside_. They would be complete biospheres with trees and lakes and gardens, much less crowded and less sterile than New York City. Many of their advocates have said that having once lived that way, humans would never want to live on the surface of a planet again, and that if they traveled to a new planet, they'd go to its surface only to explore.

Much of this, in particular the design of the colonies, is the vision of Gerard O'Neill, formerly professor of physics at Princeton and until his untimely death, president of the Space Studies Institute which he formed to research the engineering details of the scenario. His book _The High Frontier_ is a classic that should be read by everyone serious about space settlements. At one time there was an active citizen's group, the L-5 Society, dedicated to his ideas, but it has merged into the National Space Society. He testified before Congress many times and was recognized as an expert on the future of space, though his specific proposals weren't taken seriously by enough people to count. NASA did two studies of his orbiting colony concept. But of course, though it was entirely feasible from the technological standpoint, it was not feasible politically or financially, at least not in this country. Japan and India were more enthusiastic and I won't be at all surprised if the first orbiting colony turns out to be Japanese.

Most space experts don't advocate anything as ambitious as O'Neill Colonies. It's not likely that space industrialization will proceed that rapidly. But we could do it in stages. We could and should build the solar power satellites (studies that have "proven" them impractical have been based on the assumption that materials would be lifted from Earth; use of lunar materials would make them cost-effective). And we could certainly start utilizing the too-long-abandoned moon. But the American people seem blind to the need to do so, and while private corporations could ultimately get rich by doing it, it's a very long-term investment.

At the time I wrote this essay, I believed that orbiting colonies of the kind proposed by Gerard O'Neill were the most practical first step in establishing a major human presence in space and that they could be built soon if enough effort and funding were devoted to it. We now know that they are a long way ahead and are not the top priority. That does not invalidate the basic facts about the need to make use of extraterrestrial materials and energy and to move polluting industry into orbit in order to preserve Earth's environment. I still think there will be orbiting colonies someday, but other things, such as a permanent base on the moon and/or Mars, and perhaps the mining of asteroids, will precede them.

Of course, I too am excited by the long-range possibilities of galactic exploration shown in Space Age mythology. Paul Levinson has a lot to say about the infinity of the universe and how, in principle, our species has access to its infinite resources and the infinite extension of intelligence this will make possible. I agree wholeheartedly (except that unlike him, I believe we will meet other intelligent species someday). But none of this can happen unless we survive long enough to make it happen. And we can't survive that long, in my opinion, unless we take the necessary steps to get from here to there. This is why I believe the most crucial function of our new mythology, and the one with the greatest adaptive value, is expression of the idea that people belong in space.

POSTSCRIPT (2019)

While I still strongly believe most of I said in this essay, I now feel that it is neither possible nor necessary to convince the public. The majority is not emotionally ready to face the idea of an environment larger than our home planet, and the advances will be made by the minority with exceptional vision, as they always have been throughout human history. When I stated above that "at this stage of our evolution we have run into a problem with the process," implying that our situation is different from the past when exploration didn't depend on society as a whole deciding that it wasn't a waste of money, I was wrong. Entrepreneurs with vision are already beginning to send ships into space, and what the general public thinks of their ventures doesn't matter. If you are a space advocate who has been discouraged and depressed by the slowness of our progress in space in the half-century since the Apollo 11 moon landing, take heart from the success of commercial space flights.

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Update on the Critical Stage:

The Far Side of Evil's Relevance Today

(2017)

_This essay explains why I feel_ The Far Side of Evil _should not be called outdated, as it sometimes has been, and also presents my recent thoughts about the theory of the Critical Stage that underlies that novel. Because it is highly relevant to my view of the importance of space, I'm including it in this book as well as in my collection of essays about my writing._

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The central idea of my 1971 novel _The Far Side of Evil_ is one that came to me 1956: my theory of the Critical Stage, the time between a planetary civilization's development of the means to destroy itself and a commitment to expand beyond the single planet where such destruction would wipe it out. The same level of technology that makes one possible also permits the other, and in my view they are mutually exclusive alternatives—a world will remain in the Critical Stage until one or the other happens. This supposition is as valid in my eyes as ever, although my conception of the Critical Stage has changed over time.

It's frustrating to me that many readers feel that the novel is outdated, and that it therefore seems irrelevant to today's world. I addressed this in the Afterword to the 2003 revised edition, but some people say the new version, too, is dated, so evidently I failed to revise the original text successfully. That's too bad, as I feel the book is even more relevant today than at the time of its initial publication.

The political situation in the story was never meant to parallel current events on Earth; it is comparable to our world as it was during the early fifties, not the seventies when the first edition appeared. After all, I wrote an initial draft of portions of it a year before the launch of Sputnik, an event that to my surprise and relief made it impossible for the planet portrayed to be our own. The story is not about politics, although its setting—the conflict between dictatorship and freedom—is universal and applies to all eras. As far as the story is concerned, that conflict is merely a plot device; so the fact that we no longer have two superpowers on the verge of nuclear war in no way dates it. As I said in the Afterword, some readers thought I used space fiction as a vehicle for political commentary when in fact it was the other way around: I used political melodrama to dramatize my ideas about the importance of traveling into space.

When the book was written, I assumed a world's Critical Stage is short. (Yes, I believe the theory applies to worlds other than ours, just as some scientists now believe that one goal of seeking interstellar radio contact is to find out how long an average planetary civilization lasts before self-destruction.) At the time of the Apollo moon landings, most people thought that nuclear war was likely to occur in the near future, but that if it didn't, we would continue to make rapid progress in space exploration. Since personally, I had believed since the early fifties that devoting a society's energy to space travel puts an end to the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war, I described the Critical Stage in those terms. And in fact, some evidence was provided by the space race with the Soviets, which absorbed money and effort that would otherwise have been spent on a more destructive competition.

As time passed, however, it became clear that my theory was a gross oversimplification. I tried to update it in the 2003 edition, pointing out that there are more dangers to a planetary civilization than nuclear war and that mere development of space travel capability, without a major commitment to establish settlements on other worlds, is not enough to eliminate them. But it's a novel, not a philosophic treatise, and it was being issued by the publisher's "children's book" department (although it's inappropriate for readers below high school age), so I wasn't able to elaborate enough to clarify the relevance to today's world.

Readers say to me that we have space travel yet are still in danger, and that's true. But we haven't made use of our space travel capability. Expansion into space prevents a civilization's destruction by two means: first, by constructively channeling the energy that would otherwise have gone into war, and second, by establishing footholds that can survive even if a species' home world is devastated—which in principle can happen through a natural event such as an asteroid strike, as well as through various kinds of human action. We have not taken steps toward either one; for nearly half a century, despite the dedicated effort of a small number of astronauts and space advocates, we have done no more than maintain a limited human presence in low orbit. Society as a whole has made no effort at all.

One reader told me he felt that we should spend no more on space travel until every child on Earth is well fed. That dismays me, as I believe the all-too-common idea that we should solve the problems on Earth before moving outward into space is a self-defeating policy. If we wait until we have eradicated poverty to colonize other worlds, neither will ever happen. Expansion into space is the solution—and in my opinion, the only solution—to Earth's problems. Abolishing hunger and pollution and war depends on the use of extraterrestrial resources. The fact that these problems still exist despite well-intentioned efforts to eliminate them is the result of our confinement to a single planet that we have outgrown, and they will inevitably continue to worsen until we make the effort to expand our civilization beyond it.

Most people assume either that we will someday learn to prevent war, or that human nature will eventually lead to interplanetary wars. In my opinion neither of those things will occur. War cannot be abolished by "learning" to prevent it. Negotiation is meaningless because no matter how many leaders negotiate in good faith, there will be fanatics who ignore treaties, and as long as these fanatics can attract enough followers to launch attacks, a strong defense against them is essential; failure to maintain it would lead to worldwide dictatorship. I believe that in time there will be an end to war, but this cannot happen until it becomes impossible for aggressors to recruit a significant number of supporters, a situation that can be brought about only by eliminating the factors that cause people to support them.

Human nature leads to war for two reasons that can't be merely wished away (although the majority attitude toward war certainly becomes more negative as the centuries pass). In the first place, humans crave challenge and excitement, which is the reason our species has been able to survive and thrive; so when a society is not fully occupied with a constructive challenge, it fulfills this need through a destructive one. In the second place, people fight over land and resources when these are scarce or seem likely to become scarce—again, this is an instinct indispensable to survival.

But once we break free of the confines of our native planet, there will be plenty of constructive challenge in the process of surviving elsewhere, and neither living space nor resources will ever be scarce again. The universe contains sufficient resources to last virtually forever—and making use of them needn't involve stealing them from extraterrestrial races; the discovery of numerous exoplanets indicates that there are more than enough uninhabited worlds to go around.

As long we are bound to a single world with shrinking resources, however, the situation can only get worse. There is nothing surprising in the rise of militant groups and terrorists; how could it be otherwise when it's obvious that Earth's resources can't last indefinitely and some societies either have less than others, or fear that what they do have will be taken away? When the frustration of the have-nots, and their lack of any way of constructively changing their situation, makes them easy prey for fanatics who know all too well how to satisfy their instinctive longing for an exciting challenge? This was always true, but in the past trouble wasn't widespread enough to threaten the existence of Earth's civilization as a whole. With modern technology, it becomes increasingly possible for a small minority to endanger the entire planet, even without the use of nuclear weapons (or with them; it no longer takes a superpower to launch a nuclear attack). Yet with that same level of technology we could extend civilization beyond the planet so that even if the worst should happen here, our species will not be wiped out.

This is what the Critical Stage is, and far from being an outdated concept, it becomes more and more pertinent year by year. I see this as a natural stage of evolution. We don't have wars because we are foolish or morally deficient (although there will always be individual evildoers), and we won't have them when our species is mature enough to take up the challenge of interplanetary expansion. I don't believe there will ever be interplanetary war, as many people think is inevitable in view of past history. Conditions will not be the same as in the past. In the terminology of anthropology, war in the past was adaptive for our species—it led step by step to the development of the technology needed to access the resources of a new ecological niche. It will not be adaptive once we are occupying that niche.

Nor will people's attitudes be the same. Centuries ago, war was considered glorious and men felt deprived of opportunity when no war was in progress. Even as recently as World War I, young Americans who joined up were afraid it would be over before they had a chance to get into the fight. Nobody in our culture feels that way today—it's generally agreed that war is a bad thing to be avoided whenever possible. Progress does occur over time. But it takes time—evolution is not a process that can be speeded up by decree, although it can, unfortunately, be stalled by apathy.

For many years I was increasingly worried, not so much by my awareness of more threats as by the fact that nothing was being done to speed up our progress in space and the general public cared less and less about it. I was afraid that our Critical Stage might be unnaturally prolonged. Then, a few years after the republication of _The Far Side of Evil,_ it dawned on me that the public's decreasing interest in space is due not to apathy, but to fear—not conscious fear, but the stirring of an unconscious recognition that the universe is very much vaster, and more scary, than most people like to think. (See "Achieving Human Commitment to Space Colonization: Is Fear the Answer?" at my website,) At the time of Columbus, many thought venturesome ships would fall off the edge of the world, a prospect they viewed with great dismay; others (according to legend), knowing the world extended beyond their maps, marked the edges with the warning "Here Be Dragons." Figuratively speaking, most people of our time, having been shown that travel between worlds is no mere fantasy, may feel the same way about space exploration.

And so for a while I thought that the alternative fear of such disasters as biological warfare, environmental deterioration, and terrorism might be the spur needed to get the space program moving again—we wouldn't have gotten to moon without the fear that the Soviets would win the Cold War. But in 2012, while revising my nonfiction book _The Planet-Girded Suns_ for republication, I suddenly saw the striking parallel between today's widespread underlying fear of what the universe may hold and the feeling that prevailed in the seventeenth century when the orderly Earth-centered conception of the cosmos was being replaced by realization that the universe has no center and the stars aren't fixed to a solid crystal sphere. The deep feeling of insecurity this new outlook engendered among the majority of educated people lasted for nearly a hundred years. Is there any reason to assume it will take less time for the public to get used to awareness that humankind is not isolated from whatever exists elsewhere? (See "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century," published as an Afterword to _The Planet-Girded Suns_ and by _The Space Review_.)

And so I now think that a commitment to large-scale space efforts will not come soon, and that far from being a sign that something has gone wrong, this is a normal phase of evolution that should have been predictable. The Critical Stage simply isn't as brief as I once believed. That's an optimistic view, as it means we are still on track. But of course the danger of self-destruction remains, and will last until we do take major steps toward space colonization. There is a longer period of peril than I supposed, and thus greater odds that we won't survive it.

In the novel the Service is searching for "the key to the Critical Stage" that might enable them to save other worlds, and when readers asked why I didn't let them find it, I've replied it was because I didn't know the key myself. I now suspect that I do know, and that the only key is time. Thus there is indeed one unreasonable premise underlying the story—the assumption that the Service wasn't already aware of that, considering that it knew the histories of the many worlds in the Federation it represented. However, I naturally don't pretend to portray the very advanced interstellar civilization in my fiction realistically, so I trust that this newly-discovered plot hole is not too serious a flaw. Certainly their immediate concern is valid, since if no start were made toward developing space technology, a world's Critical Stage would end sooner or later in disaster.

Of course there are many individuals in our society who don't share the prevalent uneasiness about human contact with the universe and are enthusiastic about exploring. There will be small-scale activity in space, including bases on the moon and Mars, long before our Critical Stage is over. We are already beginning to make progress with commercial space ventures, which I have always believed are what are needed to bring about significant development of extraterrestrial resources. But I no longer believe we will see any major effort toward colonization before the end of the twenty-first century.

What will happen when our world's Critical Stage finally ends? By definition, we will have begun to spread into space, and more resources will be available to Earth. But I don't think our world will become the utopia many people hope for until much later; I suspect that for the foreseeable future such a society will be possible only in the colonies. I do believe war will be abandoned, yet there will still be troublemakers and police will be needed to deal with them. There will be hunger and poverty because Earth will be overcrowded for a long time to come, and it won't be possible to import sufficient resources until orbiting colonies—as distinguished from those on other planets—are well established (although implementation of space-based solar power could go a long way toward minimizing these problems). And there will be depression and apathy among the majority of citizens who cannot personally participate in the exploration and settling of the frontier. My novels _Defender of the Flame_ and _Herald of the Flame,_ which are set long after many worlds have been colonized, portray what I think is most likely; they paint a dismal picture of conditions on Earth but offer hope from an unexpected direction at the end of the story.

Today's space enthusiasts naturally resist the idea of there being a natural explanation for the slowness of our movement beyond Earth, one that time alone can overcome. My published essay about it wasn't warmly received. Perhaps I am able to believe it only because now that I'm past eighty I know colonies can't be established in my lifetime anyway, nor will I live to see the worsening conditions on Earth likely to prevail before they are. But if my theory about the delay is true, at least we have no present cause to doubt that, barring catastrophe, we will someday reach that pivotal point in our evolution.

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Is It Time to Send Humans to Mars?

(2019)

This essay is a revised version of comments posted at my website successively over the years, which reflected my changing opinion about the priority of going to Mars.

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The planet Mars has fascinated space enthusiasts since the late nineteenth century, when observation of the supposed "canals" on its surface led the public to believe it might be inhabited. Long before anyone thought that humans might someday travel to Mars, fiction—beginning with H. G. Wells _The War of the Worlds_ , which was first published in 1897—stories about it have been popular. The discovery that the red planet has no inhabitants and cannot support advanced forms of life did not discourage its use as a setting for science fiction. And since the beginning of the Space Age and even earlier, it has been the prime goal of space exploration and eventual colonization.

I began writing drafts of stories about Mars colonization in 1953 or 1954. In 1967, when I finally wrote my Young Adult novel _Journey Between Worlds_ (first published by Atheneum in 1970, republished by Putnam in 2006 and issued as an ebook in 2015 by me) it never occurred to me to question the obvious idea that we would go to Mars as soon as possible after going to the moon, and that it would be the site of our first colonies other than lunar bases. _Journey Between Worlds_ strongly advocates the colonization of Mars and compares it to the westward movement of American pioneers. It's directed mainly to teenage girls, although many adults enjoy it, and is told from the viewpoint of a young woman who doesn't like Mars at first, but comes to recognize its vital importance to human progress.

I have never stopped believing all I said in _Journey Between Worlds,_ which, is more timely than ever and which I'm happy to have read by a new audience. However, my view of the priority of colonizing Mars has undergone a succession of changes.

In 1980, while working on research for a master's thesis in anthropology focused on the evolutionary significance of space colonization—which for reasons having nothing to do with its subject, was never finished—I became convinced that orbiting colonies would precede the settlement of Mars. (See my essay "Space and Human Survival.") I was won over by Gerard O'Neill's vision of their practicality. His writings maintained that having once lifted people and equipment up out of Earth's gravity well into space, it would be pointless to send them back down into another one—to another planetary surface. And orbiting colonies could meet the needs of Earth itself, beaming back power and taking polluting industry out of the atmosphere, whereas distant Martian colonies could not. They would be less expensive to establish than Martian colonies, and could be built sooner, on a much larger scale.

So throughout the eighties and most of the nineties, I believed that a fairly large-scale presence in Earth orbit would be our next step. But this didn't happen. It could have, if we had had the will to do it. And if we had started on such a project in the eighties—which we had the technological capability to do, given sufficient funds—we would be much closer to human missions to Mars than we are right now. However, in 1998 I changed my mind again. I don't think we will build orbiting colonies without first exploring further. The public simply won't grasp their potential benefits, any more than it has grasped the potential economic benefits of permanent bases on the moon. That type of pioneering is too far removed from the image established by our biological and cultural heritage and reflected in the mythic depths of our feelings about space. It will come; it _must_ come eventually if we are to save Earth from the effects of overuse. But we're not yet ready for it.

By the turn of the century I felt sure that we _were_ ready to reach for Mars. The enthusiasm for the 1997 Pathfinder mission and the later Mars rovers inspired people's imagination. A grass-roots movement toward exploration and eventual settlement of Mars was building. It was evident that when people think of expansion beyond Earth, Mars is the place they envision. So it seemed that we might bypass the logical stage of near-Earth development, postponing it until later, and focus first on going to Mars. I felt that this might be our best, and in fact only, hope for gaining the support of a large enough proportion of the public to make the utilization of extraterrestrial resources possible. And of course, I was all for it! I have always believed Mars colonies are the hope of the next few centuries and a crucial step toward our ultimate migration to the stars. And I thought that perhaps, if we got going without further delay, I might live to see their inception.

But in 2012 I once again changed my mind. Though I certainly favored going to Mars and believed that was what America should do without further delay, I could see that it wasn't likely. I had come to realize that the public won't support further manned exploration of space quite yet, for reasons summarized in my essay "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century," (which appears as the Afterword to of my book _The Planet-Girded Suns: The Long History of Belief in Exoplanets_ as well as in this book and online). The taxpayers will not fund it in the foreseeable future, despite the inestimable benefit not only to humankind's long-term survival, but to the current economy.

So I am back to believing that the next major step will be the establishment of a large-scale presence in Earth orbit and on the moon. The taxpayers won't support that, either (unless driven to compete with China)—but they won't have to. The most significant achievement I have seen since the end of Apollo has been the successful delivery of supplies to the International Space Station by commercial companies. I have always favored private development of space industry, but until now it hasn't been feasible; funds couldn't have been raised for such a long-term investment. Once there is enough profit in it to attract investors, that will change. And when we reach the stage of several companies competing not only to provide transport to and from orbit, but to supply energy to Earth from solar power satellites, we will at last move ahead quickly again. Not toward establishment of orbiting colonies, at least not soon; but we will be on the road to utilizing extraterrestrial resources and protecting Earth's environment.

At first, I assumed that for the near term, privately-owned spaceships would not be able to reach Mars. I thought the cost would be too high to attract investors, as there would be no near-term profit in it. Throughout history, costly advances have been made only under threat of war or with the expectation of profit; voyages from Europe to the New World could not have been made if the kings who paid for the ships had not hoped they would bring back gold. Eventually, however, the utilization of solar power and extraterrestrial resources from the moon and asteroids will make entrepreneurs rich. Those are the people who will be in a position to get to Mars, and they will surely do it, whether supported by the public or not. Explorers and pioneers have never had the backing of the general public. Yet through their discoveries, majority views have gradually shifted, and I believe it will be so with the exploration of our solar system.

As it turned out, I was wrong in thinking that a privately-owned ship cannot land on Mars soon. In April 2016 billionaire Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX—which has been sending unmanned supply ships to the International Space Station—announced that his company will send an unmanned ship to Mars in the near future and will send astronauts later on. And he is not the only wealthy individual with plans for space projects. That they see the need for humankind to become a space-faring species and are willing to risk their fortunes to bring it about is the best news I've heard since the Apollo era. Thus I'm more optimistic than I have been in recent years, now that a start is being made.

To be sure, Musk's ship hasn't gotten to Mars yet, and it remains to be seen whether his current goal of sending cargo in 2022 and a crew in 2024 can be met. Even if it is, the immediate value will be more symbolic than practical. Travel to Mars is a great deal more complicated than it was once thought to be. For example, the effect of long-term weightlessness on the human body is more damaging than was first realized, and whereas astronauts on exploratory missions may be willing to accept this, it seems unlikely that colonists can be sent before a ship with artificial gravity can be developed. It is really too soon to be planning a colony, though a number of excellent proposals for its physical establishment have been offered. The most important thing at present is to set foot on the planet with the intention of returning to it, for symbols are powerful and belief in the ability of humans to reach other worlds is crucial if we are to move forward.

At the same time, it is essential that attempts foredoomed to failure be avoided. In 2012 a small private company in the Netherlands announced a project called Mars One that it claimed would establish a permanent settlement on Mars by sending a ship with no intention of returning to Earth. Over 2700 people applied to be candidates for the venture. Unfortunately, from the beginning it was extremely unlikely that this company could fulfill its promises, as it had neither the funds nor the technological capability to do so. Some experts called it a scam, and many felt that since the inevitable outcome would be bound to disillusion the public, the publicity was doing the cause of reaching Mars more harm than good. Worse, If it did get as far as sending a ship, death of even a few would-be colonists would create a negative reaction that would delay any better-prepared Mars expedition, perhaps by many years.

Unlike some observers, I have no objection in principle to letting people embark on a one-way trip to Mars, as long as they are given a realistic idea of the odds of getting there and of what life in a small base would be like (it wouldn't be like the colonies commonly envisioned). If it is their choice to do that kind of pioneering—just as most pioneers in the past have traveled to new lands without expecting to go back—I wholeheartedly support them. But Mars One was collecting funds and volunteers by misleading people into believing there was a good chance of success, which given its lack of sufficient expertise, was simply not true. In 2019 the company declared bankruptcy and was dissolved.

## *

I now believe that taxed-funded space projects should focus on establishing an infrastructure in orbit and on the moon that will support extensive use of extraterrestrial resources for the benefit of Earth and that can serve as a base for future Martian colonies. There is much about living in space and establishing self-sustaining habitats that can best be learned near Earth rather than at a distance beyond the possibility of rescue. And there is a need to gain experience before large numbers of people are involved in so risky an undertaking as the settlement of a new world

The initial exploration of Mars should be left to entrepreneurs. Apart from the historical precedent and the avoidance of need to convince the taxpayers, this will provide an important psychological benefit. It will ensure that people don't get the impression that we go just to see what's there, rather than to lay the foundations for a permanent human presence in space.

Finding out what's on Mars won't do what is essential for the preservation of Earth, such as drawing on solar power to meet our energy needs and moving heavy industry out of the biosphere. When we got to the moon a lot of us assumed that one thing would naturally lead to another—I myself did, when in 1971 I wrote the original version of _The Far Side of Evil._ I thought just having space travel capability would cause a civilization to begin the process of spreading beyond the limits of its home world. It didn't turn out that way. It's widely recognized hat the problem with the space program has been that it lacks a goal, but the only goals seriously proposed recently have been ones that don't address either the issue of our species' future, or the present concerns of the public at large. And if reaching Mars were to become a goal in itself, without commitment to a larger vision of why humankind needs to be in space, we could lose momentum again once we get there, just as we did after Apollo.

The older I get, the more this prospect frightens me, despite the fact that my generation won't be around to see the result if it occurs. I don't believe humankind can afford another hiatus, although as explained in "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century," I now see that the first one was inevitable.

Important as it is to go to Mars, such a mission will be worse than useless from the survival standpoint if it proves more of a distraction than a spur to our civilization's large-scale settlement of space. Elon Musk had the right idea when he said in 2012, "I'm talking about sending ultimately tens of thousands, eventually millions of people to Mars and then going out there and exploring the stars."

Let's make very sure that the public knows from the start that a successful mission to Mars is just a beginning.

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Space Age Mythology Revisited

(2017)

This essay brings my online series "The New Mythology of the Space Age," which was written in 1995, up to date.

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My series "The New Mythology of the Space Age," which has been online at my website since 2003, consists of my "lectures" for the online course on "Science Fiction and Space Age Mythology" that I taught in the early nineties through Connected Education for graduate Media Studies credit from the New School for Social Research. Most of it is still current. The portions dealing with the origin and function of myth, the mythic nature of pop-culture science fiction as distinguished from literary science fiction, and why it can be viewed as the developing mythology of our era would not be different if I wrote them today. Nor would I change the discussions of specific SF films or other space-related topics, some of which have been adapted for inclusion in this book. But there is one respect in which the series is outdated. In the early nineties I placed emphasis on the optimism of space fiction as opposed to earthbound science fiction. That generalization no longer holds true.

"One of the outstanding things about major space films," I stated, "is that with only a few exceptions they are optimistic, often even uplifting. In a world that many people perceive as depressing and/or terrifying, they are an island of light." Unfortunately I cannot say that anymore. This is not surprising since all mythology is an expression of a culture's perception of its relationship to its environment—the total universe of which it is aware, not just "the environment" in the sense of our planet's biosphere. And as I explained in my essay "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century," people are now less eager to confront the regions beyond Earth than they were before the reality of our contact with them sunk in.

I believe this is the reason for the decline in the public's interest in real-life space activity—the prospect of meeting new and perhaps frightening things in the wider universe is no longer an abstraction. When going there was viewed as mere speculation it held wide appeal, but once it became clear that our world is not isolated—that we may actually venture forth or be visited by non-humans—then an undercurrent of uneasiness seems to have pervaded the collective unconscious. Though a small minority is as enthusiastic about humanity's future in space as ever, the general public has begun to have second thoughts.

Is this why some people now claim the Apollo moon landings never happened? The growing phenomenon of moon landing denial is indisputably part of space age mythology today. It's usually dismissed as just another conspiracy theory based on people's lack of trust in the government, but I think it has deeper significance. People believe what they want to believe. And evidently a lot of them, underneath, don't want to believe that humankind is in the verge of breaking away from the security of the familiar planet where it evolved.

Perhaps, too, this is the reason for the increased popularity of fantasy and superhero movies, which suggests that although people crave entertainment that offers some relief from the dark reality of the here and now, and from even darker portrayals of the future on Earth, they are finding it only in stories unrelated to the real universe.

Be that as it may, pop-culture fiction about space is not as optimistic as is used to be, and that is not an accident. Mythology reflects the prevailing perceptions of a culture; it does not create them. In the mythic sense, both the highest aspirations and the deepest fears of our era are inevitably focused on exploration of space or visitation from space, which is natural since we are newly aware that accessible space surrounds our world, whether or not we like the idea. If this situation did not evoke a new mythology, as awareness of unknown lands and seas evoked the mythologies of ancient times, it would be very surprising indeed. And the changing content of that mythology can reveal much about how public perceptions of space are shifting.

The former prevalence of optimism in space films was not without exceptions. These, among major space films that attracted large audiences, were _Alien_ and its sequels, _Outland,_ and _Total Recall._ (The latter doesn't really count as a space film, as although set on Mars, it was not about life on Mars but about memory implantation; and its locale was a mere framework for a violent action movie.) At the time of its release I was upset by _Alien_ because I felt it wouldn't do the space program any good, but on reflection, I realized that all mythology deals with the dark side of a culture's perceptions. There have always been monsters in strange lands, for people need to confront not only their aspirations concerning new environments, but their deep unconscious fears. Furthermore, perhaps the universe does contain species as dangerous to ours as the one in _Alien._ That possibility must be recognized. Real mythology, as distinguished from propaganda, doesn't gloss over life's perils—not all of which can be reduced to neat wrap-ups in the Captain's Log.

_Outland_ 's status was a bit more dubious, and despite its technically-realistic portrayal of space, it's by no means certain that it should be considered part of Space Age mythology. It was really a Western in futuristic costume, patterned after _High Noon._ But whereas people found _High Noon_ emotionally satisfying and perceived it as a triumph of good over evil, I can't recall hearing any such reaction to _Outland._ And the reason, I think, was that it was a hybrid form. It was based not on mythopoeically-derived vision but on mere projection ( _High Noon,_ by contrast, was set in the mythic Old West.) Projections of current trends are not a valid basis for space fantasy, or for that matter, for serious futurism—and mythopoeic thought recognizes this in a way that logical thought does not. Audiences didn't feel that people who colonize new worlds will live like those in _Outland;_ underneath they perceived the incongruity of its premises. In any case, public reaction proves the universe of the Star Trek and Star Wars films to have been more "true" in the eyes of our culture than that of _Outland,_ even though the technology shown in the latter was far closer to what we know of scientific fact.

But the year after I last taught the course, the tide of optimism about space began to turn with the blockbuster _Independence Day_ , the highest-grossing film of 1996. There had, of course, been many alien invasion films in the past, especially in the 1950s, but these, mostly B movies featuring BEMs ("bug-eyed monsters"), were viewed as pure fantasy or horror and weren't taken seriously. The V 2 rockets of World War II had raised the theoretical possibility of threats from space, but people didn't connect their unconscious fear of an unfriendly universe with real life. Not until space travel become a reality did they begin to feel such threats might actually exist. To be sure, _Independence Day_ was optimistic in the sense that the good guys won; it reassured audiences that in the face of a horrific attack humans would be victorious. Nevertheless it portrayed extraterrestrials as both powerful and fearsome. So too did a number of other popular alien invasion films that followed it, such as _War of the Worlds_ and the TV series _Falling Skies._

In the seventies and eighties there were many major movies that portrayed aliens as friendly— _E.T., Close Encounters, Starman, Cocoon,_ and _The Abyss,_ among others, As late as 1995 _Contact_ did so _._ In the twenty-first century, however, there have been only two that I know of— _Avatar_ (which is far from optimistic since it implies humans will do harm to alien worlds) and 2016's _Arrival_.

As for movies about humans in space, almost all the recent ones suggest that it's not a good place to be. _The Martian_ is the only upbeat film among them, and even that is about escaping from the inhospitable conditions on Mars rather than improving them. _Gravity,_ a beautiful, accurately envisioned film about near-Earth space flight, gives the impression that the dangers are too great to justify leaving the ground. _Interstellar_ portrays space travel as necessary for escape from a devastated Earth, but by no means pleasant. _Europa Report_ shows a scientific space mission as involving sacrifice to the exclusion of the joy and wonder of discovery.

It's not that these aren't good movies, or that they're not realistic—on the contrary, they are. Space missions are indeed dangerous. But in the past space exploration was seen as a thrilling adventure, one in which audiences felt participation would be worth the risk. There was no lack of danger in Star Trek, yet viewers wished they could travel aboard the _Enterprise_.

The recent Star Trek films, however, do lack the outlook that made people want "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." They have become mere action/adventure films, essentially no more inspiring than those that don't happen to take place in space. The same can be said of Star Wars, which lost its mythological significance in the three unsuccessful "prequel" movies and does not seem to have gotten it back in the new trilogy. Then too, the TV series _Firefly_ , which was clearly mythic and gained a strong following among people who still think space travel will be fun, was followed by a much darker movie sequel, _Serenity,_ that disappointed many of its fans. Where is the spirit of excitement and hope that once characterized space fiction?

That spirit has faded because, as I've said above, myth reflects the feelings of the culture that gives rise to it. And if specific evidence of our culture's withdrawal from space exploration is needed, we have only to look at the conclusion of the 2004-2009 version of _Battlestar Galactica_ , in which the protagonists, after long years in space, destroy their technology by sending their starships into the sun and commit to a low-tech lifestyle, confined to a pastoral planet (ultimately revealed to be prehistoric Earth) where in reality they'd be unlikely to survive. As far as I can see on the Web, few people were dismayed by that aspect of the finale; many of them liked it and considered it a happy ending. There could be no clearer symbol of our collective retreat from the universe beyond our world.

All in all, Space Age mythology is revealing the current outlook of our society, as mythologies always do, and is bearing out what I said in "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century." Hard though it is for space advocates to accept, it's going to be a long time before the public comes to terms with the fact that Earth is open to contact with the strange and sometimes-terrifying regions beyond.

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Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars

(2017)

This is a more detailed and formal presentation of things I have been saying at my website and elsewhere for many years. Although it is the title essay in another of my collections, I'm also including it in this one because of its comments about relationships between worlds at different stages of evolution.

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Authors are not supposed to tell readers how to interpret their books. Ordinarily it should be left to each reader to do so in his or her own way, and if the author fails to convey the intending meaning in the story itself, that is a flaw in the writing of it that no amount of explanation can remove. But in the case of _Enchantress from the Stars_ , there has been confusion arising from its science fiction content that I feel needs clearing up.

_Enchantress from the Stars_ is a book with more than one level and there's much in it that I believe applies to people of our own time in our own world—ideas about the different ways truth can be seen, about the power of faith, and about love. But as I have been saying since its first publication, it dismays me when readers assume it is a wholly allegorical story rather than one literally about relations between species that evolved on separate planets. That was something I didn't anticipate, and I don't quite see why, in an era when respect for all cultures is viewed as important, so few people see the harm in it. Usually it's okay for a book to be interpreted differently by different readers—but not when a common misinterpretation gives the impression that the author endorses a view of cultural relations on Earth that is generally considered not merely mistaken but "politically incorrect."

To assume that the premises of _Enchantress_ apply to relations among groups of the same species is a false analogy, and it leads to the conclusion that I view cultural differences in a way that was rejected by anthropologists long ago. Since I came close to getting a master's degree in anthropology I don't like having it thought, as it is by some critics, that I'm either ignorant or intentionally promoting that view, even apart from the fact that it's not one that young readers should be encouraged to adopt.

It used to be thought that some cultures on Earth were "primitive" while our own culture was "advanced" in a more fundamental sense than its possession of modern technology. Today this idea is looked upon as obsolete and condescending. All independent cultures on this planet have been developing for the same length of time, although some have changed more than others. We are all members of the same human race, the same species. The different peoples in _Enchantress_ , however, are of _different_ species, some of which are biologically older than others and whose civilizations have existed for longer periods of time. The variance in their maturity is evolutionary, not merely cultural. Relations between them cannot be compared to relations among people with the same origin. Moreover, basic to the premise that interstellar contact would be detrimental to young species is the fact that the existence of more mature ones is unknown to them, a situation that cannot exist on any single world.

To be sure, the fundamental idea that it's wrong to treat others as subhuman and seize land that belongs to them does apply to Earth. But when readers carry the analogy further, the story seems to be saying that we should not offer any help to developing nations or to societies on our own world whose members are sick or starving, which I certainly didn't mean to imply. Elana's people hold that it would be harmful to give aid to less mature species because it would interfere with their evolution and prevent them from eventually making a unique contribution to the community of advanced civilizations. (Which is why I believe extraterrestrials will not contact us at our present stage, much as advocates of SETI hope they will). Extragenetic evolution, however, applies to a planetary civilization as a whole; it cannot be said that some groups of the same species are further evolved than others.

Some readers have felt that the Federation in the story is rather high-handed in labeling the inhabitants of some worlds "mature" while others are not, and this would be a valid criticism if they had not been evolving for different lengths of time. In actuality, there is nothing arbitrary about the threshold I envision. The more advanced technology and less inhumane customs of the mature peoples as compared to the "Younglings" are _consequences_ of their species' age, not random characteristics by which they are subjectively judged. It is to be assumed that different cultures exist on all worlds, as they do on ours, though for sake of simplicity the story doesn't show that; yet the civilization of each world _as a whole_ either has reached a level where it can meet other worlds' planetary civilizations as an equal, or it has not. This, of course, is not to say that all individuals of a given species are equally mature. In my novels only the agents of the Service, who are selected according to very high standards, are allowed contact with "Youngling" worlds, so the variations among members of mature civilizations are not mentioned. The level of a species, however, depends on the qualities of the majority of its people, which need not be possessed by all of them.

What defines that level? As I have said in the Afterword to _Defender of the Flame_ and in that book and its sequel, as well as by implication in _Enchantress_ , I believe it is the widespread development of consciously-utilized psi (psychic) powers, especially telepathy. Not only would such powers lead to a greater degree of understanding and empathy than exists among the people of a world at our present stage of evolution, they would be essential to contact with extraterrestrials whose physical appearance would offer none of the clues on which communication has depended since the dawn of history. Without telepathic rapport the gulf between species would be too wide to cross, and hostility or an intent to exploit would be suspected where none existed. Moreover, people who lacked such capability could not function effectively in an interstellar society based on it; they would feel isolated and deficient no matter how much respect they were given.

By telepathy, of course, I do not mean "mind reading"—telepathy as I see it is two-way communication and is voluntary, at least at the unconscious level, on both sides. It is latent in all of us and has influenced history to a far greater extent than is imagined. The degree to which it can come under conscious control is unknown, and the use of it in my fiction does not pretend to be a realistic portrayal of a faculty beyond our present understanding. Undoubtedly it would not take the form of conversation as it has to be presented in writing; I suspect it would be entirely wordless. And a society in which it was common would not be as much like ours as the ones in the stories.

Whether any other psi powers ever approach the level described in my novels is an open question. I have intentionally exaggerated them not just for plot purposes, but to symbolize my belief that evolutionary advancement is not merely cultural but involves factors beyond our ability to truly imagine. I feel sure that we will ultimately develop conscious control of telepathy, but it's unlikely that future evolution will give us the ability to place our hands in fire without being burned, as Elana and the characters in my adult novels do. That is meant simply as an indication that evolving far beyond our present stage would involve developing capabilities that sociocultural change cannot produce.

There is another reason why I'm sorry that so few readers take the relationships between worlds in _Enchantress_ seriously. One of my aims in writing it was to influence young people's attitude toward extraterrestrial aliens. In the movies and in prevalent UFO lore, aliens are generally portrayed as hostile and repellent. On the other hand, some people view extraterrestrials as benevolent "gods from outer space" who would either consider the problems of Earth evidence we are an innately deficient species and a danger to the galaxy, or would tell us how to solve those problems—as in fact some scientists hope they will if radio contact with them can be made. In my opinion none of these ideas are constructive. They don't encourage effort to solve our own problems, and what is worse, they foster a negative view of the wide universe from which Earth cannot remain isolated.

This is not an issue to dismiss as silly or inconsequential. It doesn't matter whether any aliens show up within the lifetime of young people living today (which, for the reasons given in my novels, I personally believe they won't). The view of our place in the universe absorbed by the young will be passed from generation to generation and will shape the future of our civilization. It may even affect the pace of our progress toward becoming a starfaring species, which I consider essential to our long-term survival. And if representatives of advanced extraterrestrial ones ever do appear, we surely don't want assumptions drawn from alien invasion stories to affect our reception of them.

For both these reasons, I have mixed feelings about the commonly-expressed idea that _Enchantress from the Stars_ is "half fantasy and half science fiction." There is no fantasy in it, except in the sense that all science fiction contains material that is purely imaginary. Portions of it are told in the _literary style_ of fantasy, which is something quite different from having elements of fantasy in the story. Insofar as the misconception attracts readers who enjoy fantasy more than typical science fiction, calling it a mixture is a good thing; yet it also leads to the assumption that none of the story is meant to be taken literally. All good fantasy has a level on which the outlook toward life embodied is, in the author's opinion, valid—but on the level of the story's action it is not intended as serious speculation. Even when it is satire on past or present human events, it does not attempt to say more about the future than that mistakes of the past should be avoided. The creator of a fantasy world does not expect readers to wonder whether a comparable world, or situation, really exists somewhere. It is taken for granted that it is imagined simply to highlight thoughts about the here and now.

Science fiction, on the other hand, usually does say something about the future, albeit not at all literally with regard to the details. For example, "space opera" about battles with aliens assumes and instills the idea that because war has been common among humans, war with extraterrestrials is to be expected. Such ideas may not reflect the author's actual views—though often they do—but they affect how readers feel about what lies ahead for humankind. This is particularly true of young readers. They don't necessarily believe the underlying premises of a story consciously, but they absorb them unconsciously and pass them on. If a story is set in the future, it will have an emotional impact on attitudes toward the future, and calling it fantasy will not lessen that impact. And I think that the extent to which this is recognized by classifiers matters.

I would like to believe that my readers' feelings about our place in the larger universe is influenced, to at least a small degree, by imagining what relationships with extraterrestrial species might involve. So it disturbs me when they are led to think that the different peoples in the novel are merely different cultures of our own species in disguise. It is true that in one respect my portrayal of them is indeed a mere reflection of human cultures, since it is based on human mythology—on the comic-book image of space explorers prevalent in the twentieth century as much as on the myth of dragon-slayers derived from fairy tales. This does confuse the issue somewhat, especially since to my surprise many adult readers thought the invaders in the story were stereotyped rather than intentionally depicted in terms of a modern myth comparable to the older one.

Actually, the Imperials were no more meant to be realistic than the medieval characters. Moreover, they are an anachronism; a civilization advanced enough to build starships would not behave as our ancestors did. Even today, no one in a position to form space policy would consider colonizing a planet that has indigenous inhabitants. Yet the basic idea that humans, and presumably extraterrestrial civilizations, do advance—that the invaders were immature rather than collectively evil and could be expected to outgrow their aggressiveness—is, I trust, powerful enough to override such incongruities. It is this concept that should be taken literally, not the details that form the story's plot.

And it is this concept, more even than the novel's premise about relationships between our world and others, that I hope young people will absorb. Few readers have any grasp of the time scales involved in human progress. They are thus apt to think no progress is made, despite the fact that men of the past viewed war as glorious and desirable, and slavery was considered normal even in this country less than two hundred years ago. Obvious though it is that most of us have become a great deal less barbarous than the people of ancient times, all too often today's problems are seen as an indication that human behavior will never be any better—yet lack of change within a few generations means nothing in view of the centuries yet to come. Elana's people judge progress from the perspective of experience with many planetary civilizations over a long period of time. I hope imagining such a perspective will help readers realize that neither our own future actions nor those of any aliens we may meet can be predicted on the basis of our present stage of evolution.

I believe that we have an exciting future ahead among worlds beyond Earth, whether we meet any extraterrestrials or not. And it is not too soon to start caring how that future is envisioned, if only for the effect on the outlook of people today. That is why I write science fiction, and why the way my novels are interpreted matters to me.

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Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War

(2019)

Knowledge of humankind's history is important if we are to avoid mistakes of the past, but it's necessary to put past events into perspective by being aware of how things have changed from era to era—and to realize they will go on changing as we evolve.

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By far the most common theme of science fiction, at least of science fiction directed to the general public, has been interplanetary war or invasion. This isn't surprising, since it provides more scope for exciting stories than less violent themes. It also makes the stakes in a conflict higher than they would be if only individual characters were involved. And it seems a logical extension of human affairs into the future.

But is this really logical? Should we expect that because war has been common throughout human history, it will continue to exist in centuries to come? I don't think so. I believe that the very concept of an interplanetary war is anachronistic, however reasonable it may seem in the light of past experience.

In the first place, humankind progresses. Yes, if a time machine sent people of former centuries into the era of space travel, they might well find an excuse to fight each other. Setting aside the obvious logistical difficulty of launching an attack on a distant planet, they might attempt to conquer it. Conquest was not frowned upon in the past, and many men were eager participate and thereby gain glory. But today, few if any people consider it glorious to fight in a war. To defend against aggression, when not necessary for personal survival, is seen as a duty—one accepted gladly by some and with extreme reluctance by others. We have outgrown the perception of war as desirable.

But aren't human beings aggressive by nature? Isn't that an innate characteristic of our species? There is no evidence that this is so. We have a built-in drive to overcome obstacles, which is an adaptive trait essential to our survival; but fighting among ourselves is no longer adaptive—on the contrary, it could now lead to extinction. The obstacles are different now, and to overcome them that drive must be channeled into more constructive action. There will always be individual aggressors, but not enough to seize power. Future humans will find challenge enough in preserving—and spreading beyond—our home world.

In the second place, there will be no reason for colonized worlds to come into conflict. Conflicts arise over competition for land or resources. There will be plenty of land on any world fit for colonization, and a viable colony, by definition, will have either sufficient resources to survive or a way to obtain them from moons or asteroids. It would have nothing to gain by attacking another colony even if it had the means to do so. As for far-future colonies with large populations that have established trade, there might be disputes over specific resources—it would not, however, be feasible to go to war over them. To build a fleet of ships capable of that would cost more than any possible return.

Might not one colony, or confederation of colonies, wish to rule another? This analogy with Earth's history is a common fictional scenario, and on the surface it seems plausible; but again, it is based on the notion that people are innately aggressive. An aberrant individual might want to rule, but he could not acquire enough followers, let alone the technology, to pose a threat. Colonists will be too busy developing their own planets to be swayed by a power-seeker's ambition.

There remains the other common scenario, a fight for independence from a mother world. This is the one thing people of the future would be willing to fight for. Yet the time has passed when armed citizens can defeat the kind of force a world such as Earth could employ An uprising, even a politically successful one, is not a war.

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So wars between humans on different planets are just not going to happen. But there is the far more common, and potentially more serious, question of wars with hostile aliens.

I deplore the endless stream of science fiction about warfare with aliens. In addition to movies, there is a thriving genre of science fiction novels about military strategy and exciting space battles, which is to be applauded for the recent trend toward featuring female commanders but which cannot help but instill a view of alien species as evil. Exposure to a few such stories is harmless but a many readers are addicted to them, and I don't think we want generations to grow up feeling that the universe is a hostile, frightening place. And if we do meet aliens in the distant future, we certainly don't want the population of Earth to have been conditioned to expect war with them.

Yet perhaps, as some scientists now warn, there really are aliens that would view us with hostility. Is it likely that they will attack Earth or its colonies? I think not, because there would be no point in their doing so..

It is true that we have no basis for expecting extraterrestrials to be friendly. We are not in a position to know anything at all about extraterrestrials; thus we cannot assume that their psychology is like ours—though personally I believe some qualities of thinking beings are universal. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that any aliens that have starships are rational, for if they were not, they could not have developed advanced technology.

It would not be rational for them to invade an inhabited planet. Extrapolation from Earth's past history is not valid; the common argument that Europeans wiped out the native populations of the Americas is in no way grounds for a fear that aliens will pose a danger to us. It's simply not relevant to the issue. Europeans colonized the Americas to gain land. It was an instance of the inevitable conflict that arises when humans are competing for the resources of a single planet. But space is full of resources, and any intelligent species with the ability to travel across interstellar space would have long ago developed the ability to utilize them. There is no reason to compete for them, since exoplanets are far more abundant than species technologically capable of establishing colonies.

Similarly, the argument that non-human species on Earth wiped out others competing for the same ecological niche is not relevant, because the ecological niche of space is large enough for an unlimited number of species. There is no need to compete in order to occupy it. In the very long run there will be competition in the sense that species that successfully colonize that niche will survive and multiply, while those that do not will die out when the resources of their home worlds are exhausted. But there won't be competition of the sort that that occurs within the confines of a single world.

It is often suggested that some alien species may simply be warlike, a natural supposition for those who believe that our own species is innately aggressive. In my opinion, both views are invalid because they are inconsistent with the concept of evolutionary advance. Alien species progress, just as humans do. If they have reached a stage more advanced than our present one—as by definition they will have, if they are capable of interstellar travel—then they have advanced in all ways, which means they have outgrown aggressive impulses toward other peoples. They may be indifferent to us; they may not want to make friends; but they won't try to conquer us. After all, even at our present stage of evolution, we would not choose to invade _their_ worlds.

The idea that aliens might invade Earth for its resources goes way back to H. G. Wells' 1897 novel _The War of the Worlds_ , in which Martians come here because the resources of Mars are dwindling. At the time it was written people had become aware that Mars is a dry, barren planet (then believed to be far older than Earth), yet they had observed what they thought were canals, leading to speculation that intelligent inhabitants might be attempting to channel their remaining source of water. "Across the gulf of space," Wells wrote, "minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes." This set the precedent that has formed popular impressions of aliens ever since. The vast difference between this solar system's resources and those of countless systems has not been taken into account.

One modern variation of the theme, taken literally by believers in abduction by UFOs, is that alien visitors want genetic material from humans because their own species is too inbred. This is nonsense—the premise of my trilogy _Children of the Star_ notwithstanding, a species could build interstellar ships would surely know enough about genetic engineering to produce any variations it desired. Underlying this scenario, perhaps, is an emotional conviction that humans are genetically superior to other races, even those possessing more advanced space technology.

All this supposes that there are alien species somewhere near our evolutionary level who are aware of us. The chances of that may not be large; we may encounter only far younger species that haven't yet developed space flight, or far older ones to whom we seem too primitive to notice. In my opinion the latter cannot happen because I believe what I've said in my novels about truly mature intelligent species not revealing themselves to younger ones. Contrary to the hopes of some SETI enthusiasts, benevolent aliens are not going to teach us how to solve Earth's problems. Stages in a species' maturation cannot be skipped any more than a small child can be instantly turned into an adult. I think that whatever such beings may be observing us, or may observe us in the future, will allow us to evolve naturally and fulfill our own potential without interference.

The premise of my novels is that each separately-evolved thinking species has unique qualities and a unique history, and therefore has something new and revitalizing to bring to a federation of advanced civilizations when it is mature enough to join with them. Premature contact would result in the loss of this unique contribution—young worlds would become no more than copies, probably poor copies, of the older ones. The younger races would be absorbed or they would die out. Even knowing about the existence of a more advanced civilization prior to contact would be harmful, as it would cause them to feel that any effort they might make toward progress was mere duplication and therefore meaningless. And I am convinced that this is true in reality.

Thus the view of aliens expressed in the novels is meant to be taken literally, with one exception: the invaders in _Enchantress from the Stars_ are an anachronism. They are no more realistic than the woodcutters who seek to slay dragons, as for literary reasons both were based on mythology of the past or present. And of course the portrayal of the mature civilization is also mythological in the sense that it is based on current conceptions rather than facts beyond our present comprehension. That some equivalent of the Anthropological Service does exist, I have no doubt. If it did not, young intelligent species could not evolve because they would be influenced by well-meaning older ones, even if no starfaring species are hostile.

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The Mythopoeic Nature of Speculation About ETs

(1974, 2017)

Most of the material and some of the wording in this essay comes from my nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns (1974; updated edition 2012). But unlike the book, it's focused on the significance of these facts in terms of Space Age mythology, as presented in the course I taught on that subject.

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For several years in the early 1990s I taught an online graduate course on popular-culture science fiction as the mythology of the Space Age. (My "lectures" for it are available at my website.) Its scope became somewhat wider than the original one, since the topics fundamental to science fiction, such as extraterrestrial life, were also covered. A large amount of the introductory material was centered on the nature of myth, which all modern mythologists agree is metaphorical. That issue is too complex to go into here, so I will say simply that the ideas underlying a mythology originate from a different mode of thinking than scientific ideas—the mythopoeic, intuitive, or non-rational (not "irrational") mode.

All human beings are capable of both kinds of thought, though individuals vary as to which is predominant. The mythopoeic mode is used not only for intuitive, creative activity such as art, but for dealing with matters beyond current understanding, those about which no actual facts are known. Sometimes it brings forth images, other times concepts that can be described verbally; but it is always different from the process of logical reasoning.

Myth serves to make sense of the world: not to explain it in literal terms, but to express metaphorically the pattern and order a culture sees in it. For example, myth (in this sense of the word, not the sense in which it is used to mean "falsehood") is the foundation of religion. All religious ideas are developed through the mythopoeic mode of thought since they deal with questions that are unanswerable via reason alone—though of course it is possible to reason from mythopoeically-derived premises. And prior to the availability of data about the physical universe, in all cultures questions about it have been assumed to be religious questions. This was as true after the stars were known to be suns as it was earlier.

Most people, even most scientists, wrongly assume that widespread serious belief in the existence of inhabited extrasolar worlds is quite new, dating no further back than the middle of the twentieth century. Moreover, it's frequently assumed that evidence supporting this belief would be upsetting to people's religious views. In a Huffington Post article titled "Life on Mars and the Garden of Eden," Jeff Schweitzer stated that if religious leaders now say discovery of extraterrestrial life is consistent with their teachings, it will be "a rewrite of history and an ex post facto rationalization to preserve the myths of the Bible." The difficulty with this statement is that it is historically inaccurate.

It's a little-known fact that from the middle of the seventeenth century until the early twentieth, almost all educated people believed that the stars are suns surrounded by inhabited planets—and they did so on religious grounds. Members of the clergy who were interested in astronomy preached long sermons arguing that it would be irreverent to think that God created the stars merely for people on Earth to look at. All things were created for a purpose, they maintained, and the only purpose anyone could think of was habitation; therefore, they assumed that every planet in the universe is inhabited. A number of widely-read books by clergymen elaborated on this theme.

Because there was indeed religious opposition to the concept of other worlds in the early seventeenth century, people today generally suppose that it continued. The extensive discussion of other worlds in books, articles and poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not mentioned in history books of the early twentieth century because at that time belief in extraterrestrial life was out of fashion; in fact, when I wrote The Planet-Girded Suns—originally published in 1974—I got all my material from primary sources of those centuries, many of them obscure. (Since then, a number of detailed historical studies have appeared, intended for a more scholarly audience than mine.) Even books for children of earlier centuries declared that, in the words of one, to deny the existence of life elsewhere would be "to narrow our conceptions of God's character, and to rob him of some of those exalted attributes assigned him by the unlettered savage."

This is not to say that people of that era did not believe the Bible's account of the creation of life on Earth; most of them did (although, as today, some interpreted it as metaphor rather than literal fact). Rather, they argued that since God had created one world, he was surely capable of creating others and that it would be presumptuous on the part of humans to think otherwise. Although opinion was divided as to whether the worlds of other stars were inhabited by mortals or were the abodes of the angels, by the nineteenth century belief in mortal extraterrestrials, generally assumed to be superior to humans, predominated.

In 1854 a heated controversy arose when William Whewell, the Master of Trinity College at Cambridge and a noted historian of science, wrote a book titled On the Plurality of Worlds arguing that Earth may be unique—an extremely unorthodox position at the time that was objectionable to both scientists and clergy. His most vocal critic was Sir David Brewster, a well-known Scottish physicist, mathematician and astronomer, who wrote a book in rebuttal titled More Worlds than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian. (Both books are now available at openlibrary.org.) Brewster accused Whewell of "folly and irreverence towards the God of Nature," and most book reviewers took his side.

The number of well-known people of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who casually mentioned other worlds in a religious context shows how widespread the belief was. For example, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, famous for his involvement in the Salem witchcraft trials, wrote "Great God, what a Variety of Worlds hast thou created! How astonishing are the Dimensions of them! How stupendous are the Displays of thy Greatness, and of thy Glory, in the Creatures with which thou hast replenished those Worlds!" And the eminent British politician Lord Bolingbroke wrote in a letter, "We cannot discern a gradation of beings in other planets by the help of our telescopes . . . [but] we may well suspect that ours is the lowest, in this respect, of all mundane systems . . . and there may be as much difference between some other creature of God, without having recourse to angels and archangels, and man, as there is between a man and an oyster."

Scientists, too, viewed the question of extraterrestrial beings from a religious standpoint. Johannes Kepler not only believed that the moon and planets of our own solar system were inhabited, but made the first serious suggestion that humans would someday travel to those planets. "As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying," he said in a letter to Galileo, "settlers from our species of man will not be lacking. . . . Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse. . . . Does God the Creator . . . lead mankind, like some growing youngster gradually approaching maturity, step by step from one stage of knowledge to another? . . . How far has the knowledge of nature progressed, how much is left, and what may men of the future expect?"

The Dutch astronomer and physicist Christian Huygens, originator of the wave theory of light, wrote a long book titled, _The Celestial Worlds Discover'd: or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets._ He was convinced that no planets are without inhabitants: "Not Men perhaps like ours, but some Creatures or other endued with Reason." Otherwise, he said, "Our Earth would have too much advantage of them, in being the only part of the Universe that could boast of such a Creature so far above, not only Plants and Trees, but all Animals whatsoever." And Isaac Newton wrote, "For in God's house (which is the universe) are many mansions, and he governs them by agents [angels] which can pass through the heavens from one mansion to another. For if all places to which we have access are filled with living creatures, why should all these immense spaces of the heavens above the clouds be incapable of inhabitants?"

A great deal of poetry, often book-length poetry, was written about the planets of other stars, and it was extremely popular with the public. At the time of Newton's death many poems expressed a conviction that he would see those planets on the way to heaven, as it seemed past belief that so great a man would not have that opportunity. This belief in celestial journeys after death was quite common. People fascinated by the thought of other worlds wanted to visit them, just as many do today, and unlike those of our era, they believed there was a way they might do so.

A few of the many who wrote about such worlds considered questions identical to those being asked by modern speculators. Among them was Edward Young, who in his book Night Thoughts—which was a bestseller in the late eighteenth century—wrote as if speaking to extraterrestrial beings::

Whate'er your nature, this is past dispute,

Far other life you live, far other tongue

You talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think,

Than man. How various are the works of God!

. . . Know you disease?

Or horrid war?—With war, this fatal hour,

Europa groans (so call we a small field,

Where kings run mad.) . . . How we wage

Self-war eternal!—Is your painful day

Of hardy conflict o'er? or, are you still

Raw candidates at school?

"You never heard of man," Young observed ruefully. "Or earth, the bedlam of the universe! . . . Has the least rumour of our race arrived?" These are the same questions being posed by people today.

Until the twentieth century ideas about extrasolar worlds remained almost entirely religious—there was no scientific foundation for them, since there was then no relevant data available that could be studied scientifically. Although most British, American and European scientists of that era believed in such worlds as firmly as other educated people, they too used religious arguments for their existence, and most thought that every single planet must be inhabited because otherwise it would be "useless." Not until the late nineteenth century was enough learned about the planets in Earth's own solar system to realize that they have no inhabitants. That discovery ruled out the formerly-unquestioned idea that all planets were created as abodes for life. So the conviction that there must be extrasolar civilizations was temporarily abandoned, and several generations, those that grew up between the first and second world wars, forgot that it had ever been taken for granted.

In the mid-twentieth century, when interest in intelligent extraterrestrial life was revived, religious writers began contemplating it again, and the vast majority do consider it compatible with their beliefs, whether they take the Bible literally or not. Today, however, scientific speculation about extraterrestrials excludes religious premises, so presumably it is no longer derived from the mythopoeic mode of thinking with which the human mind deals with questions about the unknowable. Or is it? Actually, since there has never been any actual data concerning ETs, scientists' ideas about them are just as fully mythopoeic as they were when based on religion.

## *

In the late nineteenth century, belief in life on other planets—which had been nearly universal among educated people for about two hundred years—began to decline. There were a number of reasons for this, but the major one was that for the first time, science was completely separated from religion. As scientists came to rely exclusively on observation and experiment, religious arguments could no longer be used; and, apart from new telescopic data showing unpromising conditions on nearby planets, there was no evidence one way or the other about extraterrestrial life.

In 1855 one reviewer of Whewell's book on the plurality of worlds had made a prophetic remark. He had said, "If the planets are not made for inhabitants . . . since some of them are of no use to us, and are not likely to be, it appears that there are things created without any use at all. And this is a dangerous element to admit upon so large a scale into our calculation of the evidence for design." As science advanced, it became obvious that there is indeed waste and "uselessness" in nature. An astronomer of the late 1870s, referring to "waste seeds, waste lives . . . waste regions, waste forces" in our own world, suggested, "May we not without irreverence conceive (as higher beings than ourselves may know) that a planet or a sun may fail in the making?"

It's not possible to say just what role people's changing attitudes toward existence of extrasolar worlds played in early twentieth-century skepticism toward pattern and purpose in the universe. It was partly a result of such skepticism, but also, perhaps, a partial cause. When people have been told for two hundred years that a cosmos full of perfectly ordered solar systems is evidence of the wisdom of its design, they do not like to hear about planets and suns having failed in the making.

In 1903 another important book argued that Earth is the sole abode of life: _Man's Place in the Universe_ by Alfred Russel Wallace, best known for having developed the theory of evolution independently of Darwin. His views on extrasolar life were not widely accepted because, knowing considerably less about astronomy than about biology, he attempted to prove that our solar system is in the physical center of the universe and that only near the center can conditions be right for the evolution of intelligent life. However, he was better qualified to discuss life on other worlds within our solar system; his arguments against it demonstrated the difference between views of astronomers and biologists toward extraterrestrial life that has existed ever since.

But for a short time during the first part of the twentieth century, even astronomers maintained that ET life is rare. The reason for this was the theory of planetary formation then current, which held that planets were formed only when two stars passed so close to each other that matter was pulled out by gravitational tides. It was calculated that such an event could occur in our galaxy no more frequently than about once in five thousand million years. More impressive than this actual figure was the very concept of planets coming into being by accident rather than as part of a natural, universal process. The only grounds for believing that such a close approach of two suns might not be an accident were those connected with purpose in the universe, which had become, as one writer put it, "largely taboo in science today." Thus most people concluded that the evolution of life was wholly accidental. Sometimes the word "freak" was used, an exaggeration fostered by the popular works of the eminent astronomer Sir James Jeans, who wrote best-selling books for laymen. Although his tidal theory of planetary formation did predict the existence of _some_ solar systems, almost everyone seems to have been overwhelmed by the huge proportion of planetless suns,

To most people, this was not a pleasant outlook. "We must make the best of it, even if we are doomed to undergo the worst of it," wrote one reviewer of Wallace's book. "It must be said, however, that this book . . . is not a cheerful message . . . So intolerable is the despair that settles upon us that we instinctively protest against Mr. Wallace's limitation . . . A planet may die, but a lifeless universe!—'that way madness lies.'"

The idea that suns change and planets do become unable to support life was another of the pessimistic ideas that advances in astronomy led to during the early part of the twentieth century, still another being the ultimate "running down" of the entire universe as a result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This prospect, combined with the disillusionment about our own culture caused by World War I and the Depression, made the era's outlook on the universe a dark one. Is it any wonder that this was the period during which science fiction arose, perhaps as a protest against a science that officially denied not only the prevalence of life, but hope for the distant future?

Actual contact with extraterrestrials was not, of course, thought possible. It was not suggested outside of science fiction—and there only after the 1890s—that they might come to Earth, except by a few believers in interplanetary spirit travel by mortals (an idea now well established among occultists). Among these was the well-known Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, who, in what was perhaps the earliest conception of ETs as "gods from outer space," reasoned that since no beings from other worlds have used their advanced science to abolish suffering on Earth, "Is there not reason to fear that we are for ever alone in the universe, and that no other world has ever been more intelligent or better than our own?" But this, the first serious "Where are they?" argument, was not known to the general public and in any case would not have carried weight, since it depended on the concept of disembodied spirits.

The assumed impossibility of contact was, I suspect, a major factor in the increasing reluctance of science to acknowledge that there may be inhabited worlds. Scientists want hard data, and if they cannot hope to obtain it, they are apt to tell themselves, unconsciously if not openly, that there is none to obtain. It is too painful to contemplate inaccessibility. This theory is supported by the history of the issue, for what caused astronomers to reverse their views of ET life again and begin to speculate—not in religious terms, but equally mythopoeically—was the idea of interstellar radio communication.

## *

Serious speculation about extraterrestrial life outside our solar system is often thought to be a quite recent development, something not common until after World War II. That was indeed when science returned to the beliefs of an earlier period, often without being aware of those past beliefs. What happened? We do not have any more evidence for intelligent ET life than we ever had. Some, especially biologists, still don't think it exists. Yet in the 1970s when I wrote _The Planet-Girded Suns,_ belief not only in ET life but in the existence of civilizations more advanced than ours was shared by over ninety percent of scientists, as well as a majority of laymen.

Part of the reason for scientists' return to speculation about ETs was that the "accidental" theory of planetary formation was abandoned in the late 1940s. Astronomer Frank Drake reports having heard, in 1951, the eminent astrophysicist Otto Struve explain the discoveries that overturned it. "In the space of a few moments in a lecture hall, Struve had raised the number of planets in the Galaxy we knew about to more than ninety-nine billion," Drake said. Since then, all theories have assumed that formation of planets is a natural part of stellar evolution, in no way unusual; solar systems are no longer assumed to be rare. And the recent discovery of large numbers of relatively nearby exoplanets confirms this.

The origin of life, however, is still thought to depend on accidental processes. Although it's generally believed that primitive forms of life will arise on all planets where appropriate conditions exist, biology assumes that each step of evolution leading to a higher form depends on random mutation. The probability of the sequence of such mutations that led to our own species is, according to most calculations, extremely low, and the majority of biologists who have written on the subject have rejected the idea that a comparable sequence may occur frequently.

What was it, then, that made astronomers so apt to share the public's reviving interest in ET civilizations? It was the development of a potential means of communicating with those civilizations: radio astronomy. No longer was the subject of alien life one on which there was no hope of obtaining data. From the time the search for extraterrestrial radio signals—now known as SETI—was first proposed in 1959, optimism about it grew. A 1972 National Academy of Sciences report stated that "More and more scientists feel that contact with other civilizations is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur in the lifetime of many of us." I suspect that last phrase, "in the lifetime of many of us," was in many cases the key to their optimism about the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials.

Scientists who support SETI advance exactly the same views of ETs as the rest of Space Age mythology, and they're equally dependent on mythopoeic thinking. The emotional tone of some of their arguments, and their use of speculative premises as if they were unquestionable, suggests that there's more going on than objective reasoning. The "gods from outer space view" not only is prevalent among SETI enthusiasts, it was specifically used to obtain funding from Congress. When Senator Proxmire gave the project one of his infamous "Golden Fleece" awards and almost got it killed, Carl Sagan was able to convince him, in Drake's words, "that if such societies had lived through their nuclear age, then we could too—by their example, or perhaps their instruction."

Drake himself had much higher hopes. He said, "I fully expect an alien civilization to bequeath us vast libraries of useful information . . . Another, even more stirring Renaissance will be fueled by the wealth of alien scientific, technical, and sociological information that awaits us . . . I suspect that immortality may be quite common among extraterrestrials . . . when I look at the stars twinkling in the sequined panorama of the night sky, I wonder if, among the most common interstellar missives coming from them is the grand instruction book that tells creatures how to live forever."

I am not saying this can't be true, or that SETI isn't a good idea (though as readers of my novels know, I personally believe that advanced civilizations do not reveal themselves to less advanced ones). The point is that SETI, like all of today's scientific interest in ETs, is fueled not by rational thought but by concepts from the mythology of our era—the intuitive feelings people have about whether or not we're alone in the universe, and what any inhabitants of other worlds may be like. All mythology deals with a culture's perception of its relation to its environment, and ours is no exception.

In 1961 Drake, the father of SETI in this country, developed an equation that is still used for estimating the probable number of communicating civilizations in our galaxy. The factors in it are rate of star formation, fraction of stars that form planets, number of planets hospitable to life, fraction where life actually emerges, fraction where life evolves into intelligent beings, fraction capable of interstellar communication, and length of time such a civilization lives. Putting something into mathematical form always gives the illusion of reliability—but it's obvious that this is a case of "garbage in, garbage out." If even one of those factors is way off, the result is going to be totally meaningless, and we don't have any real data about any of them, or even any theoretical predictions except in the case of the first two. The last one, L (longevity of intelligent civilizations) is particularly questionable. Iosif Shklovsky, who led SETI in Russia and co-authored a book with Carl Sagan about it, changed his mind about its prospects late in his life, to the dismay of American friends who were no longer in communication with him. After his death, they learned what had happened: Shklovsky had gotten depressed about our global political situation and changed the value of L in the equation.

It goes without saying that all the arguments about the probable actions of extraterrestrial civilizations depend on personal opinion, not on any knowledge whatsoever of alien beings' actual motivations. Drake is absolutely certain that they would not develop interstellar travel because, even if it should become possible, it would be too expensive in energy, and why transport physical bodies between stars when it is so much easier to transport information? (One longs to ask him why he himself doesn't stay home and communicate with foreign scientists online instead of traveling around the world to meetings, as he has done many times.) On the other hand, there are now some who believe that interstellar travel is so common that ET civilizations don't bother with radio messages. Neither side in this debate will admit that "intelligent" species may not all act in the same way, let alone the way that seems reasonable to certain humans. It is not a scientist, but New Age writer Terence McKenna, who has pointed out, "To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture-bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant."

## *

When SETI was begun, most scientists believed that interstellar travel is not possible. Since then this view has been revised and there has been a trend toward still another change of mind about ETs' existence, based on the surprise some feel that we haven't met any. Back in the 1940s, physicist Enrico Fermi posed the question, "Where are they?" He, like more recent speculators, was convinced that if any such civilizations are older than ours (as some should be if Earth is an average planet as predicted by the "assumption of mediocrity") then they should have arrived here by now. This is known as the Fermi Paradox. Why it is still called this, I don't know, since by now dozens of speculative reasons have been offered for the failure of aliens to show up. Personally I have never been able to see anything in the least paradoxical about it, even apart from my belief that advanced civilizations would not contact us on grounds that it would interfere with our evolution.

The expectation of contact stems, I think, from the modern equivalent of the belief that Earth is the center of the universe, in the qualitative sense if not the physical one. Among the countless extraterrestrial civilizations that the so-called paradox postulates, why should we expect that ours would necessarily be discovered? All roads do not lead to Earth. We are merely one small world at the edge of the galaxy. We surely don't expect that if we ourselves develop interstellar travel, we will quickly find all the planetary civilizations that exist. Many could rise and fall during the length of time charting them would take.

As in the case of emotionally-based estimates of SETI success, I suspect that emotion influenced the argument that their failure to appear means there aren't any. There have always been people who are attracted by the idea that Earth has unique significance in the scheme of things. Whewell, in the 1850s, seems to have felt that way, and belief in our spiritual centrality now takes a new form: some of today's serious thinkers feel that humans of Earth must bear the full responsibility for spreading life throughout the galaxy—that we ourselves are destined to fill the mythic role of gods. Marshall Savage, for instance, writes in his book _The Millennial Project_ , "We are not just an insignificant species of semi-intelligent apes, charged only with the welfare of ourselves, or even of our little planet. Rather, we are the sole source of consciousness in an otherwise dead cosmos. It is all up to us . . . We few, we happy few, must decide the destiny of a universe."

But views such as these do not seem to be the main reason for the recent signs of a lessened scientific consensus. The major factor contributing to it is discouragement about SETI's not having produced results. Another may have to do with speculation about the potential of interstellar travel in our own future. It is now recognized that interstellar travel should be possible—not necessarily faster-than-light travel, which most scientists still consider a violation of physical law, but "space arks" or at least interstellar probes that could carry human genetic material. Many believe, as I do, that it's imperative for us to colonize other solar systems (uninhabited ones, of course). But since civilizations more advanced than ours haven't visited our world, some speculators may feel this means travel between stars is not possible after all. Isn't it less discouraging, therefore, to believe that there aren't any such civilizations?

Some also may find it more comfortable to believe that in a universe that many people have begun to view with apprehension (as suggested in my essay "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century,") there are no advanced aliens and thus no chance that Earth will be invaded by hostile ones. The possibility that extraterrestrials might be a threat to us is an unprecedented idea that has been growing in recent years. Though there have been hostile aliens in science fiction since the publication of H. G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_ in 1897, such stories were not taken seriously (except during the 1938 radio dramatization of the novel, which was presented as a news broadcast and nearly caused a panic). The alien invasion movies of the 1950s were considered wholly fantastic. Serious speculation about ET civilizations has not until recently considered the possibility that they might not be friendly. But lately, more and more writers, including eminent cosmologist Stephen Hawking as well as some of the scientists involved in SETI, have been pointing out that there is no reason to suppose they would be. Some now feel that it would be dangerous to reveal ourselves.

It is indeed true that we have no grounds for expecting extraterrestrial civilizations to be friendly toward us—or hostile, either. Scientists have no more knowledge of the probability than do believers in UFOs. Reasoning based on human history is irrelevant, since we have no basis for thinking ET species' history or psychology is like ours, let alone for assuming that those advanced enough to build starships would not have matured in other ways. The fear of alien invasion has arisen in tandem with the growing popularity of science fiction depicting it, and has an equally emotional origin.

I don't mean any of these observations in a negative way. Rather, they are illustrations of the fact that a culture's outlook on the universe is inseparable from its mythology, and that mythopoeic thought, no less than rational thought, is essential to progress. We need mythic ideas about the mysterious; if we were limited to concepts based on evidence, we'd lack motivation to seek new kinds of knowledge. We must be careful, however, to recognize mythopoeic thought for what it is and not jump to the conclusion that the opinions of scientists about extraterrestrials are more authoritative than those of the rest of us.

Go to the Table of Contents

The Significance of Belief in UFOs

(1995)

This essay is part of the series "The New Mythology of the Space Age" at my website, which consists of the material for the course on Science Fiction and Space Age Mythology that I taught online through Connected Education in the early nineties. I have made some minor revisions.

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Alongside the changing views of scientists and serious speculators toward extraterrestrials since the middle of the twentieth century, there has been an alternate belief among a growing segment of the public. The idea that Earth is being observed by UFOs, and/or was visited by extraterrestrial spacemen in ancient times, has become so prevalent that to many people—especially those who don't read either serious astronomy books or science fiction—it's a definitive part of the idea of alien civilizations. As far as Space Age mythology is concerned, the question of whether UFOs actually exist in our skies, and if so, whether they are of extraterrestrial origin, is irrelevant. What's significant is the fact that so many people believe they exist, and moreover, assume automatically that they are alien spaceships.

According to a 1978 Gallup poll, 57% of the American public believes UFOs are real. (As of 2019 the percentage has dropped to 33%.) By no means is the phenomenon predominantly American. Britain, with its small area, has the highest number of sighting reports in proportion to the rest of the world, in part because it has a large number of UFO researchers. There have also been accounts of sightings in France, Australia, Africa and the former Soviet Union, though they include no statistics. The interest in China has been especially strong; as of 1988 the Chinese _Journal of UFO Research_ had developed a circulation of 325,000 copies—high in comparison to Western UFO magazines—with an estimated ten readers per copy, and there were hundreds of sightings in China that could not be explained during investigation.

Those unfamiliar with UFO material often confuse mere belief in UFOs with UFO cultism. Even social scientists have made this mistake, in part because scholarly literature has sometimes used the term "believer" to refer to cultists. But most UFO sightings have no connection whatsoever with cult followers. UFO cultism involves only a small minority of those who believe in the reality of UFOs; it is an occult phenomenon distinctly different from the widespread mythic view of our culture.

The cultists are convinced that they or their leaders are in telepathic contact with extraterrestrials, whether or not these leaders are self-proclaimed contactees. They are usually people who are, or have been, involved in other areas of the occult. Some have actually sold their belongings and waited for predicted mass pickups, just as other cults wait for the end of the world. Others sincerely believe that Jesus was an alien and the Star of Bethlehem was his ship. There have also been quite a few "channeled" books alleged to be aliens' advice to Earth. (Practically always, the ETs are perceived as "gods from outer space" whose aim is to save us from ourselves.) Most of these are not frauds. Channeling is a phenomenon not yet understood, which is becoming popular apart from UFOs; most likely it does not call for literal interpretation of the channeled material, but it is not faked. Its only connection to myth is that mythic metaphors usually do, as in this case, provide the basis for the ideas coming from, or through, the channel's unconscious mind.

During the past decade, there has been growing interest in "channeled" UFO material on the part of people who are not cultists, but who are adherents of "New Age" ideas. These ideas have been around for a very long time, and their current popularity is merely their latest manifestation, more public than past ones and therefore involving more people. It's part of what is sometimes called "the occult revival," but whereas past occultists believed themselves to be in contact with angels or departed spirits, they now often perceive their psychic contacts as extraterrestrials, in accordance with the mythic imagery most prevalent in our culture. There may well be real parapsychological phenomena underlying this form of occultism, as all others—such beliefs are not mere nonsense, however silly some of their adherents' literal interpretations may sound. At the very least, they deserve the same respect accorded other minority religious beliefs.

But occult psychic contact with aliens is not part of the mythic view held by most people who think UFOs are alien ships. The more common outlook is suspicion that our planet is being secretly visited, with or without the knowledge of our own governments—it is typified by the widespread belief in government cover-up of a 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. Furthermore, while both scientists and science fiction readers have traditionally scorned and ridiculed UFO cultism and its "New Age" sympathizers, there has been a growing overlap between the much larger categories of believers in UFO sightings and people who enjoy pop-culture science fiction.

This is not to say that science fiction has shaped UFO reports. Except for the alien invasion films of the 1950s, relevant films such as _Close Encounters_ did not appear until after those reports were widespread. Furthermore, the people who make detailed sighting reports—and practically all who report actual contact—usually prove to be those who have had no previous interest in extraterrestrial life. Until mass-media science fiction became so prevalent that few in our society were unexposed to it, they were apt to be those who had not even seen such films. Some connections have been shown between obscure early science fiction and the imagery in contact reports, but rarely could it be established that the individual making the report had viewed any. On the whole, the more deeply a person is involved with UFO mythology, the less likely he or she is to be involved in science fiction mythology, and vice versa.

There is a reason for this, I believe. Space fiction appeals to people who are interested in the future and/or extraterrestrial life, but who do not feel a need to take the details of their mythology literally, however literally they may conceive of its basic framework. UFO mythology, on the other hand, is accepted as literally true in all its details. Both are responses to our culture's perception of the universe beyond our planet, but the nature of the unconscious process involved appears to be quite different. In the first place, UFO enthusiasts want to believe, rather than imagine. In the second place, unless we give credence to the idea that aliens are actually present here, we must suppose that reporters of details, as distinguished from mere lights in the sky, have different perceptions than the rest of us. The most impressive sighting reports, like the contact reports, are made by people who not only aren't SF fans, but who aren't UFO buffs either. It is almost as if their minds reject hypothetically-expressed metaphor and perceive it directly as if it were reality.

I must emphasize that I'm not saying that these people are mentally disturbed. Most of those examined by psychiatrists have, in fact, been found to be entirely healthy. The term "hallucination" is commonly used as if it indicated illness, but that is only because of our culture's aversion to the idea of altered states of consciousness. In more and more contexts, it's coming to be recognized that the human mind does perceive in ways unrelated to sensory input and that such perceptions may be indistinguishable, under certain conditions, from sensory ones. Ufology has yet to recognize this fact; by and large, the idea of "hallucinations" is associated with debunkers and therefore resisted. Those researchers who now believe that there can't be so many alien ships are turning to the idea of physical manifestations from other dimensions to account for what's being experienced. Personally, however, I find this much more far-fetched than the possibility that our minds are more complicated than we've realized.

The "alien abduction" phenomenon has forced researchers to take investigation of UFO contact reports more seriously. Before going on to that, however, mention should be made of the "ancient astronaut" myth, which was especially popular during the 1970s at the time Erich von Daniken's book _Chariots of the Gods_ and its sequels appeared. This was the context in which the term "gods from outer space" originated. There are many people who don't think ETs are present now, yet believe they were here in the past, and were no less responsible for our evolution than the fictional monoliths of the film _2001._ They maintain that aliens built ancient structures and taught ancient stargazers, on the basis of "evidence" that is rejected by all reputable anthropologists and archeologists.

Of course, we have no evidence that extraterrestrials did _not_ come here. We do, however, have irrefutable evidence that they did not interbreed with our own species, as is often claimed. DNA data show an unbroken line of molecular evolution from early vertebrates to _homo sapiens._ In fact, the human genome is 99 percent identical to that of a chimpanzee, which could not be the case if we were crossbreeds. The idea of interbreeding is thus purely mythic, yet it's very persistent; why? Is it a mere reinterpretation of ancient creation myths, or myths of sex between humans and gods? Do we, perhaps, believe so strongly in the superiority of ETs that we'd rather be related to them than to animals? Or is it simply a metaphor for our hope that we won't find a universe full of strangers?

## *

Until fairly recently, UFO experiences were of three kinds: sightings of unidentified flying objects, which were quite common; contact reports, which were rare and sometimes fraudulent, the sincere ones usually coming from people with some past involvement in the occult, or at any rate a desire to gain personal followers; and alleged government cover-ups. For these reasons, most educated observers did not take UFOs very seriously. I myself did not—though I recognized them as an aspect of Space Age mythology, I dismissed the occultists' views as representative of too small a minority to be significant and the sightings as too lacking in detail. As for the government conspiracy theories, I found, and still find, them incredible—if the government can't conceal its scandals, how could it manage to conceal something as important as the existence of ETs?

But with the rise of the "alien abduction" phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s, the situation changed. Now, thousands of people—statistical projection says millions—are having extremely detailed experiences they interpret as UFO contact, and that are definitely not faked. Most of them have no prior interest in UFOs, and, according to reputable psychiatrists, no symptoms of mental instability. Moreover, many are well-educated professionals. Thus, increasingly, it's being recognized that there must be some hitherto-obscure explanation. From the standpoint of a mythologist, the most significant aspect of this is that if and when we do uncover the explanation, we are likely to find that it covers not only Space Age mythology but mythology in general, including ancient mythology. I think we may well be on the verge of an entirely new theory of what myth is, how it arises, and how it is disseminated.

The first "UFO abduction" case was that of Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, which was for a long time quite exceptional, not just in its features but in the fact that the Hills could remember the experience only under hypnosis. But now, the pattern set by that case and others, such as the 1975 Travis Walton case (basis of the film _Fire in the Sky)_ has become very common. Typically, abductees are taken by force aboard what they interpret as an alien ship and are examined medically, often painfully and usually with emphasis on organs of reproduction; women often report either the initiation or interruption of pregnancy. Physical marks and/or symptoms sometimes remain. Multiple encounters are common, and not only do many adults recall their initial occurrence in childhood, but children as young as two or three tell of being abducted. Such experiences are almost always terrifying, both while they are happening and later, when recalled spontaneously or through hypnosis. However, there are statistically significant instances of later positive personality change.

Basically, there are five categories of interpretation given to this phenomenon by investigators. (Abductees themselves, however, almost invariably interpret it at face value.)

* Debunkers hold that all such reports are either fakes or manifestations of psychosis. Neither interpretation can be valid in the vast majority of cases. Psychiatrist John Mack, a professor at Harvard Medical School, examined many abductees and, like other psychiatrists who have done so, stated not only that they are entirely sane, but that their memories are indistinguishable in all respects from memories of actual events. Though the debunkers have claimed that incompetent hypnotists ask leading questions and inadvertently implant false memories in the minds of abductees, surely this charge cannot be made against someone of Mack's professional standing. Why are they so blind to psychiatric findings? It can only be that their own psychological biases will not permit them to accept data that upsets their assumptions about reality.

* Others feel that physiological phenomena such as atypical electrical activity of the brain, either spontaneous or induced by external influences, can account for the subjective experiences reported by abductees. For example, laboratory experiments have shown that exposure to magnetic pulses can produce the sensation of floating, flying or leaving the body. However, this hypothesis cannot explain independent experiencers' near-identical descriptions of the aliens, their behavior, and even the instruments they use, which include details unobtainable from public media.

* The majority of ufologists, like the abductees themselves, hold that people are actually being abducted by aliens. However, as Jacques Vallee and others skeptical of this explanation point out, this would demand the presence of far too many alien ships to be conceivable, and furthermore, aliens would have much easier ways of getting samples of human genetic material. As for the experiments in crossbreeding which Budd Hopkins, historian David Jacobs and others are convinced have happened, again, there would be easier ways—a technology that could overcome the problems of crossing unrelated genomes (which is impossible according to biology as we know it) could do whatever was wanted by means of genetic engineering in the first place, without the necessity for getting genetic material from humans.

* Some researchers, notably Vallee and, more recently, Mack, believe that if UFOs aren't extraterrestrial, then the experience involves physical beings from another dimension; and that similar experiences have occurred through history, interpreted according to the mythology of their era—for example, abduction by fairies, or the appearance of angels or the Virgin Mary. They feel that the close similarities between abductees' accounts, involving details never reported in the media, point to a basis in objective reality. This view has the important advantage of providing a single explanation for facets of all mythologies. However, do we need to resort to the very debatable idea that other dimensions or "universes" exist in order to do this? Those who believe we do seem to be those who believe that physical results—such as marks on the body—demand physical explanations; however, our growing knowledge of mind-body medicine shows that this isn't necessarily the case.

* Speculators such as psychologist Kenneth Ring, scholar Michael Grosso and shamanic practitioner Terence McKenna believe that the abduction phenomenon is entirely psychic, involves the collective unconscious, and is a sign of evolutionary crisis (some of those in category four also consider it such a sign.) It should be noted that though the comparison isn't mentioned, this is essentially the view of the occultists, whose predecessors have believed for centuries that psychic contacts with spiritual entities of some kind guide human evolution. In fact, it is not too different from the view of people who believe literally in the voice of God. The tendency is to postulate external entities interacting with abductees' minds, if not spirits, then, for example, an "overmind" as suggested by Grosso and Ring.

It seems to me, however, that it is not necessary to do this. In my own view, ideas and even specific imagery may come directly from the collective unconscious through some process we would call "paranormal" but which, if it exists at all, is a fundamental aspect of human functioning. Ring's finding that some personality types are more prone to such experience than others certainly supports such a hypothesis. (How, after all, would ETs or beings from other dimensions pick people with particular personalities for physical contact?) It is evident, since the specific descriptions of the aliens have been traced to obscure science fiction that not all abductees could have seen, that "paranormal" communication of those images has to occur at one level or another; whatever brings about the experience, its interpretation must be at least partially derived from the collective unconscious. But of course, this raises the question of what the "collective unconscious" is. I don't think we can understand the "abduction" phenomenon until we find out.

What is more productive for us to attempt, at this stage, is speculation about what the abduction phenomenon means. It's easy to see why adherents of Space Age mythology perceive godlike aliens offering us advice, such as those the contactee cults and channelers describe. But why terrifying aliens of the kind abductees encounter? These aliens aren't perceived as hostile to Earth or apt to invade it; usually they are cold and indifferent. Sometimes they do offer "information" about Earth's perils; more often, abductees later become increasingly concerned about those perils, such as environmental crises. But most people who develop such awareness don't get abducted by UFOs. Furthermore, the abductees shun publicity; they are not trying, even unconsciously, to command an audience. Why, if the phenomenon is a warning about danger to Earth as more and more are coming to believe, does it take the form of personal, rather than cultural, examination? And why don't people who've hoped to encounter ETs—as many of us have—ever have such experiences?

I do not know the answers to these questions. But I think, as far as I can determine without having access to the serious ufology journals not found in local libraries, that researchers have not been considering them in the light of Space Age mythology. They seem to either take them at face value as alien encounters, or try to answer them in terms having nothing to do with extraterrestrials. This, in my opinion, ignores the fact that most people other than researchers do believe UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin. I agree with much that Keith Thompson says in _Angels and Aliens_ about their significance in terms of our developing perceptions, yet the form the phenomenon takes, as distinguished from the form taken by myths dealing with angels, is nevertheless its most outstanding facet. Any explanation of it, even one based on full knowledge of our mental processes, needs to tell us why the concept of aliens now has more power over us than other images of similar origin.

And so I speculate that the UFO abduction phenomenon is a metaphoric expression of our culture's fear of the wider universe, as distinguished from hopes expressed by most pop-culture science fiction and from wishes implicit in the "beneficent gods from outer space" myth. It seems to me to reflect not fear of our own destructiveness, as most commentators who don't take UFOs literally seem to think, but fear that we're indeed on the verge of contact with extraterrestrial environments, if not beings, and that when we face that test we will be found wanting.

The people who have these encounters are not those who look forward eagerly to exploring space. They are not Star Trek fans (and considering the rapid increase in both populations, it's surprising that there's not more overlap). I suspect that "abductees" are those who are open to new forms of consciousness, yet terrified at the mere idea of meeting something alien, so terrified that they perceive such contact as threatening to the very essence of physical humanity, their sexuality. The perception of genetic experimentation by aliens—and, often, of nurseries full of hybrid babies—is, perhaps, a mythic reaction to the fear that apart from Earth and our Earthly heritage we would no longer be fully human.

My personal view of the phenomenon is that the metaphoric imagery associated with it, like that of all UFO encounters, spreads throughout society by means of telepathy at an unconscious level. The unconscious mind is a deep well from which people draw only such concepts and images as fit their individual outlook—how could it be otherwise, considering the vast amount of material that universal unconscious telepathy would make available to human beings? The mind automatically filters that material, and most of us are too absorbed in everyday reality to perceive metaphorically-based experiences as real. But for people with a psychological need to validate their fears—or in the case of those who encounter benevolent aliens, their wishes—such experiences are a powerful means of coming to terms with them.

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The Meaning of Gaia in Space Age Mythology

(1995)

Most of this essay is, like the preceding one, part of the series "The New Mythology of the Space Age" at my website, which consists of the material for the course on Science Fiction and Space Age Mythology that I taught online through Connected Education in the early nineties. I have made some minor revisions.

## *

Until comparatively recently, the only notable expressions of Space Age mythology were pop-culture science fiction on one hand and UFO lore on the other. Now, however, an alternate view, popular among environmentalists as well as New Age devotees, is gaining ground. Its focus is the Gaia myth, which started out as a scientific hypothesis and has been merged with elements from pagan religions and other ancient mythologies. The hypothesis, though highly controversial, has a firm basis in science; but it is being extended in metaphorical ways and is proving to have great mythic power in our culture. Though some educated people take it more or less literally, I personally believe that the image of Planet Earth as a living—sometimes even conscious—being (as distinguished from the locale of interactions between living species) is a perfect example of a metaphor that emerges as a reflection of feelings about the universe.

We live in a society in which people's opinions are varied and often conflict—so in our culture, unlike earlier ones, it's possible to have authentic myths that not everyone agrees with in even a metaphorical sense. That is, though a myth may express the attitude of some people, there are going to be others who not only don't take it literally, but don't share the underlying outlook. Some people do react in this way to space fiction; they are not emotionally attracted to it. And I admit that this is how I myself feel about the emerging myth of our planet as an organism, one of which we're inextricably a dependent part.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell, however, would have embraced it, for he, like many others, rejected the idea of human dominance over nature. It has become fashionable to say that this idea, which is expressed metaphorically in the Bible, is now obsolete. Personally I feel the Biblical myth was on the right track as far as human evolution is concerned—the fact that some people used it as an excuse for wanton destruction does not mean the whole concept should be thrown out. But the Gaia, or Earth-as-organism, idea condemns it by claiming that all lifeforms are of equal importance, a notion in direct opposition to the idea of evolutionary progress.

The scientific Gaia hypothesis was originated by British atmospheric scientist James E. Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn Margulis (who was once married to Carl Sagan). They named it after the Greek goddess of the earth. Certainly its underlying idea, which is that geology alone cannot explain the condition of our planet and that Earth's climate and surface environment are influenced by the organisms that inhabit it, is valid. The hypothesis goes on to assert that this fact makes Earth a self-regulating "superorganism" which may have the equivalent of vital organs, so that if regions are damaged, the whole may not "recover"; this is more questionable. However, it's still legitimate science as long as the concept of a "living Earth" is taken as a model, analogy, or metaphor in the sense of "shorthand" for describing ecological interactions.

But the popular quasi-religious movement that's developed around Gaia goes much further than that. Fanatic environmentalists now often use its imagery to gather emotional support for policies that ignore the very self-adjusting properties of Earth predicted by Gaian theory. Furthermore, it has become identified with Mother Earth/goddess worship, which is for the most part antagonistic to human progress and which fosters the notion that we as a species are wholly dependent on an unchanging Earth for our own life. The Commonwealth Institute of London, funded in part by the British government, taught children to sing:

Gaia is the one who gives us birth.

She's the air, she's the sea, she's Mother Earth.

She's the creatures that crawl and swim and fly.

She's the growing grass, she's you and I.

Christian fundamentalists were understandably upset, but one does not need to take Judeo-Christian mythology literally to find this attitude toward our home planet damaging to human aspirations.

The belief that the earth is a living creature to be worshipped as a mother is an ancient one, fundamental to many mythologies. (In fact, some forms of esotericism claim "life" and even consciousness for inorganic celestial bodies as well, so that the Gaia hypothesis has been criticized for attributing it only to Earth and not to all planets and stars.) And, significantly, worship of the Earth Mother has in past cultures generally existed alongside the rival concept of sky-god worship, sometimes prevailing, in others, being superseded. Thus the blending of this traditional metaphor with modern science represents not a new concept, but a revival, one with deep roots in the human unconscious. In itself, the concept is positive, and some of its implications are constructive. Earth is indeed our "mother world" and of course, we should always preserve and honor it.

However—and this is a point fanatic Gaians seem to miss—if the metaphor is going to be used, it should be carried to its logical culmination. Do adults depend on their mothers for continued life? Do we admire adults who want to live with Mother forever without striking out on their own? Why, then, should we believe that human beings are nothing apart from physical and spiritual oneness with Mother Earth?

The question arises as to why this new and inconsistent myth is so appealing, if, as I believe, it is maladaptive, not in the best interests of human survival. I think it's partly that people are afraid of change, and they don't want to admit that our immediate environment can't stay the same in an overpopulated world as it was in an underpopulated one. Furthermore, a deep fear of ecological peril now pervades our culture, which in itself is a response to Space Age awareness of the planet's limits—as is generally recognized—and, I believe, it's a mythic rather than rational fear, one that despite propaganda to the contrary, a good many scientists don't share.

But there's a deeper reason for the Gaia myth's appeal. Its adherents often cite the image of Earth in space as evidence that this is, as Campbell put it in his book _Myths to Live By,_ "the one oasis in all space, an extraordinary kind of sacred grove, as it were, set apart for the rituals of life. . . . We have all now seen for ourselves how very small is our heaven-born earth, and how perilous our position on the surface of its whirling, luminously beautiful orb." Emotionally, this is a very powerful image. It tends to make people identify with Earth, all of it, not just in the sense of considering it a single world in the political sense, but in the sense of truly considering the whole planet to be sacred in the ancient mythological sense of that term.

In my opinion, this reaction is a sign of our culture's natural ambivalence about our perception of a universe larger than Earth. While people who enjoy space fiction respond positively to that perception, the Gaia devotees respond with apprehension—they shrink back from it, and allow the known environment to absorb their entire attention. Like Bettleheim's words quoted in my essay "The Mythic Role of Space Fiction," (available at my website and in my ebook _Reflections on_ Enchantress from the Stars _and Other Essays_ ) their view is comparable to Pascal's famous remark about the terrors of infinite space.

It is not a logical view. Certainly we love our home planet, and certainly it's beautiful—but to consider it "the one oasis in all space" on the basis of having explored no farther than the moon is utter nonsense. In the first place, there is no reason to suppose there isn't life elsewhere, and in the second place, even if there isn't, we will transport it elsewhere, not only ourselves, but whole ecologies. Lovelock himself admits this; in answer to the argument that Earth cannot be considered alive unless it can reproduce, he wrote a fictional account titled _The Greening of Mars_ (co-authored with Michael Allaby). Gaians in general, however, ignore such considerations. I'm sure it would be impossible to convince them that if Earth is now in apparent poor health, it's because She is pregnant.

Pregnancy being a condition that provides its own "cure" in the course of time, I trust, as an optimist, that the Gaia myth—its popular interpretation, in any case—will ultimately fade away. Essentially it's based on fear, and on provincialism centered upon Earth itself rather than some particular region of Earth. It is the ultimate form of chauvinism. And this outlook toward the universe is the antithesis of that reflected in the rest of Space Age mythology.

## *

When I wrote this essay for the course I taught in 1995, I believed that the metaphor of a pregnant Gaia was an original thought on my part. I later found that although it occurred to me independently, it had also occurred to several other writers. Italian space activist Adriano Autino has published a book (unavailable in English) titled _Earth Is Not Sick: She's Pregnant!_ David Buth has pointed out that the changes to a pregnant woman's body would be very frightening to someone who did not know what they meant, and that pregnancy and birth can indeed be very dangerous for a woman. "In the context of the Mother Earth metaphor, humanity's purpose is obvious," he writes. "We are here to help Mother Earth give birth. We are the reproductive organs."

Some space advocates now espouse the Gaia metaphor, saying that it is our role to enable Gaia's reproduction by spreading life throughout the universe. For example, Steven Wolfe, in his book _The Obligation_ , maintains that we are morally obliged to colonize space not only to ensure our long-term survival but to replicate Gaia throughout the universe. I personally don't agree that we have any such ethical imperative because I believe life already exists elsewhere. I feel that starfaring species should take other lifeforms only where they're needed to make colonies habitable, and that where they're not, indigenous life—and lifeless worlds potentially useful for other purposes or by other starfarers with different biological needs—should be left alone. But I certainly don't object to this use of the Gaia image; I'm all for it if it can convince Gaia enthusiasts that space travel is a natural and important step in evolution.

The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of people who worship Mother Earth do so as a retreat from facing the wider universe, and that to the general public, Gaia imagery fosters such an attitude. So I believe that on the whole the Gaia myth represents a false view of our place in the universe that is potentially threatening to our future survival.

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From the Journal of an Alien Observer

(1970)

I wrote this essay nearly fifty years ago with the naive hope that I might get it published somewhere—this was, of course, long before the Web existed, and there were still magazines looking for articles. Naturally this hope came to nothing; apart from the experimental format of the essay, it was far too controversial. Then as now, any criticism of the environmentalist agenda was doomed to obscurity. At that time Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was a major political movement; today other goals are more prominent. What they all have in common is the belief that the long-term problems of our planet can be solved while remaining confined to it, which in my opinion is a dangerous misconception.

## *

The planet spun in space, spun as it had been spinning for countless millennia, a blue and lustrous sphere that revealed nothing of the race that had evolved upon it. That was how we saw it as we approached, when for the first time its inhabitants too were viewing it in true perspective—three of them from a vantage point reached at awesome cost in money, in effort, and in risk; the majority from the comfort of their homes by a means that seemed incongruously commonplace. Some of these people watched in near-disbelief, some in pride, some in joyful thanksgiving; but others shook their heads, convinced that the view had been achieved through a mistaken sense of priorities on the part of a race never prone to let itself be guided by reason. And later, when the leader of one of the planet's most powerful nations characterized the initial landing on a neighboring globe as the greatest event since the Creation, many of his hearers doubted that assertion. For one reason or another, they felt that a people so beset by difficulties and despair had more pressing needs than to set footprints in the dust of a lifeless world.

Among the doubters, to be sure, were some who did see one justification for the accomplishment. It had symbolic value. It was eloquent proof that what humans set their minds to, they could do; moreover it demonstrated once and for all that their world was a single entity, that its divisions had less cosmic significance than had hitherto been supposed, and above all that whatever affected any part of that world must inevitably affect the whole. "There it is," they said, "and it is all there is. We had better be careful of it, for there is nowhere else to go."

Those who spoke so thought themselves very far-sighted, and they indeed showed more foresight than their ancestors—more, in fact, than most of their contemporaries. They were among the supporters of their era's newest cause: the cause of environmentalism. The human race had had many causes, but this one was worthier than most and more mature. Its adherents felt that at last, in the nick of time, a lesson had been learned about the perils of failure to look ahead. They had perceived a danger to their planet and were aware that only positive action could avert it.

They were right. But they did not look far enough ahead.

That they did not is understandable. The danger was real and frightening, and it overshadowed abstract theories about the destiny of humankind; if it was not circumvented humankind seemed unlikely to have any destiny. Old values were crumbling, and was not the ancient injunction, "Be fruitful and multiply," both outmoded and damaging? The propensity of humans to multiply had become a curse. A time was approaching when the planet's finite resources could not support any more people. The fact that this truth had itself been abstract theory until comparatively recently in no way lessened its import.

A determined few had always maintained that the natural resources of the world must be conserved; now these prophets' fanaticism was being vindicated. The cause was gathering momentum. It was becoming identified with the once narrowly-defined issue of human survival. That issue had been a matter of grave concern ever since technology had progressed to the point where inadvertent self-destruction was a distinct possibility for humankind, but the threat had been thought limited to full-scale war. People had learned to live with it. They denounced the folly of such war and dedicated themselves to the pursuit of peace. Then, in horror, they saw that even if lasting peace was achieved long-term survival would remain open to question. The human race was likely to destroy itself anyway through pollution of its environment. This realization was enough to scare all but the most complacent; it was small wonder that the traditional ideals, which were already losing their hold over society, had begun to collapse with ever-increasing rapidity.

So as the inhabitants of the planet Earth saw their world from space through the eyes of the first men to leave it, a number of them declared the project wasteful and irrelevant. "We have the technology to control our environment and thus to ensure survival," they argued. "It is that upon which our effort must be expended. Collecting moon rocks may be an amusing pastime; space exploration might even lead to a new renaissance of the human spirit as its advocates like to claim; but in this age of crisis it is a luxury we cannot afford."

As with reasonable people of any era, their logic was flawless; it was their premises that fell short. First, the premise that environmental control could ensure human survival indefinitely; and second, the premise that the first tentative venture into a new environment—a venture to which humanity had committed itself despite all the more obvious demands of this particular moment in history—was a luxury, an irrelevance, or for that matter even a chance undertaking.

It is the lot of humans to be misled by false premises; this is unavoidable, for the premises of one era are necessarily naive in the next, and the new era's innovators are too busy demolishing those of the past to examine the ultimate implications of their own. They do not possess enough data for a full examination in any case. That is why reason alone can never produce progress—why planning, however conscientiously undertaken, can never provide the assurance that humankind will prevail. Fortunately, it is characteristic of human beings to resist detailed planning. Humans are perversely unreasonable, a trait that may have more survival value than it appears to in the light of any given set of assumptions.

This is not to say that planning for the future is not needed; on the contrary, such planning is vital, and becomes progressively more so as a world's civilization enters the phase where the planet itself is endangered. But plans must not be based solely on current knowledge; they must take future breakthroughs into account. Although it is impossible to foresee the precise nature of these breakthroughs, it is realistic to suppose that they will occur. Furthermore, it is not too difficult to picture what would happen if they did not occur—and if the future thus pictured leads to a dead end, it is safer to allow for more hopeful contingencies than to be satisfied with making the best of a seemingly-unalterable situation.

The premises held by the people of Earth in the year following their first landing on another world led to a very dead end indeed, but to most this was not apparent. The ultimate implications of those premises had not been given much consideration. To consider them was a terrifying thing for a culture so lacking in faith as was Earth's at that period; there were terrors enough that were immediate and unconcealable, and the idea of a dilemma for which no scientifically-endorsed solution could be discerned was not to be borne. Most had, after all, placed what small faith they possessed in science, having forgotten that science by definition concerns only that portion of truth which no longer demands faith for acceptance.

What was the dilemma implicit in the premises of those who were pinning their hopes on environmentalism? It proceeded from their central tenet:

Earth has too many people, and unless something is done it will eventually have more than it can support. That, of course, was no mere premise, but a demonstrable fact. The trouble lay in the assumption that was drawn from it: The thing to do is to achieve zero population growth. That, and only that, can save humankind.

It was natural enough for that assumption to seem incontrovertible. Zero population growth sounds like a wise goal and indeed, as an immediate, short-term one, it is. For a planet at Earth's stage of development it is an essential stopgap measure. But its long-range implications are less encouraging. To work toward it is beneficial; to maintain it indefinitely means the end of human advancement—followed, inevitably, by the downfall of the human race. It cannot save a world's people; it can only buy time.

The whole question of zero population growth is perhaps academic; quite possibly natural law, which transcends humankind's limited wisdom, prevents a static population level from being attained on any world. If it were to be attained, however, the results would be far from salutary. To begin with, its cost would be disastrously high: not the material cost—for any sum could be counted well-spent in the cause of racial survival—but the cost in human terms. Almost certainly, zero population growth could never be achieved by purely voluntary means. A sharp drop in the birth rate, yes; but a birth rate that did not exceed the death rate would necessarily involve some form of compulsion. Many would feel that survival at the price of basic personal freedoms would be no victory for humanity, but would instead constitute a tragic and self-defeating dehumanization of the species.

Others, to be sure, would disagree. Loss of the individual's freedom to have children would not seem too high a price to those who believe that individual rights should be subordinated to the good of society as a whole. Yet there remains a less easily-dismissed issue: that of society's freedom to have children. Though the loss of this freedom was not imminent for the planet Earth, it could scarcely be denied that if medical science continued to make strides toward increasing life expectancy the problem would someday arise. The advocates of permanent population stabilization did not deny it; they had simply not visualized a world where no one could have a child until somebody agreed to commit suicide.

"No one" is an exaggeration, of course; some people would die in accidents and others, ultimately, of old age—but not often enough to allow each generation to reproduce itself. Child-bearing permits would be few. Who would get them? The healthiest? The most intelligent? Those judged by the current psychological theories to be the most competent parents? Those nominated in the wills of the decedents? Those most sympathetic to the government in power? Since none of these criteria could be considered compatible with the concept of equal rights under the law, it might be preferable to have a lottery.

Or perhaps nothing of the sort would be necessary. Perhaps a point would be reached at which life expectancy could be increased no further, by which time there would be so few people of child-bearing age that births and deaths would automatically fall into balance. Perhaps medical research would be deliberately curtailed; or, alternatively, the universal right to produce offspring would be retained on condition that anyone who exercised it would suffer the death penalty at some predetermined age. There might be more children than one would think under such a system; the desire for descendants is potent, and a society in which it was almost totally frustrated would not be a happy society.

It would not, in fact, be a viable society. Since the beginning of time viable societies have been expanding ones, and there has invariably been correlation between the rate of expansion and the advances made by civilization. The people of Earth were well aware of this until acceleration of the rate, with its attendant problems, led them to suspect that their once-firm belief in the desirability of growth might be a myth. It was not a myth, though the problems were nonetheless painful and perplexing for that. No culture can remain static; it must always be changing and growing—or else declining. If the mere stoppage of population increase did not produce such a decline, the lack of young blood surely would. It is the young through whom advances come. Disquieting as a new generation's excesses may be to its parents, in their hearts the elders know that a world without youth would be a world without hope.

Hence the dilemma: on the one hand, it had become evident that Earth's people could not survive on an overpopulated planet; on the other, it was equally certain—although less widely recognized—that total stabilization of the population would lead to stagnation and eventual decadence of the human race. Either alternative would, in the end, mean humanity's extinction.

But there was a third possibility: that of continuous expansion through colonization of other worlds.

Very few people took this possibility seriously. It was forgotten that very few had taken travel to the moon seriously until they had seen live telecasts from space, and that still fewer had recognized overpopulation as a serious threat prior to the emergence of environmentalism as a popular cause. It was hardly surprising, in view of humankind's traditional lack of foresight, that the priority of the space program was being judged on the basis of immediate benefits—or lack of them—rather than of significance for the distant future. It was unfortunate, however. It was particularly unfortunate that the men and women who were most aware of the dangers inherent in failure to plan ahead were among the ones most likely to advocate cutback of space exploration; yet a poll commissioned by a prominent conservationist group, the National Wildlife Federation, indicated that 44% of those interviewed favored diversion of funds from the space program to environmental cleanup.

That money had to be found for environmental cleanup was indisputable, but those who felt it should be taken from the space program were defeating their own real purpose. They were overlooking the crux of the issue: there would come a time when no more cleanup was possible, and by that time the people of Earth must be ready to move on.

Move where? It was a legitimate protest, for close viewing of the moon and of Mars had only confirmed the belief that those worlds were inhospitable. Venus was still less promising, and the remaining planets of the solar system were wholly unsuitable for terrestrial forms of life. Lunar and Martian colonies could be established, given another fifty years or so of technological advancement; but they would be limited in size for they would be dependent on atmosphere-enclosing domes. They could not begin to solve Earth's population problem. Their cost, which would be tremendous, could not be justified on that basis.

Nevertheless, an all-out effort toward colonization of the local solar system was justifiable. Such effort is always justifiable as a necessary step in a human race's progress toward its true goal: the stars.

"Progress" was an unfashionable concept on Earth at the time of the initial space ventures. Most enlightened observers no longer believed in it. The continued presence of evil and injustice in the world seemed to blind these observers, accustomed as they were to the accelerating pace of change in their own era, to the fact that worse evils had been outgrown and that even the poverty-stricken were leading far more comfortable lives than their counterparts twenty, ten, or even two centuries back. The people of the day rarely took a long view; both in their private lives and in their judgment of society, they wanted quick results. It was suggested that the young had been conditioned to this attitude by continuous exposure to current merchandising methods. Perhaps; but in any case their elders were no less bound by it, and such an outlook does not foster an understanding of human evolution, which like personal maturation is a slow process that invariably involves pain.

The people of Earth had no proof that evolution would take them to the stars; even the most ardent believers could do no more than recognize that there was no other place for it to take them. Their only surety lay in the realization that they could not stand still and survive. Yet this realization alone provided sufficient grounds on which to gamble, for it was clear warning that if the hope of interstellar expansion proved false, then someday their race would die.

There were formidable obstacles. Interstellar colonization was not feasible in terms of their era's scientific knowledge. Although it had been estimated that the universe might contain several billion solar systems with planets capable of supporting life, few of them were within range of the fastest ships conceivable under current hypotheses. The velocity of light was, according to the principles of relativity, the maximum speed that could ever be attained; and this limitation was a matter not of technology, but of basic theory. It would require a totally unpredictable breakthrough to circumvent it. Furthermore, development of a means of propulsion that could enable spacecraft to approach the speed of light was far beyond the capabilities of existing technology and would remain so for a long time to come.

Assuming that such a means of propulsion would eventually be found, various possibilities had been discussed in contemporary literature. Voyages of centuries' duration could be undertaken if the passengers were kept in suspended animation, or if huge arks, ecologically balanced, were designed to support successive generations that would live and die aboard before the destination was reached. Better still, if ships could travel at a high enough percentage of the speed of light for the relativistic time-dilation to have significant effect, interstellar voyages would consume comparatively few years of subjective time although centuries could pass on Earth while the travelers remained young. None of these schemes, however, were practical in the expansive sense. They might serve to transport small groups of human beings to worlds where new and independent outposts could be established, but communication with the mother planet would be precluded by the time lapses involved. Like the intra-system colonies, such outposts would be worthwhile experiments—perhaps vital ones—yet they would offer little potential for large-scale extension of terrestrial culture; moreover their status would not be known soon enough to be of any help as far as the overpopulation of Earth was concerned.

It was necessary, therefore, to face an alarming truth: humankind's ultimate fate hinged on the unpredictable breakthrough, the breakthrough that would permit two-way traffic between the stars.

No one could predict the timing of such a breakthrough. No one could foretell its character. But one thing was certain: if and when it occurred, humans must be prepared to take advantage of it. Technology that can colonize a hundred worlds, a thousand worlds, is not achieved overnight; its development is gradual and must proceed step by step through a long period of trial and error. During that period environmental pollution, even when slowed by sane controls, looms as an ever-greater threat. If the conquest of space is delayed until most of a world's people can see the true basis of the need, it is too late. There is simply not enough time left for the required head start.

On the planet Earth few understood the nature and urgency of the need; yet nevertheless, space was being conquered. It was being conquered for all sorts of reasons that had nothing to do with human viability centuries or millennia hence. National pride had a part in the enterprise; so did fear of the military advantage that space supremacy might give to an enemy. The innate desire for adventure and challenge played a large role. The courage of the astronauts was inspiring in an age that lacked heroes; the skill of those who were proving that the moon was within reach afforded a rare opportunity for optimism; science welcomed the unprecedented chance to gain knowledge of the universe. Technological advances achieved through space research had obvious benefits in that many of those advances could be applied to the improvement of conditions at home—a fact upon which the program's supporters found it necessary to place heavy emphasis, although a small minority did realize that space exploration could provide an outlet for energy that might someday replace war, and that in any case an undertaking of such magnitude could not fail to initiate far-reaching cultural innovations.

Some of these motives were decidedly naive, as their critics lost no opportunity to point out, and others, although valid in themselves, were indeed of debatable priority; only the least comprehensible were wholly sound. Was it mere chance that criticism, including much legitimate criticism, went unheeded while expedition after costly expedition pushed outward into space? Or was it a case of evolutionary laws overriding the limited knowledge of the time? People frequently do the right things for the wrong reasons. Those of Earth had acted in defiance of logic before, often to their ultimate benefit; perhaps it is always so in a species' painful struggle toward maturity.

Perhaps it is so even in regard to the despair-provoking horrors of that struggle: it is not inconceivable, for instance, that the problems of peoples confined to their mother worlds—the poverty; the explosive population pressure—and above all, the wars that sensible people think futile and preventable, yet somehow fail to prevent—are all essential spurs, stimuli through which society, being unable to plan rationally for a future it cannot envision, is given motives compatible with its level of advancement and is thereby forced to take the steps necessary to ensure that future. Perhaps the inexplicable anguish of the human condition is not as purposeless as it seems.

Be that as it may, for Earth's inhabitants the central issue was not what they thought it to be when, disturbed by the expense and the risk of the drama that was unfolding on their television screens, they questioned the value of manned space probes. They were rightfully concerned about preserving a livable world for their descendants. But in the long run, those descendants' lives would depend upon their ability to leave not only their home world but also their solar system. Such ability could not be developed in a decade nor yet in a century. The effort could not wait until the need for it was apparent, as the need for population and pollution control had become apparent. If there was anything to be learned from the current environmental crisis, it was that shortsightedness in setting priorities can be tragically costly. It would be the height of irony if humankind's response to one failure of foresight should lead to another, less reparable, failure: if in their zeal to rectify the abuse of their native environment, humans should neglect to prepare for their emergence into the universe wherein their sole salvation lies.

Environmentalism is a vital cause, yes—without it, a world's civilization cannot last long enough to reach the stars. But as we of races older than Earth's have long known, it is only a means to an end. We can only hope that the people of this planet will realize that before it's too late to begin moving beyond.

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Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal's Wager

(2017)

_This essay, which was published online in_ The Space Review _on July 3, 2017, was written in response to an article in which the author implied that because the belief that space colonization can ensure the long-term survival of humankind is based on faith, that goal is not realistic enough to be worth espousing._

## *

In his essay "Escaping Earth: Human Spaceflight as Religion" published in the journal _Astropolitics_ , historian Roger Launius argues that enthusiasm for space can be viewed as a religion. He focuses mainly on comparisons with the outer trappings of religion, many of which are apt; but in one place he reaches the heart of the issue. "Like those espousing the immortality of the human soul among the world's great religions . . . statements of humanity's salvation through spaceflight are fundamentally statements of faith predicated on no knowledge whatsoever."

I think Launius may be somewhat too pessimistic in his assertion that we have no knowledge whatsoever about our ability to develop technology that will enable humans live in the hostile environment of space, but that is beside the point. It's true that we have no assurance that the colonization of space will ensure the long-term survival of humankind. "Absent the discovery of an Earthlike habitable exoplanet to which humanity might migrate," Launius continues, "his [sic] salvation ideology seems problematic, a statement of faith rather than knowledge or reason." And the accessibility of such an exoplanet is questionable, since according to current theory it will not be possible to cross interstellar space rapidly enough to achieve much migration.

It is indeed faith that underlies the conviction that traveling beyond our home world will prevent the extinction of the human race. But Launius' presentation of this fact seems to imply that it lessens the significance of such a conviction, as if beliefs supported by mere faith were not to be taken seriously. That is far from the case, as the history of human civilization clearly shows. Most major advances have been made by people who had faith in what they envisioned before they were able to produce evidence; that was what made them keep working toward it. Having faith in the future, whether a personal future or that of one's successors, has always been what inspires human action.

On what grounds can faith without evidence be justified? This issue was addressed by the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal in what is known as Pascal's Wager, now considered the first formal use of decision theory. Pascal was considering whether is rational to believe in God, but the principle he formulated has been applied to many other questions. In his words, "Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing." If on the other hand, you bet on it being false and it turns out to be true, you lose everything; thus to do so would be stupid if the stakes are high.

This is a clear-cut defense of faith. The many refutations of Pascal's Wager concern not its logic but its unstated premises: that if God exists then there is a Heaven, that only believers go to Heaven, and that belief requires no action leading to harm. Similarly, there are unstated premises in application of this logic to faith in space colonization—it is based on the assumptions that humankind cannot survive indefinitely while confined to one small planet, that extinction of humankind would be a bad outcome, and that widespread faith within society will be needed if large-scale colonies are to be established.

Although many people deny the first assumption, that strikes me as a heads-in-the-sand attitude. It is simply not reasonable to believe that the dwindling resources of Earth, however extended by wise use, can support its population forever; and even if they could, the danger of disaster—whether from global war, runaway technology, or a natural event such as an asteroid strike—would remain. Supposing a remnant of the human race did escape destruction, in the distant future it would be annihilated by changes in the sun.

The second assumption, unlike the first, is not subject to factual analysis. There are people who aren't bothered by the prospect of extinction, and if they're not, no argument can convince them that it is to be avoided. One might ask, however, what difference the time frame makes to them as long as the human race isn't wiped out while they're alive. If it's okay for us to become extinct, why not a mere hundred years from now? Most people, even those who don't care what happens in the distant future, feel strongly that it would be a bad thing for humankind not to outlast their grandchildren. Yet either the fate of our descendants matters, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, why not let our planet's environment deteriorate and save ourselves the trouble of trying to preserve it?

Yes, as Launius says, the belief that long-term survival of humankind can be achieved through spaceflight is based on faith rather than evidence. So is the belief that it would be tragic for humanity not to survive. Faith in something, at least in our existence not being pointless, is essential to functioning as human beings. Almost everyone has a deep, instinctive feeling that our species will continue to exist when we ourselves are gone. In evolutionary terms, this is an adaptive trait. If we lacked it no progress would ever have been made; our ancestors would have achieved nothing that affected those who came after them. We might, in fact, have died out long ago due to circumstances we lacked the technology to deal with.

Does the absence of evidence that colonizing space can save our species make faith in it a religion? Of course it does. Faith in an outcome beyond our present understanding is what religion _is,_ not the rituals it involves or the metaphors it employs for the incomprehensible. To those who feel that calling something a religion impugns its relevance to the real world, I would like to say that their definition of religion is too narrow. The essence of religion is its recognition of reality that we cannot explain in terms of facts we now know. The explanations offered by specific religions, whether or not metaphorical, are not its defining aspect. The acknowledgement that we cannot know everything, and must therefore trust that there is a pattern we cannot see, is the universal concept all religions share.

Primitive religions offered metaphors for facts later explained by science. The extent of which the symbols of today's religions are considered metaphorical depends on the individual (this was the case in ancient times, too, as was pointed out by anthropologist Paul Radin in his classic book _Primitive Man as Philosopher_ ). It may well be that our present conception of interstellar travel is a metaphor for a reality we cannot yet even imagine. But knowing this, knowing that we cannot count on being able to travel rapidly between stars by means of any technology compatible with current theories, we have faith that our descendants will reach them somehow—because the alternative is extinction, and we ju **s** t can't believe that humankind will become extinct.

Under the principle of Pascal's Wager, reason demands such faith, assuming that unending survival of the human race is an infinite gain, that permanent confinement to Earth will mean extinction—and, of course, that belief in the efficacy of large-scale colonization will lead to the action required to bring it about. It should be added that widespread lack of faith in a reachable goal would result in a great deal of unnecessary hopelessness as conditions on Earth worsen and more and more people take their heads out of the sand. There are already too many, even among young people, who feel hopeless about the future.

However, the consequences of believing in an unreachable goal must also be considered. If we bet against survival and it's impossible, then nothing will happen that was not inevitable. But if we, as a civilization rather than as individuals, have faith that proves vain, will any harm have been done?

Some people will think so. Pascal considered the cost of vain belief negligible since all it meant in regard to the issue he was considering was that he would have gone to church and followed some religious rules unnecessarily. But the demands of faith in space colonization are greater. Large-scale space colonies cannot be established without a very long head start; they will be costly in time, effort, and funds. Some will say the effort and especially the funds would be better spent on improving conditions on Earth. (Never mind that as in the case of the money spent on space so far, funds cut from the space effort would not actually be diverted to causes deemed more worthy.) Even if such people concede that permanent survival of humankind on Earth is impossible, they may feel it would be better to devote ourselves to maximum comfort while we're here than to worry about the fate of our remote descendants.

The issue is complicated by the fact that at present, it doesn't really matter whether individuals have faith or not. We are generations away from the stage at which prevalent opinion will influence the final outcome. The earliest space colonies will be built by people who want to go into space personally and who may or may not be thinking about the long term—although they may well be concerned about the possibility of disaster in the near future. They will not need faith in the ultimate survival of humanity; enthusiasm for their work will be sufficient motivation. It's possible that if these colonies thrive over a long period, they will spearhead the spread of humankind throughout the universe; Earth may not even be involved.

And yet a time may come when the support of society—colonial society if not Earth's—will be needed if the survival of the human race is to be assured. The difficulty of establishing large colonies may prove so great that faith alone can sustain the efforts of our successors. It is not too soon to start encouraging belief in the goal.

In any case, no one today should feel foolish for having faith that space colonization will prove to be humankind's salvation, unlikely though the feasibility of it may now seem. Consideration of Pascal's Wager shows that when no evidence exists, belief is more rational than denial.

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Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

(2019)

_This essay was written for my book_ The Future of Being Human and Other Essays _, which will be published in early 2020. But it also belongs in this book, as it deals with my view of our coming progress in space._

## *

I have described my view of the relatively near-term future on Earth in my essay "The Future of Being Human" and several others. Life won't be as different as most current speculation suggests. Artificial intelligence (AI) will alter many aspects of it, but will never take over from humans. We aren't going to become shapeshifters or cyborgs, though we will benefit from genetic and neurotechnological advances where they are useful. No matter how many new technologies are developed, people will have the same underlying wants and needs that they do now. Couples will still fall in love. Their feelings about their families will remain unchanged, as will their sense of what's important to them, however unlike today's their appearance and activities may be.

This will be true, I believe, as far into the future as it is possible to imagine. Human nature isn't going to change. Whatever it is that makes us human—which is at present beyond our understanding—is not subject to transformation by time. But as far as humankind as a whole is concerned, there will be one major step in our evolution that will redefine our status forever. We will become a spacefaring species.

The expansion of our civilization into space is vital if we are to survive indefinitely. There are four major reasons: first, because we are vulnerable to a number of catastrophes, human-caused or natural, as long as we are confined to a single planet. Second, because sooner or later Earth will run of resources, no matter what is done to conserve them; the claim that they can be made sustainable forever is a dangerous illusion. Third, because like all species we have a built-in drive to increase the population, and attempts to frustrate it would lead only to setbacks such as war, pandemics, or mass starvation. And fourth, because throughout human history exploration of new regions has led to renewed creativity and intellectual progress; in time we would decline from boredom if we never moved outward, even if not from the other perils.

In addition to these survival imperatives, we need to become spacefaring because it will bring great benefits to Earth. Initially, the development of space-based solar power will solve the energy crisis; bring about a significant reduction in atmospheric pollution; raise developing nations out of poverty; and provide enough cheap power to desalinate sea water, a process that will be necessary if climate change requires an increase in irrigation, as well as to meet the needs of a growing population. Next, manufacturing in orbit, using raw materials from the moon and asteroids, will result in further reduction of pollution, plus lowered cost of minerals and products imported to Earth. And in the distant future, hunger and poverty will be relieved by enabling population growth on other worlds.

Eventually, settlement of such worlds will reduce the pressures that result from confinement of our species to a single planet with finite space and finite resources. This in turn will lessen conflict and, ultimately, bring an end to war. Once sufficient material resources are available to all nations and a commitment is made to the challenge of establishing large-scale colonies, the reasons for war will disappear, although it will always be necessary to maintain a defense against terrorists and attempted dictatorships. Only expansion beyond Earth can bring this about. If we fail to make the effort then sooner or later, our species will die out.

## *

The first step in becoming spacefaring was, of course, the 1969 landing on the moon, which at the time was rightly called a major evolutionary milestone. Yet despite its symbolic significance, it proved to be more or less of a false dawn, although we have made important advances in space technology since then and I believe no support for faster progress should have been expected. As to why, fifty years after setting foot on the moon, we have neither returned there nor gone further into space, see the first three essays in this book (some of which are also available online).

The true turning point in evolution will be the utilization of resources from space, the moon, and eventually the asteroids to benefit Earth, beginning with the construction of solar power satellites. By far the best solution to the energy shortage and pollution on Earth is to beam down solar power collected by satellites in space. This has been proposed since the 1970s but has been stalled by financial and political problems. It is now desperately needed for adaptation to climate change and to provide electricity to developing regions where millions of people are still living without it, as well as to meet the expanding demand for power in the industrialized nations. Hopefully, opposition to the environmental damage associated with current energy sources will finally bring about its implementation. Japan, which is already working on it, may lead the way.

The next step will be a large privately-owned space station, and perhaps a permanent base on the moon. This will be a gradual process, but by the end of the twenty-first century it will significantly increase resources, and products derived from them, available on Earth, as well as reducing pollution of the atmosphere. Moreover, working in space will provide experience essential to the eventual establishment of colonies on distant worlds, as well as enable entrepreneurs to earn the money to finance them.

Perhaps even before major orbital activity will come human exploration of the moon and Mars and the establishment of bases there. One or more expeditions—the first one already planned by Elon Musk—will go to Mars before the middle of this century and a small settlement may be established by its end. The speed at which this occurs depends on how soon the problems due to the effect of prolonged zero or low gravity on the human body can be solved. Before many people can go it will be necessary to develop ships with artificial gravity, but even with them, it may not be possible for those who have spent much time on Mars to return to Earth. They may not care; after all, most early settlers of America didn't expect to go back to Europe.

I don't believe there will be a large self-supporting colony on Mars, one that can survive without supplies from Earth, until the twenty-second century, but it will surely be established by then, and will continue to grow. If it proves possible to produce large quantities of lightweight materials such as graphene—which is 100 times stronger than steel and almost transparent—through nanotechnology, numerous domes can be easily constructed by self-replicating robots. (I don't think they'll be human-shaped robots, as other shapes might be more useful; but I find that NASA has already designed one.) In that case, a breathable atmosphere won't be necessary; but on the other hand, it may be feasible to terraform Mars. Many proposals for doing so have been developed, and it would eliminate the need for artificial life support and facilitate agriculture, even if a large population can survive without change to the natural environment. However, terraforming will be a slow process, and by the time it is complete the early settlers may be accustomed to their way of life and have no desire to change it. So whether it's worthwhile may be a question of how much ongoing immigration from Earth is expected.

The other planets in our solar system are not suitable for colonization, although some of their moons are promising and in the late twenty-first or early twenty-second century exploration of them, first by robots and later by humans, will begin. Almost certainly we will mine the asteroids, which are rich in minerals needed on Earth and for construction of facilities in orbit. How soon this happens will depend on the progress of technology, but it will start in this century and could be well underway even before the settlement of Mars.

At some point we will build orbiting colonies. It has been believed since the 1970s that large colonies could be constructed in Earth orbit with materials from the moon—little worlds with the living space, including parks containing plants and trees, on the inside surface of huge orbital structures. Many people (and I was among them) thought this should be done soon, before the colonization of Mars. Since then it has been realized that it's too big a project to be accomplished easily, and it is not a high priority because there is no short-term financial incentive. With the AI that will be available to process extraterrestrial resources, there will be no need for many people to work in orbit. But in the far future when more room is needed for population growth, orbiting colonies will be essential. Living conditions in them will be much better than in crowded cities on Earth, and eventually they may make it possible to abandon large cities and restore much of Earth's natural beauty.

Before that happens we may aim for the stars with interstellar probes and perhaps primitive starships. As soon as a means of propulsion is found that can reach the nearest star within a century or less, robots will be sent and explorers may follow, even if it means they must travel in frozen sleep or raise new generations before they reach the destination. But because it will take up to another century for messages sent back from them to reach Earth, this won't be done on a large scale. It's unlikely that we'll attempt to colonize exoplanets until we have faster-than-light (FTL) starships. To relieve population pressure it will be easier to construct orbiting colonies or even a Dyson sphere surrounding our sun. Nevertheless, the search for a means of FTL travel will continue.

## *

According to what is known of physics today, FTL travel is absolutely impossible even in theory. I believe a breakthrough will come, but there's no way of predicting how soon; it could be in the twenty-second century or it could be much later. It will necessarily involve some form of what science fiction refers to as a space warp or wormhole, though those are merely metaphors for principles that are not understood at present. I feel sure that eventually there will some means of traveling between the stars in a reasonable length of time so that our civilization, and not just humans in the biological sense, can spread throughout our galaxy and perhaps throughout the universe.

Sooner or later we will have settlements on planets of many stars. Eventually Earth may become a backwater world, honored as our ancestral home but no longer central in human affairs. The human population will be spread among its colonies, which I envision as self-governing and perhaps quite different from each other, with free trade carried on between them. There may be some kind of overall organization; I hope it won't be an overbearing bureaucracy but that is all too likely, at least until humans outgrow the impulse to control each other, if rapid communication across interstellar distances becomes possible.

Most people won't have opportunity for interstellar travel, which will surely be expensive; if communication technology proves slow, they may not even be aware of planets other than their own. But they will all be human. I don't think they will evolve into separate species as is sometimes suggested. They will adapt to new environments by means of technology, as humans have always done, not by natural genetic change of a kind that would prevent interbreeding—the latter would require centuries, and technology will surely progress much more quickly even if not adequate to begin with.

Whether technology is used to enable humans to live in new environments or to change environments to meet the needs of humans remains to be seen. Either way, pioneering on exoplanets won't be like the traditional image of farmers taming a fertile new land. The world or the people, or both, will have to be modified. We don't know how hard it would be to terraform an alien planet, but it would certainly take too long for settlers to survive during the process without equipment such as breathing masks. We do know that to change humans drastically by genetic engineering would require either that parents raise children very different from themselves, or that embryos be created in laboratories and raised in crèches of some kind; and I suspect that people would not accept either of those alternatives. The family is basic to human life. Without families and homes a settlement could not thrive.

Colonists will probably adopt a combination of strategies—terraforming slowly where feasible, but in the meantime becoming so used to necessary technological aids that they seem natural. Insofar as neurotechnological devices such as implants are helpful, they will be used. Relatively minor genetic changes may be made, but not to the extent of affecting sexual attractiveness. People will adapt to such conditions as low gravity or high temperatures simply putting up with them; children born under such conditions may have some physical characteristics unlike their parents but will not be fundamentally different. Humanity lies in inner feelings, not outward appearance.

If terraforming of a planet proves essential, small settlements of experts to oversee it will precede large-scale colonization. It is often said that the initial population of a colony must be large to avoid genetic damage from inbreeding. This idea arose before anything was known about genetic engineering. Inbreeding in itself is not detrimental; for it to be harmful, genes causing damage to offspring must be inherited from both parents, which inbreeding makes more likely. Surely by the time we can reach worlds of other stars, we will know how to detect and eliminate mutations through germline modification. We may need to do this in cases of radiation exposure, too, although perhaps long-distance space travelers who want future children will bank eggs and sperm routinely.

It has been seriously suggested that since robots will be better able than humans to make centuries-long voyages and to adapt to alien environments, we may leave interstellar colonization to them and never go ourselves. I cannot imagine anything more pointless. Certainly we will send robot probes to investigate other planets just as we have sent primitive ones to Mars, and self-replicating robots (not human-shaped, but in various forms suited to their tasks) will do the heavy work of building colonies. But that will be only a preliminary to human settlement. A colony, as distinguished from a research station, would be useful only as a place for people to live. If it weren't going to be inhabited by humans, there would be no reason to establish it. The purpose of colonizing other worlds is to ensure the survival of our species. What good could it do to populate the galaxy with robots?

An even crazier version of this scenario envisioned by some is that eventually robots themselves will take the initiative and colonize the entire galaxy, or even other galaxies. Furthermore, these people see it as a desirable goal, the takeover of the universe by superior intelligence we have created. (It's a potentially genocidal aim, since it makes no allowance for any unknown primitive civilizations that may be developing.) As senseless as this seems to me, I must admit that it is a logical conclusion to draw from the premise that mind consists solely of "intelligence"—and it is thus a reductio ad absurdum with respect to that premise. For more about its fallacy, see my essay "The Root of Disbelief in Human Mind Powers" (in my forthcoming book _The Future of Being Human_ ).

This false premise also leads to another suggestion made by several distinguished scientists, the notion that robots might prepare distant worlds for light-speed transmission of coded information describing individuals' bodies and then reassemble those individuals, complete with their memories, at the destination. I suppose, since people are used to the transporter in Star Trek, the idea of converting humans to energy patterns does not seem too outlandish, and at least one noted theoretical physicist has predicted that the technology will be invented within 100 years. But while transmission of matter may be achieved, human minds are not wholly material. For the same reason that the commonly-envisioned uploading of people to computers will never happen, electronic transportation of them is inherently impossible; even if they arrived in human form they would be mindless zombies. The idea is simply another consequence of the materialistic assumptions that limit today's science to a narrowly-defined segment of reality.

## *

What about contact with extraterrestrial civilizations? According to those who believe robots will colonize the entire cosmos, the fact that they haven't already done so means that there are no civilizations more advanced than ours. I'm more inclined to believe that it means advanced aliens haven't produced such robots because it's not possible. Nevertheless, there is a long tradition of believing that the failure of aliens to show up means there aren't any. Some space enthusiasts want to believe it because they fear that existing aliens not having come here might mean FTL travel isn't possible. Others believe it because they are convinced that it's our destiny to seed the universe with life, which in my opinion is a revival of the ancient hubristic idea that Earth occupies its center in terms of importance. SETI enthusiasts are beginning to believe it because we haven't received any radio messages. The absence of aliens is known as the Fermi Paradox because physicist Erico Fermi long ago expressed surprise that no evidence of their existence has appeared. Personally I have never been able to see anything in the least paradoxical about it. Many plausible reasons why they haven't contacted us have been suggested, but I think the most likely one is that they have chosen not to do so.

I don't believe such contact is going to happen—via SETI radio communication or in any other way—in this century, and maybe not for many centuries. As stated in my novels, I believe truly advanced "human" species do not reveal themselves to less advanced ones because they do not want to interfere with their evolution, A speculation similar to this is generally known as the "zoo hypothesis," but that is not the same thing. When we observe animals in zoos, we do not expect them to someday become our equals. We do not expect them to progress while we are watching; on the contrary, we take it for granted that their capabilities will remain the same generation after generation. Planetary civilizations, on the other hand, advance. And it seems to me that ETs significantly ahead of us would want us to reach our full potential before joining them, not only for altruistic reasons but because they would value the contributions that diverse civilized species would make to the supercivilization of which they are members—not to mention that they'd realize what trouble admitting an immature species into that confederation might cause.

Some readers of my novels have felt that the advanced civilization I portrayed was rather arbitrary in decreeing that the younger species were not their equals, and certainly I have maintained, in both fiction and nonfiction, that people of cultures at all stages are equally human. I extend that principle to people of extraterrestrial species also. But it isn't a matter of innate qualities, for culture has a bearing on the development of minds. The science of epigenetics is discovering that this is true even on the physical level; DNA is not the sole determinant of a person's brain. Thus cavemen who didn't yet have tools or a spoken language were certainly not our equals; if there were a time machine, we couldn't bring a caveman into our time and expect him to hold his own, even if he was educated. And if we were to hear from an extraterrestrial civilization that has existed for many millennia longer than ours, I don't think we would expect to be the equals of its members. We'd expect them to be advanced in ways we can't even imagine.

This natural assumption is obscured in my novels because I have to make the characters enough like us for readers to identify with. I chose to make them physically similar not only for plot purposes but as a literary device to suggest the universality of values and feelings among thinking beings throughout the universe. But of course if they exist, they are not so much like us either physically or culturally. And if there is such a thing as progress--which I maintain that there is (in contrast to official scientific theory, which defines evolution simply as "change" without any "forward" movement)--then they have developed abilities far beyond ours. I do not think we could hold our own if in contact with their worlds.

I could hardly depict advancement in ways we can't imagine in my stories, so I tried to symbolize this with the controlled psychic powers. Unless the reader stops to think a lot about it, the implication of those powers being common everyday abilities in an advanced civilization may not be apparent—but of course, if people were not hiding them as my characters do on younger worlds, it would be a very different kind of society than has ever existed at any time in human history. Could people of our time get along just fine among beings who habitually communicate telepathically and move things around with psychokinesis, and do other psychic things that we cannot not do? It would be as if a caveman who couldn't learn to speak tried to function among modern Americans. What's more, the vast majority of human beings as we know them not only are incapable of using controlled psychic powers, but would be all too likely to do harm with them, unintentionally or otherwise; a culture based on them with members no different from ourselves is inconceivable. It goes without saying that I don't know just how a species gets from "here" to "there," to the stage where the widespread use of these powers is both possible and practical—but I believe it happens. And in the terms of my fiction (which should not be taken as a literal definition of species maturity) this is the turning point. A species is accepted into a supercivilization, if one exists, when it has reached the stage where psychic abilities are commonly and safely used by its normal members, who can therefore mingle freely with others without posing a threat to anyone or finding themselves at a disadvantage. It is not a matter of subjective judgment.

This is only an example, of course, We do not know what the actual turning point is, but it may be something beyond our present ability to envision. Surely development of starships is a prerequisite, as without it we are far behind species who can travel between the stars.

Might we not come into contact with species at our own level or younger, who have not yet decided to conceal themselves? The chances of that are extremely small, considering the vast number of stars in the universe and the vast distances between them. SETI listens for signs of supercivilizations, not isolated ones that can just barely transmit signals and which only by incredible coincidence could be close enough to detect. And when we begin to explore, it will be only by luck that we find even one suitable planet within range, let alone an inhabited one.

It may be wondered why, since we are able to find exoplanets by detecting their effect on observation of stars, we won't eventually detect the presence of a supercivilization's home worlds. This issue was raised by my editor way back in 1969 before _Enchantress from the Stars_ was published, before we had found any exoplanets at all. I have always assumed that supercivilizations are able to shield their worlds from detection. We don't know of any technology that could accomplish that, but it's no more unlikely than a great many other things we don't know. It might be a useful technology even apart from altruistic aims if a world feared aliens might be hostile.

I don't believe there is any need to worry about hostile aliens as some scientists have begun to do, despite the well-established precedent set by science fiction. I have discussed this issue in my essay "Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War." In the first place, a starfaring species would have no reason to attack, as the universe is full of planets and resources that any species with the ability to cross interstellar space could obtain more easily than by invading an inhabited world. And in the second place, such species must have advanced far beyond aggressiveness, which I view not as innate but as a stage of immaturity. The invaders in _Enchantress from the Stars_ are an anachronism included because the book is intentionally based on both traditional and recent mythology.

So I don't expect us to meet extraterrestrials, hostile or otherwise, in the foreseeable future. If there are any supercivilizations they will conceal their existence even if they are observing Earth, which it's possible that they may already be doing in ways we cannot detect. Surely in the future they will observe our colonization of exoplanets, which may occupy our full attention for centuries.

There will come a time, however, when settling new worlds is not enough. Humans require challenge in order to thrive, and in time colonization will no longer be sufficiently challenging. I believe the next step in evolution will be the acquisition by large numbers of people of the ability to use psi consciously, which will mean radical change on both the individual and the social level. But even that will not permanently satisfy the need to progress into the unknown. And without progress, humankind will inevitably decline.

I see only one way forward: contact with advanced extraterrestrials, when we are at last ready to meet them as equals. We will then confront, as the hero of my novel _Herald of the Flame_ says, "a universe larger than the one we've been living in, a universe full of alien worlds with their own people, their own civilizations, a multitude of worlds that will take centuries to learn about and explore. A challenge that will last virtually forever. . . . Worlds and peoples different from those we know _must_ exist, for if they don't, there is nowhere to go from here—no hope to inspire future generations. Someday . . . humankind must encounter a new universe to explore, or civilization can only slide further downhill."

This will be the true Singularity, the point past which we can make no predictions about how humanity will change. Both literally and figuratively we will enter territory that is now beyond our comprehension. It may be that no such future will come to pass, but we are better off believing that it will than supposing that we're indistinguishable from robots.

Some may wonder why, since I've never conformed to the usual conventions of the science fiction genre, I chose to write only novels about the future. It was partly that the idea of a universe filled with countless inhabited worlds has always fascinated me, but mainly because I believe that how people in our era think about the future is important. Above all, I want readers to look toward it with hope, in the belief that however difficult our problems, and however slowly our species evolves, humankind will continue to move forward. Our world is one small part of a vast, wonder-filled universe that we will sooner or later encounter. People need to think of it in that light.

Go to the Table of Contents

Epilogue:

### Space Quotes to Ponder

These are the quotes from my Web page Space Quotes to Ponder, which has been online since 2002. They are limited to those from print publications and formal speeches of the 20th century and earlier, plus a few from the first decade of the 21st. A maximum of three per author have been included, though some of these people wrote far more worth quoting. And of course a great many such things have been said online, and in more recent print publications. To expand the page would have made it much too long, so I decided to keep its focus on what the future will view as exceptional far-sightedness. In time, our descendents will wonder why so much argument was devoted to a concept they will consider too obvious to require elaboration.

In fact, most space advocates wonder why it is not obvious now. Why has the public not grasped these facts. which have surely been presented often enough? This is a question to which I have given a great deal of thought ever the past decade or more, and have discussed in essays such as "Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century." I have come to believe that we should never have expected widespread public support for spacefaring in our era—the idea of venturing beyond our home world is too revolutionary not to arouse deep, though unconscious, apprehension in the majority, masked as mere apathy. All past human advances have been made by a far-sighted minority and this one will be no exception. And recently it has become apparent that there's no need for it to be. Pioneering private space ventures are beginning to more us forward.

If we don't need the support of the public to get into space, is there any point in continuing to argue persuasively for the necessity of going there? Of course there is—it will always be vital to inspire young people with the wish to take part. And to offer young and old with open minds the knowledge that humankind need not be bound to one small planet with ever-decreasing resources and ever-increasing conflict over them, but may in due course find new hope for peace and abundance in the universe beyond.

### We must colonize space to survive.

"Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring—not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds."

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

—Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001

"Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving."

—Gene Roddenberry, Planetary Report Vol. 1, 1981

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."

—Robert Heinlein, speech

"Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die."

—Robert Zubrin, Entering Space, 1999

"The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity."

—William E. Burrows, Wall Street Journal, 2003

"In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse- colonized from Mars."

—Paul Davies, New York Times, 2004

"We must turn our guns away from each other and outwards, to defend the Earth, creating a global and in space network of sensors and telescopes to find asteroids that could destroy our planet and create the systems to stop them. It makes no sense to dream great dreams while waiting to be hit by a train."

—Buzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson, Ad Astra Online, 2006

"There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?"

—Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University

"Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species—us. NASA is not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul."

—Astronaut John Young, "The Big Picture"

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival."

—Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"

—Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in interview at space.com, 2001

"Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate."

—Poul Anderson, Is There Life on Other Worlds?, 1963

"Space exploration must be undertaken not only out of simple human curiosity but also to further the survival of the species. The twentieth century has seen the unprecedented development and proliferation of magnificent technologies. Many of them, through design, ignorance, or misuse, are capable of destroying life as well as enhancing it. Space exploration alone holds the promise of eventual escape from a dying planet, provided we wisely manage our resources in the meantime and actually survive that long."

—Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, The Way of the Explorer, 1996

"I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!"

—Ray Bradbury, Mars and the Mind of Man, 1971

"If the human species, or indeed any part of the biosphere, is to continue to survive, it must eventually leave the Earth and colonize space. For the simple fact of the matter is, the planet Earth is doomed... Let us follow many environmentalists and regard the Earth as Gaia, the mother of all life (which indeed she is). Gaia, like all mothers, is not immortal. She is going to die. But her line of descent might be immortal... Gaia's children might never die out—provided they move into space. The Earth should be regarded as the womb of life—but one cannot remain in the womb forever."

—Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, 1994

"If humanity persists and endures, in time we will come face to face with the evolution of our sun. In a few billion years its slow brightening will speed up as it swells into a red giant. Earth will then be uninhabitable, as will the inner regions of the Solar System. Yet there will be other more clement stars to which our descendents may wish to migrate. Certainly a society that has developed space flight and space colonization will have the advantage of never thereafter having to stand hostage to fortune."

—T. A. Heppenheimer, Toward Distant Suns, 1979

"If [the earth] goes, we go. And so we should go elsewhere, so that when the earth goes, we have another place to go. And while we're at it, we should take our pets and plants, too. We wouldn't want to be without them, just as they wouldn't want to be without us—even if they don't know it. It's our job to know things, and to act accordingly. And if we fail at that mission, then we really will have failed in upholding our end of the Burkean bargain—that is, partnering not only with the living and the dead, but with those who are yet to be born."

—James Pinkerton, "The Ultimate Lifeboat," TCS Daily, 2006

"In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't know when, but one day, there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it."

—NASA director Mike Griffin, quoted in "Mars or Bust," Rolling Stone, 2006

"Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race."

—Robert Heinlein, speech at World Science Fiction Convention, 1961

"Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

—Stephen Hawking, video at Big Think, August 2010

### We must colonize space to preserve Earth

"The most important fact of this century is not that Earth is threatened in many ways. It is that for the first time in all of its history a decisive means of protecting the home planet exists. It is by using space."

—William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative, 2006

"Many of the problems that we have today may not have solutions on Earth. The solutions may lie only in leaving the planet behind. There's no way we can avoid tearing up the countryside for ores, for fuel, for raw materials here on Earth—short of everybody dying off."

—Keith and Carolyn Henson in Worlds Beyond, ed. New Dimensions Foundation, 1978

"Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival."

—Gerard O'Neill, The High Frontier, 1976

"People who view industrialization as a source of the Earth's troubles, its pollution, and the desecration of its surface, can only advocate that we give it up. This is something that we can't do; we have the tiger by the tail. We have 4.5 billion people on Earth. We can't support that many unless we're industrialized and technologically advanced. So, the idea is not to get rid of industrialization but to move it somewhere else. If we can move it a few thousand miles into space, we still have it, but not on Earth. Earth can then become a world of parks, farms, and wilderness without giving up the benefits of industrialization."

—Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University

"If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species."

—Barbara Marx Hubbard, Distant Star, 1997 (Electronic Magazine of the First Millennial Foundation)

"One of the most thoughtless statements, parroted ad nauseam ever since rational concern for our environment exploded into an emotional syndrome, calls Man the only animal that soils its own nest. Every animal soils its nest with the products of its metabolism if unable to move away. Space technology gives us for the first time the freedom to leave our nest, at least for certain functions, in order not to soil it."

—Krafft Ehricke, "Extraterrestrial Imperative" in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1971

"There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forego forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier."

—Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1979

"As long as there is the safety valve of unexplored frontiers, the aggressive and exploitive urges of human beings can be channeled into long-term possibilities and benefits. But as those frontiers close down, and people begin to turn in upon themselves, that jeopardizes the democratic fabric itself. I don't happen to think the frontier is closed. It's just opening up in space... The human race is going out and throughout, wherever space will permit us to go. It's only a question of when, and who, and what kind of leadership will take us there. And I, for one, don't think we ought to be looking just down here below."

—Governor Jerry Brown, remarks at a symposium, 1977

"The possible advantages of [space colonization] are many and not to be taken lightly. In theory many of humanity's most environmentally destructive activities could be removed from the biosphere entirely. The population density of the Earth could be reduced, and a high quality of life could be provided to all Homo sapiens. It might even make war obsolete... Environmentalists often accuse politicians of taking too short-term a view of the human predicament. By prematurely rejecting the idea of space colonies they would be making the same mistake."

—Paul Ehrlich in Space Colonies, ed. Steward Brand, 1977

"Any hostility that some environmentalists have shown toward space projects arises from the intense sense of responsibility to focus on the needs of the planet. They have not come to appreciate—and hardly anyone has—that the long-term health of this world requires that we also develop the capacity to leave it in large numbers. So this is our dual responsibility to the planet that gave us our existence: to protect her and to spread her seeds. It's actually very simple and obvious if you think about it. Both activities are equally essential to maintain the balance of life. Now that we are mature, we must begin to take these responsibilities very seriously."

—Steven Wolfe, "Space Settlement: The Journey Within," presented at National Space Society conference, 2004

"We of course have our problems, to say the least, in comportment towards ourselves and our environment, but admittance to the cosmos and the spatial infinity and temporal immortality it provides may well be just the remedy for these age-old problems. Access to the boundless resources of the universe may once and for all puncture the pressure of population and politics of scarcity which have generated war, oppression, and plagued our species from the start."

—Paul Levinson, "Technology as the Cutting Edge of Cosmic Evolution," presented at AAAS annual meeting, 1984

"The penetration of humankind into the universe, into its study and mastery, is not an expression of the inability of human beings to grapple with earthly difficulties and problems, not flight from them, but a qualitatively new and often even unique, irreplaceable means of solving many of the most important tasks of science, technology and the economy."

—A. D. Ursul, "The Human Being and the Universe" in Soviet Studies in Philosophy, 1978

"Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind."

—Arthur C. Clarke, "What Is to Be Done?" in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1992

"The frontier in space, embodied in the space colony, is one in which the interactions between humans and their environment is so much more sensitive and interactive and less tolerant of irresponsibility than it is on the whole surface of the Earth. We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies."

—Astronaut Rusty Schweickart in L-5 News, 1977

"The study of space societies may have a big dividend for Earth.... Inquiry into the rules that should govern societies in space is likely to provide fresh insights into the governance of societies here on Earth, a field in which, to judge by current events, there is certainly room for progress. This is particularly true because many of the most salient characteristics of space societies, such as strong dependence on sophisticated technology, problems with maintaining environmental quality, the need for people to work together smoothly under stress in close quarters, and the dependence of inhabitants on their society for basic necessities just as food, water, air, and communications, are in many ways simply exaggerations of characteristics already present (and growing) in Earth societies. By studying the problem of space societies we gain a window into not just their future, but our own."

—Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, speech at conference of Judges of U.S. Court of Appeals, 1988

"Despite the campaign rhetoric, the bureaucracies—big business and big government—are here to stay. The centralization effort cannot be checked, but it can be rationally directed towards our species goal: Space Migration, which in turn offers the only way to re-attain individual freedom of space-time and the small-group social structures which obviously best suit our nervous systems. It is another paradox of neuro-genetics that only in space habitats can humanity return to the village life and pastoral style for which we all long."

—Timothy Leary, Neuropolitics, 1977

"We must open the frontier to expand this grand experiment called freedom, because without an arena to feed and nurture the ideals of liberty, individual choice and the right to do and be whatever you want they may well perish from the Earth. We must open the frontier because without an edge to our packed culture of individuals, nurturing and then bringing in new ideas and giving release to bad ones, the center comes apart. We must open the frontier to find and create new wealth for humanity, because everyone in the world deserves the chance to have the same fine house, fine cars, and good life you can potentially have, and this planet alone simply cannot provide support that, unless you give up yours (and someone, sometime will try and make you do so). We open the frontier to help save the planet we love from the ravages caused by our ever growing numbers and our hunger for new forms of energy, materials and products. Finally, and most importantly, we must open the frontier as humans to survive as a species and to protect our precious biosphere from destruction by the forces of the universe or ourselves by making it redundant."

—Rick Tumlinson, Testimony to a Senate Committee, 2003

"For the environmentalists, The Space Option is the ultimate environmental solution. For the Cornucopians, it is the technological fix that they are relying on. For the hard core space community, the obvious by-product would be the eventual exploration and settlement of the solar system. For most of humanity however, the ultimate benefit is having a realistic hope in a future with possibilities.... If our species does not soon embrace this unique opportunity with sufficient commitment, it may miss its one and only chance to do so. Humanity could soon be overwhelmed by one or more of the many challenges it now faces. The window of opportunity is closing as fast as the population is increasing.... Our future will be either a Space Age or a Stone Age."

—Arthur Woods and Marco Bernasconi, Space News, 1995

### We must colonize space to eliminate war.

"It is the hope of those who work toward the breakout from planet Earth that the establishment of permanent, self-sustaining colonies of humans off-Earth will ... make human life forever unkillable, removing it from the endangered species list, where it now stands on a fragile Earth overarmed with nuclear weapons. Second, the opening of virtually unlimited new land areas in space will reduce territorial pressures and therefore diminish warfare on Earth itself."

—Gerard O'Neill, Foreword to The Overview Effect by Frank White, 1981

"Unless people can see broad vistas of unused resources in front of them, the belief in limited resources tends to follow as a matter of course. And if the idea is accepted that the world's resources are fixed, then each person is ultimately the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation. The extreme result is tyranny, war and even genocide. Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers."

— Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars, 1996

"The prospective colonization of space responds, not to the particular problems of the American nation, or of any other nation, but to those of mankind as a whole... In an ideal view, such an undertaking by mankind as a whole would tend to divert it from its present preoccupation with international conflict, would tend to channel its energies into the pursuit of a great common purpose."

—Louis J. Halle in Foreign Affairs, 1980

"The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it."

—Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space, 1951

"War and space exploration are alternative uses of the assertive, exploratory energies that are so characteristic of human beings. They may also be mutually exclusive because if one occurs on a massive scale, the other probably will not."

—Frank White, The Overview Effect, 1981

"Man is so made that he can progress only when challenged. If sociological advance were to make war impossible before a planet's technology was sufficiently developed, the people of that planet would never achieve the means to expand to other worlds. If they waited for overpopulation to confront them, it would be too late; they'd either become the victims of mass starvation and chaos, or would resort to ruthless, planned killing without the 'excuse' of war, followed by an irreversible decadence. But the fuse is necessarily short. The technology, once achieved, must be used for expansion; otherwise the tendency toward war outlives its purpose and results in inescapable disaster."

—Sylvia Engdahl, The Far Side of Evil, 1971

"Every civilization [in the universe] must go through this [a nuclear crisis]. Those that don't make it destroy themselves. Those that do make it end up cavorting all over the universe."

—Physicist Ted Taylor, quoted by John McPhee in The Curve of Binding Energy, 1974

"It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the normal birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail."

—Robert Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil, 1970

"We need the stars... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny [to take root among the stars] gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars.... When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness."

—Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents, 1998

"We see purposeful movement—mobility—as the most important reason for life's surviving and flourishing in every conceivable place... In this power of movement, life has protected itself from life-destroying disasters—fire, earthquakes, volcanoes, and disease plagues—which may strike one meadow or one forest or one continent. Only a new kind of biological mobility could prevent the total destruction of a life system imprisoned on one planet and dependent on one star... If the nations of the earth work together to solve the enormous challenge of a workable space ark, lasting world peace would be a probable result. The required creativity and competition would absorb human energies normally reserved for war."

—William Sauber, The Fourth Kingdom,, 1975

"The eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.... I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours."

—John F. Kennedy, speech at Rice University, 1962

"Mankind's journey into space, like every great voyage of discovery, will become part of our unending journey of liberation. In the limitless reaches of space, we will find liberation from tyranny, from scarcity, from ignorance and from war. We will find the means to protect this Earth and to nurture every human life, and to explore the universe. . . .This is our mission, this is our destiny."

—Ronald Reagan, speech at Houston, 1988

"I am convinced that of all the people on the two sides of the great curtain, the space pilots are the least likely to hate each other. Like the late Erich von Holst, I believe that the tremendous and otherwise not quite explicable public interest in space flight arises from the subconscious realization that it helps to preserve peace. May it continue to do so!"

—Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1963

### We must colonize space to grow.

"The fatalism of the limits-to-growth alternative is reasonable only if one ignores all the resources beyond our atmosphere, resources thousands of times greater than we could ever obtain from our beleaguered Earth. As expressed very beautifully in the language of House Concurrent Resolution 451, 'This tiny Earth is not humanity's prison, is not a closed and dwindling resource, but is in fact only part of a vast system rich in opportunities..."

—Gerard O'Neill, testimony before a congressional committee, 1978

"Men go into space .. to see whether it is the kind of place where other men, and their families and their children, can eventually follow them. A disturbingly high proportion of the intelligent young are discontented because they find the life before them intolerably confining. The moon offers a new frontier. It is as simple and splendid as that."

—Editorial on the moon landing, The Economist, 1969

"I grew up with the notion that the frontier had shaped our characters and that there was no frontier any more.... What we had to have were frontiers in literature, scientific research, human welfare. That was a beautiful figure of speech. I used it for years, but the first time somebody really talked to me about space colonization and what it might be like to really put a colony out there that could do as it liked, I discovered that a little real new space in which you could put a new society was much more exciting than pushing back those figurative new frontiers.... Space means greater well-being for our children and adventure, an outlet for all the things we thought there wasn't any outlet for, and a belief that the frontier isn't closed, that there are endless possibilities and we don't need to be discouraged by the population explosion, and we don't need to feel that life is going to get duller and duller so it isn't worth living."

—Anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Does it Matter What Women Think About Space," Space Digest, 1960

"This whole issue of limits to growth, which provides a psychological, as well as a physical, cap on potential expansion of activity and awareness, has had a very depressing effect on many people.... I don't for a moment think that there's any concept which anyone's working with now which will be followed as a straightforward scenario. But the idea embodied in concepts such as space colonization or space industrialization, or availability of nonterrestrial resources, is fundamental, and it will change the way in which people look at the future."

—Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, "One Man's Approach to Space" in Worlds Beyond, edited by Larry Geis, 1978

"While civilization is more than a high material living standard it is nevertheless based on material abundance. It does not thrive on abject poverty or in an atmosphere of resignation and hopelessness. Therefore, the end objectives of solar system exploration are social objectives, in the sense that they relate to or are dictated by present and future human needs."

—Krafft Ericke, 1970

"Space colonization offers mankind a radically new and different option: The choice is no longer between continued growth until the limits of a small planet force collapse back to subsistence farming versus drastic social and economic changes to halt growth soon. We now have a third choice, that of continuing growth, but in a very different direction."

—J. Peter Vajk in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1976

"Without space included in the equation, 'sustainable growth' is an oxymoron. Think about it a moment. It suggests a pattern of growth somehow continuing indefinitely within a closed bubble—but a bubble can only 'sustain' so much growth before we bump into the walls.... Even with huge improvements in clean technology and recycling, under the closed sustainable growth scenario, it is simply impossible for every human on the planet Earth to achieve the lifestyle of the average North American without destroying that same planet. Yet, morally, there is absolutely no reason they should not be as rich as we are.... We can sustain the growth of the human species and the other life of planet Earth only by bursting the bubble. We must open the space frontier.

—Rick Tumlinson, "The Frontier Files," Space Frontier Foundation, 1995

"To think that we could stop growing could be compared to an imaginary embryo that is in its sixth or seventh month and has decided to stop growing in order to survive in the womb. The womb is the only environment it has known; all others are feared out of ignorance. Assume, however, that the embryo is very intelligent. It has kept records since the third or fourth month. It extrapolates from its statistical data to the eighth or ninth month. It sees environmental conditions in the womb growing precarious going into the tenth and eleventh months. It decides this growth is impossible, so that it had better stop growing in the fifth or sixth month before a catastrophe occurs. What it doesn't know is that in the ninth month a change will take place.... 'Mother' Earth and her latest children, humanity, are at that same point now. Our new frame of reference will be the environmental enlargement beyond Earth. Now that we possess the necessary technology, we can 'breathe' and live beyond Earth, outside the womb of the biosphere in which we grew up."

—Krafft Ehricke, "The Extraterrestrial Imperative" in Update on Space Volume I, 1981

"How seriously does the conventional population planner take the instinct of all breeds of living things to expand to the limits of their biological enclosure? ... [Man] knows that he can destroy the Earth, and destroy the race, and it worries him. Now, why should this consciousness itself not be the ally of the profound urge of protoplasm to seek insurance against accident and extinction? Numbers and dispersion—those are the strategies of survival. To the thinking man the Earth suddenly in this generation appears a precarious foothold for a mighty, climactic animal.... If man plants a foothold on Venus or Mars he can breathe easier—though probably none of this wells up into the conscious levels at all—because now the race can survive even if Earth is kindled into a fireball. Another colony on a planet orbiting another star would ease the pressure even more.... Biologists have long remarked that a new environment usually stimulates the rate of increase of an animal population, But the Technological Revolution is a new environment—omitting all mention of Space. And man's population growth has been stimulated.... My friends are producing children whose children will live on Mars, because in the depths of their nervous and cellular structure they can no longer tolerate that the fate of man should dangle upon the existence of this one small planet."

—Peter Ritner, The Society of Space, 1961

"In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited."

—Neil Armstrong, press conference, 1999

"In my considered opinion, the profit to be made by permanent settlement in space is nothing less than the survival of industrial civilization, and therefore the survival of nearly the entire human race, along with such amenities as peace, freedom, enough to eat, and the chance to reach a high age in good health."

—Poul Anderson in Galileo, 1979

"Space, [Stine] argues, is to be the scene of a Third Industrial Revolution because there man can find virtually limitless energy and resources. Pollution as a by-product of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions disappears in the vastness of space. He pictures our present earthbound industrial system as being a closed system for ecological purposes. By developing space as a site for industry, man opens up the system and ensures his future survival—a survival holding the promise of plenty rather than scarcity."

—Barry Goldwater, Introduction to The Third Industrial Revolution by G. Harry Stine, 1975

"If the Third Industrial Revolution is not a realistic forecast, perhaps it is the fate of all intelligent, self-aware species in the universe to blaze like a supernova for one brief instant of climactic glory before sinking into a final nuclear dark age. But I don't think so. I prefer to believe that there is more to the human race than that. We have come far. There are those among us who will not be daunted or denied a better future or an ultimate destiny among the stars. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Politics, 'We think our civilization near the meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.'"

—G. Harry Stine, The Third Industrial Revolution, 1975

"It is not failure but success that is forcing man off this earth. It is not sickness but the triumph of health... Our capacity to survive has expanded beyond the capacity of Earth to support us. The pains we are feeling are growing pains. We can solve growth problems in direct proportion to our capacity to find new worlds... If man stays on Earth, his extinction is sure even if he lasts till the sun expands and destroys him... It is no longer reasonable to assume that the meaning of life lies on this earth alone. If Earth is all there is for man, we are reaching the foreseeable end of man."

—Earl Hubbard, Our Need for New Worlds, 1976

"Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek... Fecklessness might be the main theme of [the aliens'] report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... [that] emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve—while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space."

—Nigel Calder, Spaceships of the Mind, 1978

"Interplanetary and interstellar colonists would be motivated by a desire for new living space away from the rapidly-filling earth, or in later times, the rapidly-filling solar system—new sources of energy, material resources, new beauty and new knowledge... As the total human population increased ... the number of scientists, musicians, artists and philosophers would increase proportionally. And as the knowledge and power of the race increased, so would the knowledge and power of the individual human being."

—Dandridge Cole and Donald Cox, Islands in Space, 1964

"Perhaps it won't matter, in the end, which country is the sower of the seed of exploration. The importance will be in the growth of the new plant of progress and in the fruits it will bear. These fruits will be a new breed of the human species, a human with new views, new vigor, new resiliency, and a new view of the human purpose. The plant: the tree of human destiny."

—Neil Armstrong, "Out of This World," Saturday Review, 1974

"Now, more than ever, we need people in space... The events of September 11 show us how vulnerable we and our civilization are down here on Earth... So let us use our strength, our awareness of mortality as a civilization, to do something truly lasting and earth-shaking for humanity. Let us join with the peoples and cultures of this planet, the diversities of its perspectives and religions and science, so we can leave it—not behind, but as a springboard to something better."

—Paul Levinson, Realspace, 2003

We must waste no more time.

"A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time. All of the people of the Earth are in a desperate race against disaster... To save the Earth we must look beyond it, to interplanetary space. To present the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it, we must understand that our planet does not exist in isolation."

—Ben Bova, The High Road, 1981

"Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth... Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth."

—Martin Rees, England's Astronomer Royal, Our Final Hour, 2003

"This generation is crucial; we have the resources to get mankind off this planet. If we don't do it, we may soon be facing a world of 15 billion people and more, a world in which it's all we can do to stay alive; a world without the resources to go into space and get rich... I don't think it will come to that because the vision of the future is so clear to me. We need realize only one thing: we do not inhabit 'Only One Earth.' Mankind doesn't live on Earth. Man lives in a solar system... Given [a] basic space civilization ... we'll have accomplished one goal: no single accident, no war, no one insane action will finish us off."

—Jerry Pournelle, A Step Farther Out, 1979

"Our generation may stand at a crucial breakpoint in history, for we in the presently affluent nations may be the last who can afford to open up the high frontier. What we do during the next ten or twenty years may determine whether future generations will live in a humane and rewarding society, or whether they will spend their lives in desperate contention for the dwindling sustenance afforded by our limited terrestrial resources."

—Astronaut Philip Chapman in Physics Today, 1978

"I firmly believe that we who are alive and can think today—in the closing years of the 20th century—have a commitment to our species to make sure that the flicker of movement we have thus managed in space stays sufficiently kindled so that the people of the 21st century can build upon and extend the human abode from Earth to the cosmos beyond."

—Paul Levinson, introduction to an online conference, Connected Education, Inc., 1987

"To fulfill our cosmic destiny and carry Life to the stars, we must act quickly. The same unleashed powers that enable us to enliven the universe are now, ironically, causing us to destroy the Earth. The longer we delay, the further we may slip into a pit of our own digging. If we wait too long, we will be swept into a world so poisoned by pollution, so overrun by masses of starving people, so stripped of surplus resources, that there will be no chance to ever leave this planet. Thus far, we have failed to use our new powers for the ends they were intended. The result is an accelerating slide toward disaster... We need to rupture the barriers that confine us to the land mass of a single planet. By breaking out, we can assure our survival and the continuation of Life."

—Marshall Savage, The Millennial Project, 1992

"There may be only a brief window of opportunity for space travel during which we will in principle have the capability to establish colonies (which could in turn establish further colonies). If we let that opportunity pass without taking advantage of it we will be doomed to remain on the Earth where we will eventually go extinct."

—Richard Gott, "Implications of the Copernican Principle For Our Future Prospects," Nature, 1993

"We hesitate about where to go from here in space. Yet our delay in exploiting this window of opportunity could close off choices for our descendants if the no-growth paradigm—or a failure of nerve—should come to dominate the industrial nations... Because of our technologies, and the scales of our political and economic organizations, we now have the option of taking a conscious evolutionary step, expanding the presence and influence of humanity beyond the biosphere that evolved us—and possibly beyond the limits that otherwise would constrain our future... Our generation is the first to have this choice. It may be up to us to prove that intelligence armed with technology has long-term survival value."

—Michael Michaud in Life in the Universe, AAAS Selected Symposium 31, 1979

"I believe it is urgent to begin now, before we are constrained by a totally controlled society monitoring limited resources on the planet. Now is the time to establish our extraterrestrial base in freedom; later it may be under the coercion of necessity."

—Barbara Marx Hubbard in L-5 News, 1977

"Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, it's been temporary and local. And other parts of the world have been doing fine. And eventually, they help you get out of the dark age. We are now facing a possible dark age which is going to be world-wide and permanent! That's not fun. That's a different thing. But once we have established many worlds, we can do whatever we want as long as we do it one world at a time."

—Isaac Asimov, speech at Newark College of Engineering, 1974

"We should be most careful about retreating from the specific challenge of our age. We should be reluctant to turn our back upon the frontier of this epoch... We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand slow march of our intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities."

—James Michener, testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, 1979

"Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history... We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future... A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die."

—Anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Man on the Moon," Redbook Magazine, 1969

"If two or three hundred years from now an earthbound civilization is dying ... and they look back at the opportunity that we have here at the close of the twentieth century to move out into space and they see that we didn't do anything with it ... I don't want history to judge us on having blown this opportunity, and I think history will judge us on this more than on any other issue."

—Paul Levinson, speech at Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, 1986

### Our species must continue to evolve.

"It may be that the venture into space is the product of biological determinism which impels us to explore a new environment when we are technologically ready."

—Richard S. Lewis, Appointment on the Moon, 1968

"The space effort is very simply a continuation of the expansion of ecological range, which has been occurring at an accelerating rate throughout the evolutionary history of Man... Successful extraterrestrial colonization, for example, might be counted as an evolutionary "success," and unsuccessful colonization—abandonment of the space effort—as an evolutionary "failure." ... Space exploration should be considered primarily as a biological thrust outward for the human species, and not just another step toward making life easier through a speedup in technology."

—Ward J. Haas, "Biological Significance of the Space Effort," Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1966

"I think that space flight is a condition of Nature that comes into effect when an intelligent species reaches the saturation point of its planetary habitat combined with a certain level of technological ability... I think it is a built-in gene-directed drive for the spreading of the species and its continuation."

—Donald A. Wollheim, The Universe Makers, 1971

"One of the most fundamental aspects of life is its relentless pursuit of new environmental niches to colonize. It seems inevitable that, sooner or later, living things will spread off the planet—if not us, then perhaps whatever comes after us. Seen this way, a space station need not be a tin can. It can be like the reptile's egg, the bold evolutionary innovation that contained the water and the salts of the oceans and brought them safely onto land."

—Corey Powell, "MIR vs. Pathfinder," Los Angeles Times, 1997

"In the long run, the only solution I see to the problem of diversity is the expansion of mankind into the universe by means of green technology... Green technology means we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our animals and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it... When life invades a new habitat, she never moves with a single species. She comes with a variety of species, and as soon as she is established, her species spread and diversify further. Our spread through the galaxy will follow her ancient pattern."

—Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1979

"It is inconsistent with the nature of life—as revealed by the record of the past—for a species to remain in an environmental niche when the opportunity exists for escape. Most individuals of the species remain within the security and comfort of the environment to which they have become adapted... [But] certain individuals will always probe the limits of their environment. These adventurous few are the vanguard of a new development in the evolution of life... As most fish remained in the water, and most apes remained in the forest, just so, in tomorrow's world most of us will remain on the earth... But a small percentage of the human species ... will leave us, and their descendant—s will spread out into the galaxy."

—Robert Jastrow, Introduction to The Next Ten Thousand Years by Adrian Berry, 1974

"We should have positive expectations of what is in the universe, not fears and dreads. We are made with the realization that we're not Earthbound, and that our acceptance of the universe offers us room to explore and extend outward. It's like being in a dark room and imagining all sorts of terrors. But when we turn on the light—technology—suddenly it's just a room where we can stretch out and explore. If the resources here on Earth are limited, they are not limited in the universe. We are not constrained by the limitations of our planet.... As children have to leave the security of family and home life to insure growth into mature adults, so also must humankind leave the security and familiarity of Earth to reach maturity and obtain the highest attainment possible for the human race."

—Nichelle Nichols, "The Future is Now" in Update on Space Volume I, 1981

"The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire... Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age."

—Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, "From the Moon to the Millenium," Albuquerque Tribune,1999

"When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won't be because its inhabitants visited their own moon. That first step, like a newborn's cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy."

—Astronaut Michael Collins, Liftoff, 1988

"We shall move out there, not because we want to but because we have to. There is an immediate reason for going—the earth's surface may soon become uninhabitable because of nuclear war or some other catastrophe, and we want the human race to survive—but there is a deeper and more compelling reason for going. We are what our remote ancestors were—colonists, always on the march toward better environments, always evolving, always adapting, learning how to control the physical world to our advantage. It is inconceivable that we have here and now come to the end of our long march, reduced to clinging to what we have, with no prospect for improvement—no hope. Rather we must view our present situation, with all its very real problems, as merely an overnight campsite along the way."

—Edward Gilfillan, Migration to the Stars, 1975

"When it is realized that man's future, his greatest fulfillment, may lie in the cosmos and not on the surface of the earth at all, then it is strongly suggested that mankind has not reached maturity but only completed gestation. Man is a creature not merely of the earth. Man's creation began as a turbulence in a cloud of gas in infinite space and proceeded by condensation into a galaxy, stars, planets, and finally the seas and continents of the earth. These speculations lead inescapably to the concept that man is the creature of the cosmos, not of the earth; that the earth is only his womb, his chrysalis perhaps."

—Hamilton B. Webb, "Speculations on Space and Human Destiny," 1961

"We are at the stage of the flower bud, not the bloom; the pregnant woman, not the newborn. In this stage we represent only the potential for the extension of life into the cosmos, with no guarantee that we will succeed. Humanity is the means by which evolution has determined achieve its end... Not to act in building civilizations beyond this planet is quite literally to go against the very demand of the universe. If we are resolved to participate in this effort, we must be willing to get very close to the evolutionary tension throbbing within us, and boldly act in accordance with it."

—Steven Wolfe, Ad Astra, 2004

"Earth has provided a stable platform for the evolution of life over 4 billion years. But that lease is limited; we know for sure that it will expire after a few billion more. Long before that, our planet may become a place where it is no longer suitable for us to live. Increasing luminosity of the sun may gradually boil our oceans, or more sudden catastrophes may threaten our existence. If we are wise, we will have furnished our new apartments long before that time."

—Robert Shapiro, Planetary Dreams, 1999

"Eventually we must leave Earth—at least a certain number of our progeny must as our sun approaches the end of its solar life cycle. But just as terrestrial explorers have always led the way for settlers, this will also happen extraterrestrially. Earth is our cradle, not our final destiny."

— _Astronaut Edgar Mitchell,_ The Way of the Explorer, 1996

### We must not lose sight of the vision.

"As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the moon and Jupiter]... Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse."

—Johannes Kepler, letter to Galileo, 1610

"In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York."

—Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, 1865

"A time will come when science will transform [our bodies] by means which we cannot conjecture... And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe."

—Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, 1872

"The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever."

—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1895

"It is conceivable that some great unexpected mass of matter should presently rush upon us out of space, whirl sun and planets aside like dead leaves before the breeze, and collide with and utterly destroy every spark of life upon this earth... It is conceivable, too, that some pestilence may presently appear, some new disease, that will destroy not 10 or 15 or 20 per cent of the earth's inhabitants as pestilences have done in the past, but 100 per cent, and so end our race... And finally there is the reasonable certainty that this sun of ours must some day radiate itself toward extinction... There surely man must end. That of all such nightmares is the most insistently convincing. And yet one doesn't believe it. At least I do not. And I do not believe in these things because I have come to believe in certain other things—in the coherency and purpose in the world and in the greatness of human destiny. Worlds may freeze and suns may perish, but there stirs something within us now that can never die again."

—H. G. Wells, lecture at Royal Institution of London, 1902

"A manuscript I wrote on January 14, 1918 ... and deposited in a friend's safe ... speculated as to the last migration of the human race, as consisting of a number of expeditions sent out into the regions of thickly distributed stars, taking in a condensed form all the knowledge of the race, using either atomic energy or hydrogen, oxygen and solar energy... [It] was contained in an inner envelope which suggested that the writing inside should be read only by an optimist."

—Robert Goddard, "Material for an Autobiography," 1927

"Conquering space! It would be the most grandiose of all achievements ever dreamed of, a fulfillment of the highest purpose: to save the intellectual accomplishments of mankind for eternity before the final plunge into oblivion. Only when we succeed in transplanting our civilization to other celestial bodies, thus spreading it over the entire universe, only when mankind with all its efforts and work and hopes and with what it has achieved in many thousands of years of striving, only when all of this is no longer just a whim of cosmic events, a result of random incidents in eternal nature's game that arise and die down with our little Earth so large for us and yet so tiny in the universe will we be justified to feel as if we were sent by God as an agent for a higher purpose, although the means to fulfill this purpose were created by man himself through his own actions."

—Hermann Potocnik Noordung, "The Problem of Space Travel," 1928

"On earth, even if we should use all the solar energy which we receive, we should still be wasting all but one two-billionths of the energy the sun gives out. Consequently, when we have learnt to live on this solar energy and also to emancipate ourselves from the earth's surface, the possibilities of the spread of humanity will be multiplied accordingly... There will, from desire or necessity, come the idea of building a permanent home for men in space... At first space navigators, and then scientists whose observations would be best conducted outside the earth, and then finally those who for any reason were dissatisfied with earthly conditions would come to inhabit these bases and found permanent spatial colonies."

—J. D. Bernal, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, 1929

"Man must at all costs overcome the Earth's gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System. All kinds of danger wait for him on the Earth... We are talking of disaster that can destroy the whole of mankind or a large part of it... For instance, a cloud of bolides [meteors] or a small planet a few dozen kilometers in diameter could fall on the Earth, with such an impact that the solid, liquid or gaseous blast produced by it could wipe off the face of the Earth all traces of man and his buildings. The rise of temperature accompanying it could alone scorch or kill all living beings... We are further compelled to take up the struggle against gravity, and for the utilisation of celestial space and all its wealth, because of the overpopulation of our planet. Numerous other terrible dangers await mankind on the Earth, all of which suggest that man should look for a way into the Cosmos. We have said a great deal about the advantages of migration into space, but not all can be said or even imagined."

—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, The Aims of Astronautics, 1929

"For me, a rocket is only a means—only a method of reaching the depths of space—and not an end in itself... There's no doubt that it's very important to have rocket ships since they will help mankind to settle elsewhere in the universe. But what I'm working for is this resettling... The whole idea is to move away from the Earth to settlements in space."

—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, said to a friend, 1930s

"No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe."

—Henry Miller, Sunday after the War, 1944

"Sooner or later for good or ill, a united mankind, equipped with science and power, will probably turn its attention to the other planets, not only for economic exploitation, but also as possible homes for man... The goal for the solar system would seem to be that it should become an interplanetary community of very diverse worlds ... each contributing to the common experience its characteristic view of the universe. Through the pooling of this wealth of experience, through this "commonwealth of worlds," new levels of mental and spiritual development should become possible, levels at present quite inconceivable to man."

—Olaf Stapledon, address to the British Interplanetary Society, 1948

"I only hope that we shall not wait to adopt the program until after our astronomers have reported a new and unsuspected aster[oid] moving across their fields of vision with menacing speed. At that point it will be too late!"

—Wernher von Braun, "A Plea for a Coordinated Space Program" in The Complete Book of Outer Space, 1953

"The point to remember is that a giant leap into space can be a giant leap toward peace down below."

—Willy Ley, "The Leap into Space" in The Race for Space, edited by Paul Neimark, 1957

"This is the goal: To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful."

—Hermann Oberth, Man Into Space, 1957

"Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go—and he'll do plenty well when he gets there."

—Wernher von Braun, Time magazine, 1958

"There is no way back into the past; the choice, as Wells once said, is the universe—or nothing. Though men and civilizations may yearn for rest, for the dream of the lotus-eaters, that is a desire that merges imperceptibly into death. The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close."

—Arthur C. Clarke, Interplanetary Flight, 1950

"Life, for ever dying to be born afresh, for ever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars."

—H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920

Go to the Table of Contents

About the Author

Sylvia Engdahl is the author of ten science fiction novels. Six of them are Young Adult books that are also enjoyed by adults, all of which were originally published by Atheneum and have been republished, in both hardcover and paperback, by different publishers in the twenty-first century. The one for which she is best known, Enchantress from the Stars, was a Newbery Honor book in 1971, winner of the 1990 Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association, and a finalist for the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Rediscovery category. The omnibus edition of her trilogy Children of the Star was issued as adult science fiction.

Her four most recent novels, the Hidden Flame duology and the Rising Flame duology, are not YA books and are not appropriate for middle-school readers, but will be enjoyed by the many adult fans of her work. In addition, she has issued an updated and expanded edition of her nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns: The Long History of Belief in Exoplanets (first published by Atheneum in 1974 with a different subtitle) as well as several ebooks of her essays.

Between 1957 and 1967 Engdahl was a computer programmer and Computer Systems Specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System. From her home in Eugene, Oregon, she has recently worked as a freelance editor of nonfiction anthologies for high schools. Now retired, she welcomes visitors to her website www.sylviaengdahl.com, which contains many of her essays and other commentary.

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE EDITIONS OF SYLVIA ENGDAHL'S BOOKS

Click on the title to see the book description, reviews, and purchase links. All are available in inexpensive ebook editions. Starred titles have no paperback editions.

YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

Enchantress from the Stars

Journey Between Worlds

The Far Side of Evil

CHILDREN OF THE STAR TRILOGY

(YA, reissued as adult)

This Star Shall Abide (Book 1)

Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains (Book 2) *

The Doors of the Universe (Book 3) *

Children of the Star (Omnibus)

HIDDEN FLAME DUOLOGY

Stewards of the Flame (Book 1)

Promise of the Flame (Book 2)

The Hidden Flame (Omnibus)

RISING FLAME DUOLOGY

Defender of the Flame (Book 1)

Herald of the Flame (Book 2)

The Rising Flame (Omnibus)

YA ANTHOLOGY (editor)

Anywhere, Anywhen: Stories of Tomorrow *

NONFICTION

The Planet-Girded Suns: The Long History of Belief in Exoplanets

Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars and Other Essays (Collected Essays Vol. 1) *

From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward (Collected Essays Vol. 2) *

The Future of Being Human and Other Essays (Collected Essays Vol. 3) *

FROM THE REVIEWS OF

### The Planet-Girded Suns

"Engdahl has marshalled an impressive and fascinating selection of primary sources—including a roster of believers that includes Newton, Ben Franklin, Walt Whitman, and rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. . . . [She] has shown how deep this vein of speculation runs . . . and reminded us that our ancestors entertained a view of the universe that was larger and more imaginative than the history books lead us to believe. Challenging and original." — _Kirkus Reviews_

"In a brisk, engrossing account Engdahl traces the theories and speculations concerning the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life throughout history. . . . This [book] is based on original research in primary sources and smoothly incorporates many quotations from scientists, philosophers, poets and theologians." — _ALA Booklist_

"This is an important and interesting book. . . . The author's thought-provoking presentation on the subject should provide some fascinating reading." _—National Space Society_

"By carefully reconstructing her story from voluminous notes on many writers, both well-known and obscure, Engdahl has given vitality and dimension to the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence." — _Cosmic Search_

"The substantial treatment of the history of the idea of other solar systems, based largely on research in primary documents, should make it of use to scholars." — _Isis One Hundred Second Critical Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Implications_

"Engdahl has created a well-crafted, well-researched and unique view on exoplanets, and is a must-read for those who want a different view on space than the usual technical one."  
— _Readers' Favorites_

FOREWORD TO

### The Planet-Girded Suns

. . . Amid the radiant orbs

That more than deck, that animate the sky,

The life-infusing suns of other worlds. . . .

The enlighten'd few . . . they in their powers exult,

That wondrous force of thought, which mounting spurns

This dusky spot, and measures all the sky.

— _James Thompson, The Seasons, 1746_

Surprising though the current interest of scientists in the possibility of life in other solar systems is to some, a still greater surprise to most people of today is the fact that belief in inhabited extrasolar worlds is not new. The idea was not, as is commonly believed, invented by science fiction writers. On the contrary, it was accepted by the majority of educated people from the late seventeenth century until the early twentieth century. Scientists, philosophers, clergymen and poets wrote a great deal about it. When in the 1850s the head of a well-known college wrote a book suggesting that there might _not_ be other inhabited worlds, he published it anonymously because he felt it might damage his reputation—and indeed, most of the book's many reviews were disapproving. A prominent university's magazine declared that plurality of worlds was a subject on which "until now it was supposed that there was scarcely room for a second opinion."

This fact does not appear in history books. Until recently the information was to be found mainly in the books and magazines of past centuries. Famous authors of those eras sometimes mentioned their belief in other worlds, but they spoke of it briefly and casually, thinking it too commonplace an idea to merit much discussion. Most of the writers who went into detail about it are no longer famous. Their books, many of which were bestsellers in their time, have been nearly forgotten. They remain in the collections of large libraries, rarely called for, in some cases with bindings so old and brittle that they fall apart in one's hands when one first opens them to read.

Such books are not science fiction. Though a few imaginative stories about voyages through space were written as early as the seventeenth century, they were presented as dreams, satire on human society, or fantasy; they did not suggest that space travel would ever become a reality. Not until the late nineteenth century was there any fiction set in the future. The widespread literal belief in extrasolar worlds, on the other hand, was discussed in nonfiction—"popular science" works and also religious ones, reflecting their authors' conviction that God would not have created the stars merely for people on this one small planet to look at. All contain speculation about the inhabitants of other planets that was intended to be taken seriously. Readers did not laugh at speculation of that kind, for none of it—even the portions concerning life on the moon—was contrary to the science of its time. Later scientists, who knew more, looked upon it with scorn. Several generations, the generations that came of age during the years between the twentieth century's two world wars, got the impression that science had always laughed at talk of "space people" and that it always would; not until the 1960s did respected authorities begun to speculate again.

The speculations in old books, and in most modern scientific ones, have nothing to do with UFOs. The question of whether there are inhabited worlds elsewhere in the universe is separate from the question of whether or not any of those worlds' inhabitants have ever visited our world. Nonfiction of past centuries about extrasolar planets does not mention such a possibility. The idea did not occur to anyone until about the time of World War II. Since then, many people—some of whom are scientists—have investigated records of strange objects seen in the past, and have suggested that these might have involved alien visitors. But science considers the existence of other civilizations far more probable than the notion of their representatives' having come here. And during the former period when almost all educated people were utterly convinced that superior civilizations exist, actual contact between the ones of different solar systems was not even imagined.

At the time this book was written, searching for the old writings about extrasolar worlds was a little like a treasure hunt: one could not predict just where they would be found, and one had to look in many places without finding anything. Libraries had reference tools that helped, but these tools were only a beginning; often they provided merely clues leading on to other clues. Occasionally they led to a dead end, such as a work of which the only existing copy was in an inaccessible museum. (Thanks to the progress of technology since the 1970s, some of the books then only in exceptionally large university libraries are now available on the Internet as scanned ebooks.) Yet an astonishing number of relevant volumes were available, even before scholars had published the accounts of past writings that now exist. One could go to a library shelf, take down a magazine well over a hundred years old, and turn to an article that thousands of people must have read when it was new—and that never, perhaps, has been looked on by anyone now alive. The wording of such articles may seem quaint, and their authors may have been ignorant of facts that are now known, but the idea expressed is often closer to what scientists are saying today than to what they said when one's grandparents were young.

There are many current science books about extraterrestrial life. This, however, is not a science book. It is the history of an idea. Not all men and women with important ideas are scientists; science studies only that which can be systematically observed. Long before the invention of the telescope made it possible to observe distant parts of the universe—long before the belief in other worlds became popular—there were men who thought about what might lie beyond Earth. Some had followers, but others were ridiculed or persecuted and at least one was put to death for his theories. Since that time more facts about the universe have been learned; present views of far-off solar systems have scientific foundation. Still, the question of what inhabitants of those solar systems are actually like cannot yet be studied scientifically. When scientists give opinions on it, they are speaking not as authorities but simply as members of the human race, just as their predecessors did. They are expressing not proven truths, but thoughts. This book is the story of humankind's thoughts about the worlds of other suns: past thoughts, remarkably similar present thoughts, and thoughts that will be investigated in the future.

Thoughts about the unknown concern not only science, but religion. For many centuries all speculation about astronomy was inseparable from religion, since the mysteries of the heavens could be explained only in religious terms. Today, when more scientific data can be obtained, there seems to be a firm line between the two. In the past, however, people who drew a line between religion and other affairs placed the subject of other worlds on the "religious" side of that line, while it now usually falls on the "scientific" side. Unlike their predecessors, modern scientists who believe that the universe was created by God do not spend their time debating about whether the various features of it could have resulted from what they think God must have done; they accept their observations as evidence of what God did do. In other words, they study what exists and form their theories from its nature—not God's, which they do not expect to explain scientifically.

To people of past eras such reasoning would have seemed backwards. They felt that they knew a great deal about God, and they realized how little knowledge they had of the universe. At first they did not guess that it was possible to obtain more. Gradually, as science did acquire more knowledge, certain ideas about God had to be discarded; and although some lost faith in all religion when that happened, others came to feel that less had been known of God than had been supposed. They developed new ideas about religion as well as about astronomy, sometimes disagreeing strongly with the established churches. But until the twentieth century, few if any people separated their personal religious beliefs from their thoughts about what the universe is like. Even those who paid little attention to religion in everyday life considered cosmology—the nature of the cosmos—too unknowable to be viewed as a purely scientific matter.

That astronomical discoveries came into conflict with the religious view current at the time of Copernicus and Galileo is a familiar fact of history. It is often said that learning that the earth moves around the sun lessened people's feeling of central importance. Historians, however, point out that the relation between the earth and the sun was not the real issue. More upsetting was the discovery that there are other suns, and therefore, perhaps, other earths—innumerable earths, all of equal importance in the universe. Yet though this was a blow to human pride, before long the public began to look upon the existence of countless worlds as proof of God's power and glory. Not everyone agreed with that idea, but by the nineteenth century most religious leaders favored the view that God had probably created inhabitants for many worlds besides this one. When no scientific evidence is available, faith of some kind is the only basis for believing in the unseen.

Near the end of the nineteenth century another crisis occurred, one that has not been discussed often. People had been saying for two hundred years that a world would not be created for no purpose, and the only purpose anyone could think of was habitation. Travel from one world to another was not thought possible. So when scientists concluded that the moon and nearby planets are not inhabited, it was natural to start wondering whether the universe is really purposeful. The most common argument for extrasolar life seemed less convincing than before. Furthermore, around the turn of the twentieth century a new theory was adopted about the origin of planets. Astronomers began to think that solar systems came into existence accidentally. Such accidents were considered rare; even among people who still viewed cosmology in a religious way, there were many who abandoned their faith in worlds of other suns.

Today, the opposite situation prevails. Since the mid-twentieth century scientists have believed it is highly unlikely that ours is the only inhabited planet in the cosmos, for solar systems have been considered common—a theory recently confirmed by the discovery of many planets orbiting other stars. The likelihood of sentient species elsewhere is accepted by men and women of differing faiths, and also by those with no religious faith. It is frequently assumed that discovery of extraterrestrial life would be upsetting to religion. This is not true; there has been little if any conflict since the early seventeenth century and most if not all the religious thinkers who have considered the issue believe that existence of other inhabited worlds is compatible with their faith. (Interestingly, a poll has shown that many people think members of _other_ religions would be disturbed, though not their own.) Yet the former Soviet Union's philosophy of dialectical materialism supports the same idea. In 1958 a Soviet astronomer wrote, "The thesis of the existence of life outside the earth is shared in our epoch . . . in equal measure both by the materialists and by the idealists." There are few issues of such importance on which people with conflicting philosophies can so readily agree.

If life does exist in other solar systems, our view of it is surely important. This book tells the story of humankind's view.

