by James Gunn
how can i explain it? words are not the only, nor perhaps the best, means of communication. get one for yourself. experience!
If there are about a million worlds in the galaxy capable of such feats, they would visit one another about once in every thousand years and scouts may have visited the earth from time to time in the past—perhaps a total of 10,000 times over the full span of the earth's history....
Carl Sagan, 1963...
He stared back at the dome, a tiny black thing dwarfed by the distance.
Back there were men who couldn't see the beauty that was Jupiter. Men who thought that swirling clouds and lashing rain obscured the face of the planet. Unseeing humay eyes. Poor eyes. Eyes that could not see the beauty in the clouds, that could not see through the storms. Bodies that could not feel the thrill of trilling music stemming from the rush of broken water....
"I can't go back,” said Towser.
"Nor I,” said Fowler.
"They would turn me back into a dog,” said Towser.
"And me,” said Fowler, “back into a man.” ...
Clifford Simak, 1944...
the reappearance in our society of the dilettante, the gentleman-scholar-professional, the person who indulges his passion for the arts or the professions because of the pleasure he derives from it, is a phenomenon that deserves further study. when work is an avocation does it cease to be work? does an avocation provide a greater potential for discovery and service? or less?
Advanced societies throughout the galaxy probably are in contact with one another, such contact being one of their chief interests. They have already probed the life histories of the stars and other of nature's secrets. The only novelty left would be to delve into the experience of others. What are the novels? What are the art histories? What are the anthropological problems of those distant stars? That is the kind of material that these remote philosophers have been chewing over for a long time....
Philip Morrison, 1961...
Will we be able to understand the science of another civilization? ... Our science has concentrated on asking certain questions at the expense of others, although this is so woven into the fabric of our knowledge that we are generally unaware of it. In another world, the basic questions may have been asked differently....
J. Robert oppenheimer, 1962...
The Computer—2118
... he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry....
The observers began arriving on Wednesday.
Some had been selected by their governments or by qualified selectors; some had been elected by popular vote; some came by special invitation of a Project committee, signed by the director.
They came from all over the world and in all manners. Many arrived in sailing ships ranging from passenger schooners with two stainless steel masts and elegantly appointed cabins to the smallest of sloops with no cabin at all. An outrigger canoe was paddled all the way from Samoa by a dozen proud Polynesians to demonstrate that they still revered and were capable of the feats of their ancestors.
One man came in his personal submarine with the intention, to be sure, of doing exploration of the ocean floor after the occasion, one man swam from St. Thomas, and a woman peddled a bicycle mounted on two pontoons from Cuba.
The majority arrived on Saturday by ferries spouting their wings of spray, by commercial jet, by private helicopter, by sailplane, or by balloon.
This was the era of the individual when men and women had the opportunity and the time to make their own decisions.
Saturday was the Day of the Reply, a holiday in all parts of the world, the day the world had been awaiting for ninety years, and it was as if the world was awakening from a long sleep—no, not a sleep but a dream, a kind of wonderful slowed-down reality, a dream about humanity and what mankind might be like with a bit more time, a little less urgency, a bit more grace, a little less adrenaline. The Project set up nearly one hundred fifty years before to listen for messages from the stars and the Message from Capella that it had received and deciphered had given Earth and its people ninety years of peace in which to explore the other aspects of humanity besides aggression. The problems which had seemed so difficult, virtually unsolvable, one hundred and fifty, even ninety, years before had seemed to solve themselves once the world relaxed.
Now the Day was at hand. The people who arrived to celebrate it were of many colors and many occupations, but the colors seemed somewhat less distinct than they used to be and the occupations were not as precisely defined, as if everyone was a bit of a dilettante, performing his duties and assuming his responsibilities with the undimmed delight and undulled awareness of the eternal amateur who is as interested in his neighbor's job as his own. But there were scientists of all kinds, linguists, philosophers, humanists; politicians and political figures; newsmen and analysts; composers, artists in many forms and media, poets, novelists; and interested citizens. Many of them, for convenience, traveled in national groups, although the spirit of nationalism, too, had diminished in the past ninety years.
But all of this, perhaps, was ending with the approach of the moment when the reply was expected from Capella.
The observers arrived, most of them, at the port of Arecibo and traveled the green hills of northern Puerto Rico in buses and in limousines, on bicycles and on foot—some spoke of pilgrimages and told each other the adventures they had experienced on their way—until they arrived at the Project, passing the implausibly round valley lined with gleaming metal, and not far beyond, the steerable radio telescope held aloft on a metal arm, and coming at last to the long, low building that housed the Project.
The building had grown over the century and a half since it had been put together with concrete blocks and poured cement, sprawling each decade a little farther on either end, but now a new wing had been attached onto the back. It housed an auditorium especially built for this occasion by volunteers and designed so that the seating descended the hill behind the Project and the roof line remained level with the roof of the original Project and the auditorium became the leg of a T.
The observers had to pass through the ancient corridors of the old building to reach the auditorium. They admired the often-repaired walls and the layers of paint that seemed to hold them together. They gaped at the listening room and paused to hear samples of the hisses and crackles that were the music of the spheres, the background noise of the universe, and the original recordings of the Voices, the fragments of radio programs from the nineteen-thirties with which the Capellans ingeniously had first attracted the attention of the listeners at the Project fifty years after the Project had begun.
popcrackle ice regusted cracklepop music: that little chatterbox the one with the pretty poppopcrackle wanna buy a duck popcracklepop masked champion of justice cracklepoppop music poppoppopcrackle ter eleven book one hundred and popcracklepop here they come jack poppop music crackle yoo hoo is anybody popcrackle is raymond your popcracklepoppop music poppopcrackle music: wave the flag for hudson cracklepop um a bad boy poppoppop lux presents holly cracklecrackle music poppopcrackle rogers in the twenty popcracklepop music: cola hits the spot twelve....
And they shook their heads in wonder and said, “It sounds so much better here than in the recordings I've heard. So much closer. So much more real. Think what it must have been like ninety years ago to have heard that for the first time and have realized that it had been all the way to Capella and back and you were listening to the first evidence of intelligent life on other worlds.” And everyone agreed that it was so.
After that their path took them through the even more impressive computer room, where they could hear the computer itself whispering and clicking and muttering to itself—"almost alive,” as the cliché went—and see the lights flicker on and off; they watched the various readers and printers eating up information or spitting it out, and smelled the oil and ozone that was the distinctive odor of electrical equipment big and small. And some of them asked st
aff members about the empty chairs in the corners, while others, more knowledgeable, asked if any of them had seen the Presence and, depending on their expectations, the staff members would raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes and say, “Yes, and it was a terrifying experience I can tell you,” or chuckle and say, “He talks to me whenever I'm in trouble,” or tell the truth and say, “No one's seen him for a long time, though there are those who say they have.” And whatever they said the observers were pleased and went on.
One by one they inspected the original Message framed and hung on the wall of the director's office:
And they ran their hands along the worn desk where papers had been strewn and pencil and pen had noted and drawn and calculated, and some of them slipped into the chair behind the desk, its wooden arms polished by the hands of generations of directors, to sit where they had sat and pondered the mysteries of the universe and the difficulties of communication, and others only looked and smelled the old books that lined two walls of the office.
The building was a marvel of antiquity, the observers said to each other, in some ways rivaling the pyramids of Egypt or the castles of Europe—you can see, they said, how the concrete of the corridors has been hollowed toward the center by generations of passing feet; and how many times has the tile on those corridor floors been replaced?—and besides that it was a monument to human science and perseverance; and now it was all going to culminate in a wonderful, exciting Reply
from Capella that would change everything or not, but it would be wonderful all the same and the world would be glad it had waited.
But now the waiting had come to an end, and the tempo was beginning to pick up; the pulse beat of the world was quickening as the moment approached when the giant radio ears outside would hear the reply that had been started on its way to Earth forty-five years ago from an alien race faced with possible destruction from the explosion of their giant red suns....
capella is latin for “little she goat.” it is found in the constellation of auriga, the charioteer, who was, in greek mythology, the inventer of the chariot. his first chariot, according to the myth, was drawn by goats.
Star Type App. Mag. R/A Decl. Dist. Lum. Mass
Capella a GO 0.2 0514 +4558 45 120 4.2
Capella b GO 3.3
The second performance of the epic, eight-hour “capella” symphony of a young pakistani composer sent half its los angeles audience toward the doors before the musicon tapes, with the composer himself at the keyboard, were more than half played.
Many of those who left stopped at the box office and demanded their money back, claiming the work was too long and too boring.
The contrast with last year was dramatic. at the symphony's premiere in new york not a person left his lounge and, at the conclusion, the audience paid the composer, singhar khan, the ultimate compliment of ten minutes of silence, and many stayed for hours afterward discussing with friends the meaning of the symphony....
Did you hear about the new show from Capella?
No, what about the new show from Capella?
It laid an egg.
...The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them....
Walt Whitman, 1856 ...
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes—were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, I was overcome with disgust and dread....
H. G. Wells, 1898...
The program itself began at sunset Saturday. Late arrivals had seen a spectacular vision of the sun setting behind mounting clouds to the west, turning them various shades of gold and orange and red and then darkening into purple and finally black. Those who believed in omens said it was an omen, and those who did not said it was a good show all the same.
The visitors had passed through the Project and all its fascinating history and mementos, and then into the auditorium and down the resilient ramps and into the upholstered chairs. They had looked around them at the others who were assembling and then at the auditorium itself, with its muraled side walls and the recessed stage at the bottom of the seats—it was not really a stage but a speaker's pit. At the back of the pit were some small computer display units with switches and dials and a few oscilloscopes. At either end of the computer units was a chair sitting in shadows. The chairs were empty.
When the visitors had settled into their seats, the staff members of the Project came down the center aisle in a group, led by William MacDonald, the Project director. He was a middle-aged man of fifty-seven, and he walked briskly to the speaker's pit while his staff scattered themselves among the seats in front, left vacant, by immemorial custom, as the earlier arrivals filled the back seats first.
As MacDonald turned to the seats, every one of them filled—two staff members had to find portable chairs and fit them in at the ends of the front row—the lights dimmed, not dramatically but just enough to focus attention on the speaker's pit and diminish the hum of conversation.
“Citizens of the world,” MacDonald said, and his words were picked up and heard all over the auditorium and flung around the world as if MacDonald were sitting and conversing with each person, “Earthmen. Welcome to the Project and to the Day of the Reply. This occasion and the ceremony that surrounds it is being broadcast to every continent and every continental subdivision, and to our colonies on the moon and on Mars and to all the men who work in space, for this is Earth's day, the day all of us have been awaiting for ninety years, the first day when we might hope for a reply from Capella to the Answer Earth sent to the Capellans ninety years ago.
“But first, into the heart of our euphoria, let me inject a few milliliters of realism. In about half an hour, as accurately as we can measure the distance, is the earliest we can anticipate a reply. That does not mean we can realistically expect a reply at this time. Our answer might require processing; that takes time. Their reply may take formulation; that takes time. In other words, the reply may not come for hours, or even days or weeks. We should not let ourselves be disappointed or become discouraged by delays that may be inevitable. We have developed patience over the past ninety years; we may have occasion to exercise it.
“I am William MacDonald, director of the Project. I am the third MacDonald to have held this position. It is not hereditary, though to some it may have seemed so.”
Dry laughter rustled the audience.
“Perhaps only a MacDonald,” MacDonald continued, “would be willing to spend his life waiting and listening.... I have no son, but for those of you who might be wondering, I do have a daughter who is now a member of the Project staff.
“The real work of the Project, however, is not performed by the Director but by the staff. They sit in front of me, and I would like them to stand and be introduced to you....”
After the applause had faded to only a handclap or two, MacDonald said, “Thousands of men and women have devoted their time, their energies, their devotion, their lives to the Project in its nearly a century and a half, and their work has helped the Project reach this point in time and history; I would like to mention them all, but that would take far more than the thirty minutes we have at our disposal. You will find their names in the Project booklet available at the door as you leave, and as a tribute to all of them we have placed a chair at either end of th
e speaker's pit to remind us of them and of their indispensable contributions. You may, of course, consider them occupied by any of the past staff members—by John White, for instance, or his son Andrew, by Ronald Olsen, or by Charles Saunders, or by any or all of them, or by the spirit of the past, by the unknown staff members. I think of them as being occupied by my father and my grandfather.”
The Siberian premier pulled himself heavily to his feet and said, “Mr. MacDonald. I have heard it said that apparitions of your father and your grandfather—what some have called a ‘Presence'—have been seen in the computer room of the Project, and I have it on reliable authority that the computer is capable of such illusions and that it has been instructed to speak in the voice of your father or your grandfather—”
MacDonald looked steadily up at the big man in his robe and said, “The computer can present holographic displays of information, as you will see before long, I hope, but it is our belief that such an illusion as the one to which you refer is beyond its present capability; if some of us believe that the spirits of the past members of the Project linger in the computer in the form of dialogue and other inputs, why we allneed comfort and spiritual assistance.
“The computer will be taking over the majority of this presentation in a few minutes, for no human is quick enough to interpret the hoped-for signals as they arrive, and this is what the computer has been prepared to do for these past one hundred and fifty years. That preparation and its accumulated information and programs and linkages have made it an incredibly complex creation, but we should not project into it our own fears or hopes. When you hear the computer speak, you may judge for yourself whether it speaks like my father or my grandfather, or, as some maintain, like me or like a composite of all of the voices it has ever heard. We could instruct it in such matters, but we do not. Perhaps, as I said, we ourselves prefer to think of it as at least a half-conscious ally.
