Just The Caffeine Talking

My PhilCon 2024 Schedule

In two weeks I'll be driving down to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, home of PhilCon 2024, the Philadelphia area's longest-running science fiction convention. This year it runs from November 22 through 24, and I've got events all three days.

Friday, November 22, 8:00 p.m.: Let's Design a New SF Television Show! — A panel of fans and writers brainstorm a TV series which will be good, good science fiction, and (one hopes) popular.

Saturday, November 23, 11:00 a.m.: How Real Does the Science in Science Fiction Have to Be? — Science fiction sometimes leans heavily into "rubber science" but presumably there's a line between science fiction and fantasy. Where do we draw that line? I'll be discussing that with some other creators.

Saturday, 1:00 p.m.: Writing For Aliens: Realistic Yet Relatable Perspectives — Writing alien characters, especially alien viewpoints, has a built-in conflict. We want the characters to be human enough for our (presumably) human readers to identify with, but we want them alien enough to make good science fiction.

Sunday, November 24, 10:00 a.m.: Autographing — I'll be signing any of my works anyone cares to put in front of me. There will be special swag for anyone who comes by!

Sunday, 1:00 p.m.: What's Happened to the Traditional Ghost Story? — The ghost story is one of the oldest forms of fiction, but modern horror fiction has become something very different. Where did the ghosts go? Come hear me discuss that with some other writers working in different genres.

So come see the fun at PhilCon!

A Busy Day at AlbaCon

As is my habit, I'll be attending this year's AlbaCon convention in Albany, New York, on Saturday the 14th. It's at the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Clifton Park, NY, just outside Albany. This year I told the convention organizers they could have me for a single day, so they decided to pack as much into that day as possible. Here's my schedule — five events back-to-back!

10:00 a.m.: What's In a Name? — A panel discussion about genre labels and what they mean. I'll be moderating a very strong panel including Alex Shvartsman, Chuck Rothman, Vikki Ciaffone, and Steven Sawicki.

11:30 a.m.: What, Another One? — A panel about series fiction vs. standalone novels. I've tried to square that particular circle by writing a series of independent novels, so that each book in the Billion Worlds is almost a different genre. Again, I'm serving as moderator, trying to ride herd on Cory Doctorow, Michael Ventrella, Steve Davidson, and Elektra Hammond.

1:00 p.m.: Autographing — Come by and get something signed. I've got shiny new bookmarks for my upcoming book The Miranda Conspiracy, and you may get a secret bonus story if you stop by!

2:30 p.m.: What Gets Overlooked in Fantasy and SF? — A three-person discussion with me, Anna Rose, and Gordon Linzer about under-used concepts and ideas in fantastic literature.

4:00 p.m.: Reading — Come hear the first-ever public excerpt from my new novel The Miranda Conspiracy!

Once that's done I'll probably round up a group to get dinner. If you're going to the con, let me know — you're welcome to join us!

Big Announcement! THE MIRANDA CONSPIRACY!

I'm pleased and proud to announce that my next Billion Worlds novel, The Miranda Conspiracy, is scheduled for release by Baen Books in February 2025!

Join Daslakh, Zee, Adya, and Pelagia as they travel to Adya's home world Miranda and face a trio of threats: a political coup, a financial scheme . . . and the biggest menace of all, Adya's parents. This book's got mysteries, space battles, espionage, cephalopod gangsters, intrigue among Miranda's ultra-rich oligarchs, and a centuries-old cargo payload from deep space holding a fortune in exotic matter. All of it comes together as the timer ticks down to the revelation of THE MIRANDA CONSPIRACY.

Here's the cover, showing Pelagia making an important career move.

Watch this space for more details.

At Liberty

UPDATE: Due to my own inattention during planning, the Sunday events had to be rescheduled or eliminated. I have revised this post to reflect my new schedule.

This coming weekend, June 21-23, I'll be in mountain-girt Chattanooga, Tennessee for LibertyCon, now in its 36th year. 

As always, when I go to a convention I don't want to just be a spectator, I want to be part of the show! Here's my schedule:

Friday, June 21, 4:00 p.m.: Meet and Greet the First-Timers — Since this is the first time I'll be attending LibertyCon, I'm one of the first-timers to be met and gret.

5:00 p.m.: Opening Ceremonies — This is on my schedule but I'm not sure if I'm actually doing anything other than applauding. I may sneak off to get some food.

8:00 p.m.: Autographing — As always, I'll sign my own books, games, other people's books, whatever. Note that anyone who comes to the autographing will get the key to a secret surprise!

Saturday, June 22, 10:00 a.m.: Brunch Banquet — Still trying to decide if brunch should be accompanied by Bloody Marys or Mimosas. Stop by and give your opinion.

12:00 noon: Let's Design a One-Page RPG in an Hour — Game mechanics, how to create an appealing setting, and how it all fits together, all at a breakneck pace.

2:00 p.m.: Baen Traveling Road Show — Join me and a plethora of other Baen Books authors as we discuss what's coming up in 2025 and beyond.

3:00 p.m.: Reading — Come for the first public reading from my upcoming novel The Miranda Conspiracy.

 

Ozblogging: The Scarecrow of Oz, Part 2

(Sorry for the delay: in retrospect I shouldn't have started this series right before a pair of back-to-back trips. Thanks for your patience.)

The Ork doesn't like being stuck in any cave, even one with a couple of humans in it for company, so he insists on exploring the dark tunnel at the back of the chamber. The team push their way through and eventually the tunnel ends — right in the middle of a tall cliff face overlooking a vast pitch-dark cavern. The Ork flies down to explore, and eventually ferries Trot and Cap'n Bill down to the cave floor, where they soon find another passage.

This all sounds a little familiar to anyone who's read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz — a series of caves which serve as survival puzzles, house wacky wayside tribes, or contain groups of randomly hostile freaks. And where did Dorothy and the Wizard's underground adventures take place? Why, in a series of vast caverns deep under California — exactly where Trot and Cap'n Bill are wandering! Presumably, with a good hex map and careful record-keeping, the two of them might find the right passage leading to the Valley of the Gargoyles, or the vegetable people in their glass city, or the Vale of Voe with its invisible bears.

It strikes me that there's a ton of potential crossover material here. In fiction there's a surprisingly self-consistent depiction of underground civilizations in the western United States. H.P. Lovecraft's "revision" for Hazel Heald, "The Mound," describes an enormous underground cave civilization under Oklahoma, the sinister realm of K'n-Yan, which lies above the even nastier abyss of N'Kai. It certainly seems possible that the California caves are just an outlying part of the main realm of K'n-Yan.

A very similar subterranean phantom empire made a move against the surface world in 1935, sending masked "Thunder Riders" to wreak havoc. Fortunately for all surface-dwelling folk, singing cowboy Gene Autry was able to foil their schemes and inspire a rebellion among the oppressed subterranean proletariat, before going on to serve in the Air Corps in World War II.

And all of these underground dwellers are doubtless examples of the "Deros," or DEtrimental RObots, sadistic mutant beings who plague surface dwellers with thought projections, and occasionally kidnap them for horrid purposes. They're described at greater length in the writings of Richard Shaver, appearing in Amazing Stories in 1950.   

Happily for Trot and Cap'n Bill, their journey does not lead them into the clutches of K'n-Yan or the Deros. Instead they march for hours through seemingly endless tunnels, as their very limited supply of food and candles shrinks alarmingly.

Eventually they find a shaft of daylight entering the dark tunnel, but it shines down a long vertical well. Fortunately the Ork's propellor tail has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1, so he is able to fly up the narrow shaft carrying Trot and Cap'n Bill. They emerge in a lovely landscape near the sea. This new land has fruit trees and melon vines, which solves their logistical problems.

A bit of exploring establishes that they are on an island, but it isn't uninhabited. Trot spots a shed-like building and the two of them go to see who lives there. (The Ork has flown off as his feet are sore after so much walking in tunnels, and flying lets him rest them.)

The island's sole inhabitant is a little man with a long pointed beard. His name is Pessim, and he is "the Observer." As his name suggests, Pessim sees the worst in everything, and worries about imaginary dangers. Despite these qualifications he does not have a well-paid job at CNN. His relentless negativity soon grates on his visitors, especially Cap'n Bill.

Suddenly the three of them are plagued by what seems to be a large bee, buzzing about them and refusing to be driven away. Only when Trot gets a good look at it that they realize what it is: it's the Ork, only miniaturized somehow. Perched on Trot's shoulder the Ork explains what happened: as he was flying about the island he spotted a bush laden with lavender berries, and stopped to try one. Immediately he began to shrink, went in search of help.

The Observer finds this hilarious. He explains that the same thing happened to him when his neighbors exiled him to the island. He ate a lavender berry and shrank, but unlike the Ork he couldn't fly, so had to struggle along on the ground, dodging hungry wildlife. Eventually he decided to find another shrinking berry and reduce himself out of existence altogether. But the berries he found were dark purple rather than lavender, and restored him to full size.

After some difficulty they persuade Pessim to show where the dark purple berries grow, and the Ork is soon back to normal.

The three travelers stay on the island for a few days, until they can no longer stand Pessim's company. Unfortunately they don't have the tools to build a boat, and neither does the Observer. Then the Ork has a happy inspiration: use the lavender berries to reduce Trot and Cap'n Bill to a convenient size for him to carry, and then he will fly them off the island. They can bring along a few purple berries to get back to normal once they've crossed the sea.

This touches on something I've noticed in other Oz books: Baum likes to use his magical wonders as puzzle solutions. It's very reminiscent of how roleplaying game players think, especially in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons. I know that the Oz books are not listed in Gary Gygax's famous "Appendix N" of inspirational reading, but I have a strong suspicion that he read the Oz books as a child. Except for the lower body count (though the Oz books do have their share of violent mayhem) Baum's adventures could easily be products of the old TSR company.

With his miniaturized passengers the Ork flies across the sea, bypasses an island, and eventually lands on a mountain top (which to any modern air traveler sounds like a very bad place to choose). As soon as Trot and Cap'n Bill are back to full size again, they poke around the mountain and discover its sole resident: the Bumpy Man.

The Bumpy Man is called that because he is bumpy. Even his bumps have bumps. He is a Mountain Ear, which is to say, his job is to hear things and tell them to the volcanic mountain he lives on, thereby preventing it from erupting. After a jolly song he invites the travelers to stay for dinner. According to the Bumpy Man the travelers have arrived in the famous land of Mo, which they have never heard of. But he has never heard of California, either, so they're even.

Mo is a diabetic's nightmare of a country. All the food is candy — the Bumpy Man serves them molten molasses candy for dinner — and it rains lemonade rather than water. How anything survives in a land where the average ph is somewhere around that of stomach acid is never explained.

Somewhat stickily, our heroes go to sleep.

Next Time: Adventures!

Ozblogging: The Scarecrow of Oz, Part 1

Well, it has been more than six years since I blogged about one of the Oz books, so it's time to head down the Yellow Brick Road again and tackle a new one. This time we're looking at The Scarecrow of Oz, the eighth of the Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum. It was published in 1915, and apparently draws some elements from the script for the 1914 film His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, produced by one L. Frank Baum for the Oz Film Manufacturing Company.

A personal note: for a long time I was a strong purist about accuracy and "canon" in Oz film adaptations — which in practice meant I mostly griped about the movies. Then I learned about Baum's own film versions and realized he didn't give a damn about fidelity himself, so I'm inclined to take a more charitable view. (That being said, I'm still not happy about Oz the Great and Powerful.)

The Scarecrow of Oz gets moving right away. We are introduced to a little girl named Trot, and her best friend Cap'n Bill, who lives in the boarding-house kept by Trot's mother and is devoted to the girl. Baum alludes to "many strange adventures" that the two have already had. "It is said" that Trot was marked at birth by the fairies and is able to "see and do many wonderful things."

Bill is an old (though "not so very old") sailor, retired from the sea due to having lost a leg in an accident. He doesn't get a cool cybernetic tin replacement, just a wood peg leg. I'm not really sure why losing a leg makes him incapable of working at sea any longer — this is 1915, after all. Even if he can't work aboard a sailing vessel there are plenty of steamers afloat.

The two of them head out in Bill's rowboat to visit one of the "great caves" along this un-named stretch of coast. Based on names, attire, and speech patterns one can assume Trot and Cap'n Bill are both Americans, but what part of America are they in? The story begins with the two of them sitting under an acacia tree, which rules out Maine, and that's about the only place on the East Coast where one could find caves by the sea.

California, however, has both acacia trees and sea caves — and in 1915 it could also boast L. Frank Baum as a resident, so it seems pretty clear that Trot and Cap'n Bill are rowing around on an oddly pacific Pacific Ocean. The very calmness of the sea worries Cap'n Bill, in fact — and his misgivings are soon validated as their boat is caught by an unexpected whirlpool and the two are sucked underwater!

Down in the depths Trot is "almost sure that unseen arms" are helping protect and guide her, as she and Bill are drawn down and down, then rise again but in a slanting direction so that they surface in an undersea cave. Like all useful caves in fiction and roleplaying games, this one is lit by a green glow and has breathable air and a comfortable temperature.

After recovering from their ordeal and drying out, the two go exploring and find a dark passage at the back of the cave. It might lead to safety — or it might lead someplace worse. They decide to remain in the cave. Cap'n Bill has some ship's biscuit and is able to catch some fish, but they don't have much in the way of fresh water to drink.

The two of them sleep, and breakfast on biscuit, but then they are startled to see, emerging from the pool that leads to the ocean, "the most curious creature either of them had ever beheld."

"It wasn't a fish, Trot decided, nor was it a beast. It had wings, though, and queer wings they were: shaped like an inverted chopping-bowl and covered with tough skin instead of feathers. It had four legs — much like the legs of a stork, only double the number — and its head was shaped a good deal like that of a poll parrot, with a beak that curved downward in front and upward at the edges, and was half bill and half mouth. But to call it a bird was out of the question, because it had no feathers whatever except a crest of wavy plumes of a scarlet color on the very top of its head. The strange creature must have weighed as much as Cap'n Bill, and as it floundered and struggled to get out of the water to the sandy beach it was so big and unusual that both Trot and her companion stared at it in wonder — in wonder that was not unmixed with fear."

(Later, Baum adds: "Perhaps the most curious thing about the creature was its tail, or what ought to have been its tail. This queer arrangement of skin, bones and muscle was shaped like the propellers used on boats and airships, having fan-like surfaces and being pivoted to its body.")

This, it transpires, is an Ork. We know this, because when Trot wonders aloud what it might be, the Ork tells her he's an Ork. Apparently the Ork also got sucked into the whirlpool, and also got helped by mermaids, but wound up in an empty cavern with no exit. Seeking escape, the Ork dove back into the sea and swam as far as the cavern holding Trot and Cap'n Bill.

The Ork (whose name is Flipper, but that's quickly forgotten) explains that he left his home in Orkland, motivated by curiosity about those strange creatures called Men. Unfortunately, as he flew, the Ork was attacked by birds, had to evade airships, and lost track of where he was.

And now for a massive digression concerning the word Ork. If you type that into a search engine, the first result is likely to be a link to the game Warhammer 40,000 or its associated universe. In WH40K, the Orks are an alien species — a sentient kind of fungus, in fact — who basically act like English football hooligans and wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other. (As opposed to the humans, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the Eldar, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the minions of Chaos, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or . . . well, pretty much every species in the 40K universe.)

The Warhammer 40,000 Orks got their name from a monster race in the original Warhammer fantasy wargame. Those Orks were of course just J.R.R. Tolkein's Orcs with the serial number filed off to thwart over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses. Tolkein, scholar that he was, derived his Orcs from an old English word for a monster, descended from an Old English word "orcneas," which may derive from some even more ancient root that also gave us "ogre," the Roman evil spirit "Orcus," and possibly the word "Orca" for what are also known as killer whales. Which means, of course, that if any over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses tried to claim ownership of the name "Orc," the defense team might well want to summon the shade of J.R.R.T. himself to explain why it's actually public domain already. Plus William Blake.

However, I sincerely doubt there's any connection between L. Frank Baum's Orks and Tolkein's Orcs, or any of their linguistic ancestors. For one thing, when Baum wrote The Scarecrow of Oz, Tolkein was too busy dodging German shells on the Western Front to be writing much about Orcs or anything else. And for another, Baum was perfectly capable of creating weird creature names of his own, like Erbs, the Gump, Knooks, Rylls, and the Woozy. Now, to be candid, Baum did often phone it in by simply describing a character using Capital Letters and leaving it at that. That's how we get the Scarecrow, the Glass Cat, the Foolish Owl, the Dainty China People, and so forth. But when he felt like it, he could nomenclate with the best of them and I'm reasonably certain the Ork was an original creation that just happened to echo an ancient word.

Next time: tunnels and tails!

Cinematic Note

Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire is the greatest actress in the world, and I will fight anyone who disagrees.

Notes on Worldbuilding, Part 17: Aliens!

We've finally arrived at discussing actual intelligent extraterrestrial beings. I'm going to come at this concept from two directions in separate posts. This entry will discuss the science of alien beings — what they might be like, based on all the previous worldbuilding entries in this series. My next entry will look at aliens from a literary perspective, discussing what roles they can play in a story.

I can't list all the possible forms alien life may take. Look at the amazing variety of life on Earth, then realize that alien life will likely be even more diverse and strange. However, we can draw some basic ideas from biology and physics.

Size: The size range for intelligent beings is pretty big. What's the smallest brain capable of intelligence? How much does the brain-to-body ratio matter? How much does the structure of a brain matter? We're only just beginning to find out.

I think a human infant's brain is definitely big enough for intelligence (especially since we have seen very small adult humans with no sign of any impairment). Smaller than that we have only animals to guide us, and we have to figure out whether size or structure of a brain is more important for intelligence. Certainly some birds — ravens, crows, parrots — are disturbingly intelligent, with brains massing only 10-20 grams (while a human brain can be a hundred times bigger).

Let's call that the low end. We can also assume that a brain-to-body ratio of 1:20 (twice the proportions of a human brain) is the maximum possible, simply because brains are such energy hogs that an organism couldn't eat fast enough to support one any bigger. That gives us a minimum size for an intelligent being of 200 grams. That's the size of a large bird or a small monkey. With a more efficient brain organization, I can believe a creature like that would be capable of human-level intelligence.

At the upper end . . . well, that's a darn good question. Sperm whale brains are nearly 8 kilograms, and whales are famously intelligent animals. It's very easy to imagine whales with human-level intelligence — indeed, some people think they are as intelligent as humans. So I'm going to say there is no upper bound to how big an intelligent being can be, subject to the limits of physics.

Which we will now address. The largest land animals on Earth were the sauropod dinosaurs, some of which weighed in at close to 100 tons. On other worlds that would scale more or less with surface gravity. The square-cub law starts to bite hard when you get an organism of that size.

On land, that is. At sea, I don't think there is a limit to size, other than food supply. On an ocean world you could have marine grazers miles long, and some immense species might evolve intelligence, presumably via the route of language, social manipulation, and herding prey. If they were whale-like, it's hard to imagine they could develop much technology, but among the invertebrates there are plenty of marine animals with superb manipulating appendages.

Senses: Everybody knows that humans have five senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Except that we actually have at least eight, since we can also sense temperature, feel the position and motions of our own bodies (proprioception), and detect gravity and acceleration (balance). But even on Earth there are other senses used by living things. Electric field sense, magnetic field sense, directional heat sense, and echolocation.

As near as I can tell, senses come in three main categories. Electromagnetic sense (vision, directional heat sense, and electric and magnetic fields); Physical sense (sound, infrasound, ultrasound, proprioception, touch, body temperature, balance, and echolocation); and Molecule detection (smell and taste). Because I have no patience for woo, we will ignore "psionic" senses.

Alien beings might add more senses in those categories. One can imagine alien beings using radio wave detection, radar, x-ray sensing, infrasonic or ultrasonic hearing, or maybe scent gradients to perceive the world around them.

It seems likely that sense organs will be located near the brain, and in most animals that would be near the front or top of the organism. Front because that's the way you move, and senses keep you from bumping into things or falling off cliffs. Top because it gives you more range. Chemical senses might concentrate near an organism's mouth (or other feeding organ) to detect whether things are good to eat.

Limbs: Humans have two arms and two legs, and most land vertebrates have the same four-limb arrangement. But that's mostly a historical accident: the first fish which adapted to life on land had four fins. They might just as well have had six, or eight. Invertebrates can have dozens. I strongly suspect that any alien organisms we encounter (or, more likely, exchange radio transmissions with) will have more limbs than we do. If you're building aliens, you can pick whatever number you like. Remember that in addition to limbs, there are also trunks, prehensile tails, prehensile mouthparts, tentacles, and tongues. One can imagine beings creating a technological civilization using any or all of them.

Skin: Life on Earth has a huge variety of outer coverings. Snails rely on a coating of mucus to protect their very thin skins. Humans have bare skin suitable for a hot climate. Birds have superb insulating feathers. Mammals have fur, almost as good. Fish have scales, reptiles have different scales, a few animals have armor plating — and that's not even considering all the ways plants garb themselves for protection. There's no reason alien beings can't have skin like tree bark or cactus rind.

An organism's outer covering protects against whatever the biggest local threats are — sunlight, cold, predators, parasites, dryness, and so on. Alien hides will likely be much the same.

Many organisms on Earth use their skins as billboards. Octopuses express some fairly complex emotions by changing the color of their skin. Other organisms shift color for camouflage, or to aid in temperature control.

Minds: This is the big one. This is really the only reason to go through the whole process of designing a planet, designing life, and designing intelligence. The whole process is aimed at producing an alien mind. A mind which does not think the way humans do. Otherwise, why not just write about humans? Alien minds are such an important topic that I'm going to put this one aside for my next post.

Boskone 61!

On February 9-11 I'll be at the fabulous Westin Waterfront hotel in Boston for the 61st BOSKONE! The venerable New England convention is back again and I'll be part of it. Come on down and see some of the best writers in the U.S. talking about science fiction. And me. Here's my schedule:

 

Friday, February 9

4:00 p.m.: Harvesting Space for a Greener Earth — Can we save the Earth by developing space? Join me and a bunch of clever people to discuss the topic.

 

Saturday, February 10

5:30 p.m.: Alien Psychology: An Evolutionary Perspective — How does an alien species's biology affect the way they think? I have some thoughts, and we'll see what the rest of the panel thinks.   

 
8:30 p.m.: Single-Biome Worlds in Science Fiction — Can there really be a "desert planet" or a "forest moon"? Is Earth just an "ocean planet" with a few other bits?

 

Sunday, February 11         

11:30 a.m.: Writer's Blockbusting — Is "writer's block" real? What causes it? How to overcome it when you have to finish your book on time?                             

1:00 p.m.: Story Structures Other Than the Hero's Journey — Do all stories fit Joseph Campbell's archetypical template? Should they? I'll be moderating this and trying not to monopolize the panel because I have strong opinions about this.   

There Is No Fermi Paradox

The famous Fermi Paradox is one of the central concerns of research on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Just to summarize quickly: we know of no good reason why technological civilizations can't emerge on other worlds in our Galaxy, but we see no signs of any. Paradox!

"Where is everybody?" Enrico Fermi asked plaintively.

But it's not a paradox. We see no signs of extraterrestrial civilizations because we've barely looked.

The Milky Way contains 100 to 400 billion stars (and the fact that the possible range is that large should be suggestive — there's a lot of things we don't know). How many of those stars have we searched for signs of advanced civilizations?

Not many. To spot a civilization like our own, you couldn't just glance at the Solar System with a radio telescope and instantly detect some old sitcom broadcast. That's not how it works. You'd have to watch over a long period — months or years. You'd have to detect the faint radio emissions and link them to the orbit of Earth around the Sun and Earth's own rotation.

According to Jill Tarter's index at technosearch.seti.org, the biggest search so far covered 290,000 targets. The SERENDIP survey looked at 30 percent of the sky, but that was all piggybacked observations on other astronomers' observing sessions, so very few of those examined the same target repeatedly or over a long period. The Breakthrough Listen project aims to study 1 million objects over the next decade.

That would be . . . one percent of the Galaxy. Maybe less. At this rate it'll take millennia to finish the job.

These are all good and valuable projects, but they're woefully limited. The real solution to the Fermi Paradox is a very simple one: we don't know enough. We don't know if there are stars wrapped in alien Dyson Sphere megastructures. We don't know if there are tiny, heavily Doppler-shifted point sources in interstellar space burning the exact color of deuterium fusion rocket exhaust. We don't know if there are stars with rosettes of co-orbital worlds in their habitable zones, all with identical atmospheres and surface temperatures. We don't know!

I do expect the pace of SETI to pick up as techniques are refined and infrastructure expands. There's also the heartening fact that the "giggle factor" of searching for "little green men" among the stars seems to be waning. After decades of after-hours bootleg research, SETI is finally getting serious support. All this means that it probably won't take a thousand years to search the other 99 percent of stars in our Galaxy. Maybe not even a hundred years.

What then? What happens when we have made a serious effort to search the sky?

Well, the results can be generalized into four cases.

Case 1: Nothing! It's 2124 and we've given the Galaxy a thorough going over and found no sign of intelligence other than our own. Maybe signs of life here and there, but no radio signals, no energy emissions, no artificial structures. Apparently we really are the only minds in the Galaxy.

This could go either way. It might cause a turning away from space exploration because nobody really likes to consider awful, infinite emptiness. Maybe over time some eccentric tycoons will fund colony projects on the Moon or Mars, and maybe the resources of near-Earth space will attract robot miners, but the bulk of humanity will stay on one planet for the foreseeable future. Some people may find this idea appealing, but I don't. To my mind, it's one small step from that to suicide.

Or perhaps the certainty that there's nobody out there would stimulate expansionist ideals among humanity. Unlike exploration and colonization projects on Earth, this time there's nobody to get hurt or displaced. Manifest Destiny on a cosmic scale! The Universe is our sandbox and we can play with it as much as we like! It's something to hope for, I suppose.

And either way I expect a hard core of diehards will insist that we just haven't searched enough. This will become an increasingly hard line to sell, but people are persistent, and those lonely SETI researchers will keep listening . . . to silence.

Case 2: We Are Not Alone, Barely. Our searches turn up one or two civilizations. They're thousands of light-years away and are modest in scale. This would naturally spur interest in the idea of communicating with them, even though it may take centuries to even get a reply. In effect, alien intelligence would be a cool science fact but little more than that. Space exploration and astronomy will still be driven by commercial concerns, national pride, and scientific curiosity, probably at about the same levels of funding as today. Crackpots will finally have a name to put on their imaginary alien friends, but otherwise life goes on as before.

The biggest winners in this case will be SETI and astrobiology researchers, because finally they'll have some data to work with! Humans can learn about alien life and intelligence in relative safety.

Case 3: They're Everywhere! Turns out we picked the wrong 1 percent to search at first. Once you learn the trick, finding alien civilizations is easy. Disturbingly easy. There's scores of them in the Milky Way, and some of those civilizations are big.

As with Case 1, the response could go in one of two ways. Either humanity will try to hide, masking and muting our emissions, putting strict (and probably un-enforceable) restrictions on transmissions to the stars, and generally doing our best to avoid attracting the attention of beings who can move stars around.

Or our insatiable curiosity will prevail, and we'll listen and learn and eventually try to make contact. Whatever happens, this is a turning point in human civilization. It's going to affect government policy, education, everything. The night sky will never look the same again.

SETI — and planetary protection — will become national security priorities. Radiotelescopes will sprout like mushrooms, both on Earth and the far side of the Moon. Whether we're hiding or trying to join the interstellar club, learning about alien civilizations, figuring out their goals and especially how close they are will be of capital importance.

Case 4: They're Here! The crackpots were right. They were here all along. Somebody finds a probe on the Moon, or the seabottom, or on a near-Earth asteroid. They've been watching us, maybe for decades or maybe for millennia.

The take-away is simple: they're real, they know we're here, and they can reach us. As with the above scenario, expect a massive push to discover as much as possible, this time without the option of trying to stay hidden.

Ironically, the big losers in this latter case would be the UFO crackpots. Because now defense agencies, universities, governments, and international organizations will be taking the concept of life beyond Earth very seriously. There will be a lot of research, done rigorously and systematically. No more blurry photos, no more woo. Astrobiology and SETI will become as serious, well-funded, and no-nonsense as nuclear power or genetics research.

Which will it be? My money's on Case 2. I don't think we're alone, but I think it's a lot harder to create and maintain a technological civilization than astronomers think it is. Our views are biased, because we live on a world where it did happen, so of course it looks practically inevitable. Whichever proves to be the truth . . . we'll see! And I hope it's sooner rather than later.