#alien arrival

Alien Arrival

After the spaceships landed, the Earth suddenly turned much greener.

The human population had been so excited to finally meet some aliens. Of course some humans were scared, and the ships were guarded closely in case they suddenly started emitting gases or fire or anything else that could do harm, but that never happened. Gradually the news stopped mentioning those uneventful ships, and people thought of it no more than they would about a meteorite—meaning there were plenty of conspiracy theories about what the international authorities did or did not keep secret, but none that spread widely.

~~~

Walks in the forest were the best way Phoebe knew to relax. She was delighted by the recent expansion of greenery and took every opportunity to wander and daydream among the trees, ferns, and flowers.

“Excuse me,” she said as she carefully squeezed between two new, fully grown trunks that definitely hadn’t been there on her previous walks in this area.

The trunks politely shifted out of the way, and Phoebe rubbed her eyes, muttering: “Did that really happen?”

“Oh yes,” said one of the trees, just for a moment shifting into a tall, green, four-limbed body with a face that winked at her, before reverting.

And that was how humans finally discovered the nature of their visitors.

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○ /|\ ○ – Blinkback The cab does not take the road I remember.The landscape blurs, folded like static tape.By the time we stop, the air itself feels redacted. Authored By: Kliq410 | 03:33 AM | August 20, 2025Location: St. Ignatius Facility – Colfax, WAStatus: site infiltration / Blue Sky Protocol vectorNEXT EVENT: SEPTEMBER 7, 2025 – ACTIVE 3:11 AM — The AscentThe road coils up the hillside…

OK so when the Aliens arrive en-mass… what will you do? No seriously, let’s say for a moment (take a leap of imagination) and ask yourself. What will it change? What do you expect? Will it even matter to you at all? Are you one of those who believe that the HUMAN way of life will be lost? Are you one of those who believe that WAR is inevitable? Are you one of those who believe we will be slaves…

Liu Cixin

(English translation by Ken Liu)

How do you feel about first contact? There’s a lot of material out there – books, films, TV series – dealing with this subject, and we’ve been trying to find other intelligent life in the depths of the universe for many years now with scientific programmes like SETI. Some of us are excited by the prospect of not being alone in this vast universe, others are not so delighted.

Probably, the seminal work for the arrival of an alien species to our planet is H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”, which kind of sets the standard. The aliens arrive from Mars, attempt to take over our Earth, destroying everything in their path and generally causing mayhem. That book did actually end well for the human race as our wonderful viruses(!!!) took care of the monsters for us.

But, let’s consider things seriously. Most scientists working in this field concede that any alien race capable of reaching Earth would have technology so far in advance of ours that the scenario that would play out would be much the same as the Spaniards invading the New World – pretty much total extinction for the native population. Not a very attractive prospect for us pitiful earthlings.

So, let’s say a scientist working in a remote area of China (Yes, I know, it’s China. It seems bad things tend to start there nowadays) happens to stumble upon a message from an alien race. This is a scientist who knows well how things are likely to turn out, so what do they do? If they answer their call, they know the alien race will be able to pinpoint Earth’s position in the galaxy and aim straight for us. Thing is though, this particular scientist is not a big fan of the human race right now. After all, we’re pretty much destroying our home planet with our incessant wars, over-population, global warming, species extinction, plastic saturation and so on and so forth, so …

Fast forward a few years. Another scientist working in the field of nano-technology is suddenly approached by the government to do some weird undercover work. At first this involves playing a computer game. Doesn’t seem too dangerous, right? And, not exactly what you’d expect your government to ask you do, but it seems that other prominent scientists who have played the game have suddenly committed suicide. The government wants to know why.

The game in question introduces this scientist to the world of Trisolaris, a planet in a triple sun system. This planet has big problems. The fact that it orbits three suns means its conditions are extremely chaotic, ranging from extreme heat to extreme cold and everything in between but the Trisolarans have a particularly interesting means of surviving these extremes. The Trisolarans are, of course, the alien race that has sent the signal to Earth. They want off their crazy planet as soon as possible. Will they get an answer to their signal? Well, there are no spoilers here – read the book!

The system of Trisolaris probably equates to that of our nearest neighbour – the Alpha Centauri system.  It was as early as the 17th century  that two Jesuit missionaries, Richaud and de Fontenay discovered independently that Alpha Centauri was, in fact, a binary star , which came to be called Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. To the naked eye, however, they look like one single star, the brightest in our night sky after Sirius and Canopus, Much later, not until the 20th century did Robert Innes discover  Proxima Centauri. Although Proxima Centauri is quite far, in astronomical terms, from A and B, they are still gravitationally intertwined, making them, in effect, a tri-star system. Interestingly, our nearest exo-planet neighbour also revolves around Prox. C. so could be a good candidate (if your imagination stretches that far) for Trisolaris.

As well as learning a lot about our nearest star system, another interesting aspect of this book was its examination of a period of Chinese history I didn’t know much about – the Cultural Revolution. I realise that China and everything Chinese isn’t flavour of the year right now, but this book isn’t a piece of Chinese propaganda even though its author has been criticised for his staunch support of the Chinese government. It is science fiction with some historical references that flesh it out and allow you to understand the characters more.

"Alien Arrival" - Will Smith's Rap from Arrival