Reading Matter for Aliens

0 Conversations

You are lying in bed, content with your dream about doughnuts, blissfully unaware that random postings on h2g2 were being monitored from afar by people who innocuously logged in as 'Orange-Green Bug-Eyed Aliens From Planet Google.' Suddenly, you feel a rumble that starts in your baby toes and that, by the time it wakes you, is gently edging your tableside Orangina nearer to the precipice . . .

Suddenly, the menacing rumbling and humming is replaced by an equally menacing silence, and then by an increasingly menacing blue-green light pouring in from behind your bedroom door.

Your door flies open, and a short being with green-orange skin, bug-eyes, and a flash spacesuit made out of what looks like 'platinum gold tin foil' steps into your room. He informs you that you have been chosen as a representative of your race to come and teach his people about human beings and human nature.

As you are stuffing your towel into your satchel, and struggling into your best travelling bathrobe, you decide to grab one book which you think typifies the human condition. Throughout history, many have tried to hold a mirror up to humanity and show us ourselves. 'Mimesis' (that is: the art of trying to mimic reality) is one of the basic tenants of literature, the other being fantasy, which is the art of trying to create a reality which is different from our own.

Do you choose a religious work? The Torah, Bible and Koran peer at you from your nick-knack encrusted shelves... or a serious work of dramatic fiction such as
The Colour Purple, or Anne of Green Gables? Do you pick a work that shows the best of human nature, like Little Women; or do you take Heart of Darkness and show them the depths to which we can sink. Do you think that real history can capture
the image of humanity better than fiction, or do you think that well-tailored characters can evoke more emotion than true, albeit impersonal, facts? Do you believe that human nature is best observed by analogy from the more objective viewpoint of fantasy? Do 'Hobbits' and 'Paranoid Androids' tell us more about ourselves than 'Cowboys and Indians'?

Which book do you choose?

Answers and explanations, if you will, to this forum:
The BooKNooK.


Beeblefish


08.03.10. Front Page

06.03.00. Front Page

Back Issue Page


Bookmark on your Personal Space


Conversations About This Entry

There are no Conversations for this Entry

Entry

A503236

Infinite Improbability Drive

Infinite Improbability Drive

Read a random Edited Entry


Written by

Credits

Disclaimer

h2g2 is created by h2g2's users, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the Not Panicking Ltd. Unlike Edited Entries, Entries have not been checked by an Editor. If you consider any Entry to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please register a complaint. For any other comments, please visit the Feedback page.

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more