Why would anyone spend an enormous amount of energy and time to reach us, a miniature rock that has nothing to offer to a space faring race?
I would suggest Peter Watts' "Blindsight" or Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" trilogy.
And honestly the killing star has aged.. weirdly. Amazing concept, seemingly written by an author with multiple personalities, one of whom just cannot shut up about the Titanic
Has he written about Titanic in his other books too?
And I really, really tried hard with The Three Body Problem. I get that the English version is a translation, but in the end the flowery language and slow plot just wore me down. Did anyone else have the same experience?
(Off topic, but I find that the problem with fiction based on SETI / first contact is that the subject often ends up being used as a metaphor for the human condition and the difficulty of really communicating with other people. Which is fine, but doesn't make for satisfying SF in my experience.)
Much of Seveneves was depressing too but it all seemed very plausible. It was in what came next that seemed off.
(Possible mild spoiler ahead)
[1] Basically: "the forest is full of hunters of unknown strength, so either stay quiet or kill all the hunters." I thought that Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars did a much better job on this aspect of Fermi.
This is true for relatively low power omni-directional broadcast signals such as terrestrial TV and radio. The signals proposed by the METI community (and those that have already been sent - e.g. from Arecibo) are broadcast at much higher power using a concentrated beam, and would be detectable over interstellar distances using technology similar to that which we have now.
Still this is not a movie where the aliens are on next moon so even if they picked up the signals it would long after the next few generations die off (Light years away - Man they are damn far off). (living in a developing country would give you a whole new perspective on energy scarcity)
In this case, if sending a signal into space takes a lot of energy and if energy is scarce, then it's a waste of energy regardless of if the government provides it or a private donor.
EDIT: I'm not saying this is true in this particular case (I'm also not saying that its not true), I'm merely stating that whether something is a waste doesn't matter on who is doing the wasting. I would gladly listen to a counter argument and maybe a discussion can be had, but I guess its easier to click a down arrow. Oh well. (Yes, yes, I know it'll happen even more due to my mentioning it)
[1] http://io9.gizmodo.com/5784658/so-you-want-to-send-a-message...
[2] http://www.cleanenergyauthority.com/solar-energy-resources/w...
I wasn't taking any sides on this issue, so its not really relevant how much energy it took. I said "if" it is and it was a hypothetical to give a concrete example, not a statement that I thought it was wasteful.
I'll paraphrase:
If <something> is hypothetically wasteful, then <something> is still wasteful regardless of who did it.
Yeah but they would need interstellar-type of timescale to reach us anyway even if they moved at a fraction of speed of light, so the risk is close to nil. We are way, way more likely to be hit by an asteroid or to destroy our planet than to be destroyed by a very remote alien civilization.
If you pinpoint its origin to light years away, you know they already had a lot of time to progress past this technology. A good response if you plan on eliminating them would not be a fleet: you'd better setup and direct a huge gamma-ray burst in their general direction.
So the destructive response could come at the speed of light with a little delay at first.
I'd think a truly space faring race would probably have very different goals to us and the currency of culture would be much more valuable than natural resources which surely are abundant if space travel is trivial to you. Looking at it that way we'd have a hell of a lot to offer.
I guess that this comment is based on our technologies that we have _now_....
Finally, by the time we'd be able to visit another planet, we'd probably prefer sitting in our Holodecks all day.
ONe intelligent species on Earth? So you are assuming most animals are moving objects without any thought or emotion?
Dolphins are pretty smart! Mean like us, too. If we and they didn't inhabit incompatible environments, I suspect we'd have had some complicated history with them, and probably now speak of them in the past tense - or they'd speak so of us.
Fortunately, ravens are smart enough to recognize the combination of repeated food offerings, and a demurral to repeat the initial rudeness, as earnest of good intent - walking out the door with my camera no longer provokes alarm calls and surveillance overflights. Catbirds, not so much - I pissed off one of those back when there was snow on the ground, and I suspect he'd still quite happily rip my lungs out if he could.
Folks spend lifetimes thinking of philosophy or working on a single science problem. In addition, we are still exploring oceans, depths of volcanos, and we explore space as much as we can without actually travelling to the places ourselves. We research animals and our own bodies. Some folks spend a lifetime making music. Not all of these has a payback outside of satisfying curiosity or enjoyment, at least not upfront.
Considering this, why would it seem odd that a race would explore what there is to explore?