Even If You Think Discussing Aliens Is Ridiculous, Just Hear Me Out

> This has even been true with aliens. The science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson reminded me that in the early 1900s it was widely but mistakenly believed that we had visual evidence of canals on Mars.

I wonder how true this is. Whenever I read old science fiction it does seem like aliens on Venus/Mars was believed to be a real possibility. So while we now think that aliens existing would be this huge existential crisis for humanity… maybe we would just accept it without issue as speculated by the author.

My recollection is that this arose from a bad translation from an astronomer's Italian. The word should have been "channels" in English, but someone rendered it as "canals".

Man, if 9/11 got us 20 years of terror/war/etc., what would losing control of 'the aliens are attacking!' narrative get us?

I like the mention of Ted Chiang's "The Great Silence" -- slammin short sci-fi story:

https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chia...

Language inserted into the 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act gave the government 180 days to gather and analyze the data it has collected, and to release a report on the findings.

No way this would happen. :))