I always feel honored and excited when I am asked to contribute to a project. Being invited into an anthology is like getting picked first for a sandlot baseball team, out of the crowd of contenders. One of my favorite editors is Ian Whates, who helms one of the best small presses, NewCon. When he told me that he was putting together a volume concerning Fermi’s Paradox, I grew even more excited. This famous question—if the universe is generally favorable to life, why have we on Earth never seen evidence of it from elsewhere?—is one of the biggest conundrums of the scientific era.
I can’t say that my answer to the problem is very probable. But I think it offers some emotional resonance.
The gonzo fiction of Steve Aylett served as a handy roadmap for me here.