Dear Homo Sapiens: Letters from a Friendly Alien

By Chris Andrew Anderson

There is excellent news from across the Universe. The council of advanced species has granted us Homo sapiens candidate status. A member of the council named Narg Dedrom has been tasked with leading a series of correspondence to guide us towards reaching an acceptable level of advancement to be able to join the council as full member.
As the correspondence plays out, however, it becomes evident that the task is extremely arduous and almost doomed to failure. Humans are simply not ready to make the necessary changes and this unreadiness may have far greater consequences than simply jeopardising our candidate status. Throughout his letters, Narg will provide some insights into the reasons for our existence and the nature of the Universe. He will also reveal a secret about our past that should not leave us indifferent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Andrew Anderson
• Release date: Jun 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215247457

Chris Andrew Anderson

I am a British citizen living in Europe where I teach English for a living. I was brought up as a Christian, which I still am but I have always been troubled by certain philosophical questions related, notedly, to science and religion. I haven't really been able to find any satisfactory answers to my questions so I decided to answer them myself. Or attempt to. As I said somewhere in one of my books, writing is a great clarifier of thoughts. The first, a perhaps only, person to benefit from the exercise is the writer himself.

Book preview

Dear Homo Sapiens

Letters From A Friendly Alien

By Chris Andrew Anderson

Copyright 2023 Chris Andrew Anderson

Smashwords Edition

Also by Chris Andrew Anderson:

A Short Guide To Respect: How To Improve Relations With, Basically, Everyone

Surviving The Next Big Asteroid And Being The Chosen Race

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Letter I

Letter II

Letter III

Letter IV

Letter V

Letter VI

Letter VII

Letter VIII

Letter IX

Letter X

Letter XI

Letter XII

Letter XIII

Letter XIV

Letter XV

Letter XVI

Letter XVII

Letter XVIII

Letter XIX

Letter XX

Letter XXI

Letter XXII

Letter XXIII

Letter XXIV

Letter XXV

Letter XXVI

Letter XXVII

Letter XXVIII

PREFACE

There is excellent news from across the Universe. The council of advanced species has granted us Homo sapiens candidate status. A member of the council named Narg Dedrom has been tasked with leading a series of correspondence to guide us towards reaching an acceptable level of advancement to be able to join the council as full member.

As the correspondence plays out, however, it becomes evident that the task is extremely arduous and almost doomed to failure. Humans are simply not ready to make the necessary changes and this unreadiness may have far greater consequences than simply jeopardising our candidate status. Throughout his letters, Narg will provide some insights into the reasons for our existence and the nature of the Universe. He will also reveal a secret about our past that should not leave us indifferent.

Letter I

Dear Homo sapiens,

Congratulations. Yes, congratulations indeed! I am most honoured to inform you that you have been accepted as an official candidate for a place on the council of advanced species, a grouping of all (as far as we know) of the most advanced species of the Universe. Allow me to announce myself. I am Narg Dedrom. I am one of the representatives of my own species on the council and I shall be your unique interlocutor for this process. It will be my great pleasure to accompany you on the next stage of your evolutionary journey. Your acceptance as candidate marks a very important step in your evolution and progress as a species of the Universe and one that we hope will lead to your acceptance as full member of the council in due time.

The goal of the council is to reunite all the most advanced species of the Universe so that we can come together to further our common goals. Considering the size of the Universe, our Universe I should say, for you are also a rightful occupant of it, this task is no small feat and, understandably, even though we cannot be sure that there are not more out there that we have not yet encountered, we have already reunited with an impressive number of species. While you must be bursting with questions, that is all I am permitted to say for the moment about the council and its role. I will obviously speak more at length as the process of your integration on the council plays out. I do need to inform you, though, that there was a slight irregularity concerning your acceptance as candidate but we will not trouble ourselves with this small detail at this time. For now, I would like you to focus solely on the marvellous news of your acceptance as possible future member of the council of advanced species and all the advantages that this will bring.

Of course, I am fully aware that you may not initially share my enthusiasm nor my delight for this announcement. How could you? You never knew such a thing existed. You are surely still reeling from the shock or surprise of receiving this letter. In fact, I expect that once the initial surprise or shock has passed, instead of great joy and delight, you will probably greet this letter more with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Yes, I shouldn't expect too much from you. Not now.

You will be curious, I am sure, because first of all, I am confirming to you the existence of not one other species of alien life but, in fact, numerous species. And secondly, and much more importantly, I am informing you also of the existence of very advanced alien species. How wonderful that must be for you. You thought you were alone, up to now, and you find that you are not. Better still, there are other species who can not only communicate with you on a level of your own intelligence but also be a guide to you, a model and be able to further your own intelligence. I sense your scepticism. I hope you do not doubt my claim of belonging to a species which is more advanced than your own. I know that you Homo sapiens feel quite comfortable in your position as top species of your planet and that you are quite proud of your achievements and scientific progress. Without having to resort to revealing information about our level of advancement, which I would be most unwilling to do anyway, I hope the fact alone that it is I who is contacting you, and not the reverse, is sufficient to convince you that I belong to a more advanced species. I do not use this word as bravado but merely as a fact. False modesty is an irritating waste of time when the truth is so evident. My species (although this is valid for all the species represented on the council) is much more advanced in terms of technology, intelligence, and let me just say other things, which I can't mention at this stage. We have lived for a much longer time and we have evolved more. And, more importantly, we have survived! Yes, I must insist on the significance of this achievement. To say that our advanced status is purely because we came into existence before you is not to give credit to our success. I can inform you that other species evolved either around the same time as ours or even before but they are no longer here. They did not survive.

As you will see, survival in the Universe is not guaranteed. It is a constant preoccupation for us all, including those species on the council. Complacency is a death-wish, and arrogance is pure suicide. We are always on the lookout for new dangers to our survival. As we have existed for much longer than you humans, we have consequently progressed further along our evolution line than you have progressed along yours. We are more evolved. It would be improper of me to say otherwise, all species in the known Universe have evolved into what they are today and are still evolving. It is a simple fact. As well as feelings of curiosity and interest, I suppose you may also be feeling a trifle concerned or worried, as would be natural of any species in the presence of a more advanced one. You may even be feeling a little threatened. You probably wonder what we want, what our intentions are. I expect that you do not trust me. Not now, anyway. I hope that will change. I know that it may take a while but I hope that I will quickly be able to convince you that we mean you no harm whatsoever. I hope you will soon realise that, as I am about to tell you, I am here to assist you.

On the subject of assistance, allow me to return to one of the reasons for this correspondence. You are no doubt aware that there are great challenges in this Universe. There are enormous hurdles to a species' survival. All kinds of dangers abound from natural disasters to more, in your case, man-made disasters and they threaten your survival every day. Some of them can be attributed to your blatant abuses and serious lack of planet management (I will try not to scold you too much, you are still cutting your teeth, so to speak, but the damage is there, all the same) but there are other dangers which exist due to the nature of the Universe.

These dangers are not indicative of bad or evil in the Universe, they simply are. The Universe is a dangerous place. Colliding galaxies, black holes, exploding stars, dying suns are catastrophic for any species in their wake. Some of these events are quite rare and are easy to predict, and therefore avoid but it does depend on a species’ capabilities. Much more problematic for an emerging species is the threat of a cosmic collision between their home planet and an asteroid. This is not something that will come as a surprise to you, you had already figured this out for yourselves. You are quite aware that an asteroid will one day be on course to collide with your planet. You have not yet come up with a sufficient global strategy but you have begun to scan the cosmos for incoming asteroids.

It would be foolish to deny the possibility of a colliding asteroid and I must insist that, if this process is to have any chance of succeeding at all, we must put foolish ideas behind us. Foolishness has been the cause of many a species’ downfall. The disaster in question has already happened on your planet. It happened when the dinosaurs were roaming your planet and was responsible for their extinction. It was not a one-off event. It will happen again. You are aware of asteroids and you know what they can do. Your galaxy is full of them and your planet, like all planets, is not immune to them. They are a real danger and there are more out there than you are aware of. In your own personal timeline as a species, you have only experienced rather small asteroids that have collided with your planet but we know that you are already preparing for bigger ones. I should encourage you in this respect quite fervently. Of all the threats to a species, an asteroid is the one that can cause the most immediate damage. We often call an asteroid a reset button because it has the effect of resetting a planet to a previous, albeit lifeless, state where nature can have a clean slate and perhaps start again. At the risk of repeating myself, this is what happened exactly on your planet, as it has on many others. For your planet, this event is fully documented in the annals of the council. I am personally familiar with them because it is my honour and duty to lead this correspondence with you.

I doubt you fully appreciate the fact but the dinosaurs were present on your planet for a very long time, much longer than you have been around. I can’t tell you much about their existence but, apparently, there seemed to be at the time a certain relief when a particularly large asteroid arrived and collided with your planet, setting off the process of planet reset. The council had been following the evolution of the dinosaurs for quite a long time and had given up all hope that they would evolve into an intelligent species. One of the members at the time described your planet as being as engaging as a plate of jelly to a cosmically renowned gourmet. Even after so many millions of years they were still rather primitive, had hardly evolved except in size and deadly ability to hunt and kill. In terms of intelligence, they hadn't progressed much farther than the lizards from which they had evolved. You may think that it is cruel and heartless to wish the extinction of such a variety of magnificent creatures and a world of nature. Yes, on the surface it is. We treasure all life but we are conscious that life is not a random event, not really, that there is a goal and that this goal is the most important thing. The evolution of the dinosaurs had reached a dead end, if you will allow me the pun. It was time for evolution to try again. The existence of the dinosaurs was frankly a tiring waste of time for all. Although an asteroid collision would be immensely threatening to your survival, it is not the biggest immediate threat on your horizon to date. Your much accelerated climate change is a greater risk to your survival. Less so in the development of more extreme weather events and climate conditions but more in the consequences that these events may trigger for your global populations. Do not view a substantial rise in sea level or temperature as simply a grain of sand in your finely tuned mechanised society. Think of it more as a veritable sandstorm.

Still, I digress, this letter is already longer than I had initially planned and I still have not yet explained what I hope to achieve with these messages. Never mind, I will explain further next time but suffice it to say for now that during your time as a candidate, I will be sending you various written communications, letters of sorts. I will try to do this on a regular basis. Unfortunately, you won't be able to respond but we are able to monitor your reaction and I will be paying close attention. We will certainly not intervene physically in your world. Only full acceptance on the council leads to in-person meetings. Of course, I know if you could correspond back to me, you would have a million questions to ask which I would be most unwilling to answer. We are fully aware of the types of questions that are still causing you intellectual and philosophical headache and while we could certainly provide you with some answers, those answers would only lead to more questions and things would get out of hand very quickly. In any case, it is no longer council policy.

I hope that while you are waiting for my next correspondence, you will reflect upon this first missive. All that is needed on your part is a healthy dose of common sense and an open mind. I will get down to the more serious topics very soon.

Until next time, your friendly alien

Narg Dedrom

Letter II

Dear Homo sapiens,

Oh, my goodness! I am almost speechless. Yes, almost! In all my years of dealing with alien species I have never been so close to being at a loss for words. And that is saying something! I must express my deepest consternation at the reaction of my initial letter. I am utterly dismayed to see the panic