09/01/2185
September 1st, 2010
The new e-book “First Contact: Who Needs It?” by author Kurt Riven has zoomed to the top of this week’s best-seller list. In the book, the counterculture icon argues that contact between extraterrestrial species is inherently a bad idea. Riven writes, “Aside from the inevitable wars, jingoism, and disease that always follow first contact, there’s a more insidious problem: the homogenization of culture, of thought, of ideas themselves. As soon as I see how your ship works, I don’t need to figure it out myself. I’ll copy yours and whatever hope we had for something new evaporates. Maybe mine’s a different shape, but so what? The same problem exists on a galactic scale, where all major species are busy duplicating each other’s ideas. It would have been better if they never met.” Ironically, in light of the book’s success, many copycat books are already popping up across the extranet.
Tags: First Contact: Who Needs It?, Kurt Riven