“If and when aliens make first contact, who should answer? Maybe humankind should turn to people like me, translators of science fiction. We’ve already thought through this kind of problem.”
Those are the opening sentences of my essay “When Star-Stuff Tells Stories: Translating science fiction as a metaphor of technology and wonder.” You can read the essay here.
It was originally published by Calque Press in 2024. In it, I explore the development of human language and the challenges it poses to translation here and now, and how the lessons learned from translation and from science fiction can help us if we come into contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
Whomever we find, wherever they are from, they too will be made of star-stuff, and that should be enough to let us find a way to know each other.
Semiosis 