Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

A very highly esteemed and decorated fellow, retired Israeli general and space security chief Professor Haim Eshed has finally spilled the beans (he is not the first in the last couple of years—look up, if you will, Canadian official Paul Hellyer). He says that you extraterrestrials are real, that you are here right now, that you have had diplomatic relations with his country and with mine for years (seventy-three I would guess), and that you even have constructed an underground base on Mars. Don’t hit your head on the ceiling, running down the corridor.

I was born the year before Roswell. I grew up in the Air Force, amid grown men who were afraid to speak too often or too loudly about things they’d seen in the air, for fear of ridicule or dismissal. Everybody had a story. I was prepared to believe in you earlier than most people.

I happen to be an American writer of science fiction, the literature of the future. I have written more than thirty books, each representing about a year of my short, human life. It’s pertinent to note that, on the occasions I have dealt with the subject of extraterrestrial intelligence in my writing, I have always done my best to be rational about it, never entertaining notions of alien monsters (although I’m sure there must be some Out There) or super-beings, just people who are interestingly different from us. (My main job, after all, is to entertain my readers.)

I have always calculated that, whatever our faraway neighbors may look like, whatever gases they may breathe or liquid they may drink, they are governed by the same universal immutable laws of physics that I am, the same grim, unavoidable laws of economics, and put their pants on one tentacle at a time. Somewhere in the galaxy, I am confident, there are people very like my characters the Freenies (The Nagaski Vector). Somewhere there are people like the Gunjj (Tom Paine Maru). Somewhere there are even people like my nine-legged furry crabs, the Lamviin (Their Majesties’ Bucketeers).

If they can fly from star to star, they have probably learned a great deal more about certain subjects than we have. I am an old man, now, with an arm and leg that don’t serve me, with diabetes, and with an iffy ticker, crudely repaired. If you folks are capable of interstellar travel and of building a base on Mars, you must be capable of fixing me. Consider this a job application: do that, and I’ll be your reliable press secretary on this world, provided, of course, that you, yourselves, have managed to outgrow the triple maladies of mysticism, altruism, and collectivism (I refer you to the works of philosopher Ayn Rand). My guess is that you would likely rather deal with Donald Trump and his futurist admirers than with the vile, close-minded puppeteers of Joseph Biden. That would be my preference, anyway.

Even if Trump’s policy is “Earth first”.

I know that you believe there are human beings whose heads will explode, metaphorically speaking, when they are confronted with incontrovertible proof of your existence. You probably got this silly, condescending, patronizing, and grossly insulting bonnet-bee from the most stupid and short-sighted sector of the American government, the very badly-misnamed Central Intelligence Agency, the same idiots who think you built the Pyramids.

There were once human beings whose heads exploded when they learned that the world is round, others whose heads exploded when the process of evolution by natural selection was revealed, and still others whose heads exploded when a cure for venereal diseases—God’s punishment for naughty behavior—was invented. There are human beings today who, for various reasons, recently rioted, looted, robbed, raped, and brutalized others when they thought they had an excuse. Their heads are exploding as they are proven wrong. They are a tiny, insignificant fraction of our planet’s population, the vast majority of whom are decent, kindly, and rational. Let all those heads explode as they may, so that the rest of us can get on with the future.

Yours sincerely,

L. Neil Smith