LONDON (AFP) – Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.
Obviously this is one of the staples of sci-fi movies. Aliens could be very, very bad. I guess Hawking is a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
Of course, the historian in me seized on this idea with some glee. (Possibly eager to prolong break from the paper I'm writing.) It would make a neat sort of AU... with colonizer!Vulcans and a forbidden love between the colonizer and the colonized. And imagine what Earth would actually look like - what kind of colony? A settler colony, like the US, Canada, and Australia? Or a later-stage imperial possession like most of Africa? Hmmm...
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