To Be Sung to the Tune of Silence

 

I’m very proud to have had my tenth story published in Stupefying Stores: To Be Sung to the Tune of Silence . Please go and take a look before reading my commentary on the story below.
Enjoy!

The idea for this story was triggered by a couple of books I’ve read concerning the “Fermi Paradox” (one academic [1], the other more popular [2]), which to summarise can be stated as “If aliens exist, then where are they?”. This conundrum – the fact that we have neither seen nor heard from them has become known as “The Great Silence” in recent years.

Now personally, I am an optimist, and believe that as our technologies for detection of signals, remote sensing of stars and planets, and exploration of space improve over the years/decades/centuries to come, we will eventually have a breakthrough discovery of alien life. Indeed, many of my previous stories have been set in a Universe teeming with life, specifically within our local confederation – The Five Thousand Galaxies.

But the fact remains that we currently have no conclusive proof of life anywhere beyond the Earth. So, what if we are alone in this Universe, or maybe worse, we discovered and then lost the only other known alien life? This story sets out to explore the questions of discovery, loss and loneliness in an (almost) empty universe.

I also wanted to hold a mirror to the existential challenges we have here on Earth: would other alien civilisations face similar challenges, and how might they fare?

This is my tenth published SF story. I’m really happy to have reached this (rather minor, really!) milestone in my writing, and have many more ideas for the future. A wild plan is to address each of the “75 Solutions to the Fermi Paradox” in Ref. 2 below with a story, but that may take a little time… Hopefully, before then, fiction will become fact!

References:

1. The Great Silence: Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox by Milan M. Ćirković
   https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-great-silence-9780199646302
2. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life by Stephen Webb
   https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-13236-5