Frank Shook is, or claims to be, tight with aliens—the extraterrestrial kind. He goes with them on excursions to the future. Then he goes back to the present to report to Rudy Rucker. In turn, Rucker writes “Saucer Wisdom” to chronicle Frank’s adventures.
I don’t buy time travel, especially when it involves looking to the future. Its fatalism depresses me. If what we will be is already fixed, then there’s no point fretting over what we are. All we have to do is sit back, relax, and wait things out. What will be will be anyway.
But I get aliens, and this is because I believe that we exist in a perpetually expanding universe where galaxies similar to our Milky Way are constantly emerging and evolving. If life form exists in our galaxy, why not in other galaxies? What I don’t get is why aliens have to be smarter, powerful, or superior to us in every way. Aliens could be nothing more than brainless leptons; they simply exist and do or be nothing else.
I have to give it to Rucker: he sure knows his science and has incredible imagination. He combines science and imagination to convincingly and intelligently speculate a future populated by knifeplants, grown homes, soft television, transhumans. So I don’t understand his need for the dubious and unnecessary gimmick that is Frank Shook.
Dear Elizabeth 