Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel by Shelby Van Pelt - 1

Ever since childhood I’ve wanted to be abducted by Aliens. My interest in the night sky began at age nine, after a first visit to New York City’s famed Hayden Planetarium, an attraction within the American Museum of Natural History. Growing up in the City, with persistent air pollution, light pollution, tall buildings, and endless evening distractions, were it not for the Hayden Planetarium, I’d have no relationship with the night sky at all.

After a few years, I joined the local amateur astronomer’s club, I and with my telescope, I’d look for occasions to be alone, at night, under clear skies. The more alone I was and the more secluded the observing site, the greater my desire for a beam of light to come down from the sky and take me away. This sentiment was especially stoked at the summits of mountaintops, surrounded by low-lying clouds below, at observatories in the Chilean Andes, where I obtained data for my PhD thesis. Just me, my telescopes, and the universe. The desire to be abducted was driven entirely by my cosmic curiosity and not by some suppressed need to escape civilization and leave Earth behind.

As a professional astrophysicist, I am not alone in this interest. We’ve all done the calculations. We know the size of the observable universe—more than 90 billion light-years across. We know the age of the universe—13.8 billion years. We know how many galaxies it contains—as many as a trillion. We know how many stars populate those galaxies—approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten sextillion), give or take a few. We can estimate how many planets and moons might orbit those stars—multiply by ten. We know the chemical ingredients of life—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and of course “other.” We know how common they are—among the most common in the cosmos. And we know how quickly life began—organisms have thrived for 95 percent of Earth’s timeline, starting when Earth was cool enough to sustain complex molecules.

We know these numbers well, which prevent any of us from imagining a universe not teeming with life. We desperately want to find them. Or maybe it is they who will find us. If that happens, and the space Alien demands, “Take me to your leader!” what will you do? What should you do? Our collective assumption is that the Alien wants to meet the person in charge of things: The President. The Prime Minister. The Monarch. The Pope. Or whoever happens to be the head of state. But plenty of other people are also “in charge” of things, especially multi-billionaires and captains of industry. Not knowing anything in advance about human civilization, but eavesdropping on our cultural norms before arrival, the Aliens might just as easily conclude that decade by decade, pop culture icons were also, or exclusively, in charge, such as Clark Gable, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift.

For the Aliens to have reached Earth at all, from any place outside our solar system, we can reliably conclude they’re more advanced than we are, in every way. So, maybe you should not seek out your actual leaders, be they political, cultural, or religious. Perhaps you should instead seek out people who have high scientific and technological expertise. You might also hide from the Aliens everybody who thinks Earth is flat, as well as all others who deny what science is and how and why it works. This would also be the wrong time to convince them that your God created the universe and that humans, not Aliens, are created in His image. We want to leave the friendliest impression possible on our space visitors, whatever their intentions, be they plunderous, nefarious, or simply curious.

In science, skepticism is foundational to our profession, so we uphold standards of evidence that some interpret as disinterest or even denial. Don’t take it personally, it’s how any and all objective truths have ever been established in this world. Think of Take Me to Your Leader as a book of etiquette and insights for your next close encounter, or perhaps a scientifically infused user’s manual with helpful hints from an astrophysicist who wants to meet the Aliens as badly as you do.