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213 A generation ago, science writer Trudy Bell described how our reason- ing about extraterrestrial intelligence has been based on what she called “The Grand Analogy” between Humankind and extraterrestrials.'’? That analogy has stimulated our thinking, but also has constrained it. We are extrapolating from a sample of one. Invoking analogies may be inevitable because so much about SETI is hypothetical. Where ignorance forces conjecture, analogy is a useful (and perhaps the only) guide, observed a group of experts who reviewed the social and cultural implications of remote contact. However, they warned that analogs must not be taken as predictors of action, but only as useful guides to thinking. Nothing in human history is fully analogous to the type of encounter to which the search may lead us.'* To which events in our own history do we compare contact? Optimists draw on the most positive examples, often comparing contact with the Western European rediscovery of ancient knowledge that stimulated the Renaissance. Pessimists draw on the worst of our history, often invoking the fatal impact scenario in which a more powerful culture disrupts a weaker one. Morrison thought that the SETI enterprise could best be understood as an exercise in the archaeology of the future. It is their past that we would be investigating, but our future.'? Can we simply project our own develop- ment and apply that analogy to an alien civilization? Our record of fore- casting is poor; experts often have failed to foresee major changes in their own fields. All straight-line projections of current trends must be suspect, for they do not incorporate the contingency of human history. In any case, we cannot assume that extraterrestrial intelligence will simply be some more advanced form of human intelligence. Alien futures may be very different from ours. Would our analogies apply to postbiological beings? We may be com- municating with inorganic intelligences.” We cannot escape the use of analogy when we consider the possible consequences of contact. However, there is no guarantee that our analogies are correct. ETI’s beauty—or ugliness—will reside in the eyes of the beholder. —Albert Harrison and Joel Johnson, 19977! In science fiction, encounters with extraterrestrials often are face to face. The remote contact scenario is at the opposite extreme; we might never know the appearance of our correspondents. Even in the more direct ver- sions of contact described in the films “2001” and “Contact,” we never see the extraterrestrials—only their works or their simulations. Images of Aliens Images of Aliens