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216 As film and television professor Vivian Sobchak saw it, the mass media have given rise to three images of extraterrestrials: the menacing and dominating “colonizing” alien; the benevolent alien that has come to save us from ourselves; the cyborg, part living being and part machine. There is no reason to expect that mass media will feel any particular responsibility to imagine extraterrestrials as benign and unthreatening.”* The basic formula remains the same. Good aliens are humanoids; bad aliens are life-forms that frighten or disgust us. We use appearance as shorthand for intentions. Yet, what will matter most in a contact situa- tion is not the way they look, but their abilities and their behavior. At one extreme, we think of aliens as altruistic teachers who will show us the road to survival, wisdom, and prosperity, or God-like figures who will raise Humankind from its fallen condition. At the other extreme, we see the aliens as implacable, grotesque conquerors whose miraculous but malevolently applied technology can only be overcome by simpler virtues. These i images are extensions of centuries-old debates about human nature. mL. a ae Lane nnd ne They are exaggerations of ourselves, at our best and at our worst. Myth, religion, and now science fiction with their tales of benevolent and malevolent extraterrestrial beings are commentaries on the human condi- tion, observed philosopher Lewis Beck. To him, even responsible scientific speculations about our search for others were the modern equivalent of angelology and utopia, or of demonology and apocalypse. A Mirror Image. To an extraterrestrial, Boyce reminded us, we would be the aliens—the bizarre creatures inhabiting a strange and mysterious planet. Just as they might resemble some of our myths, we might resemble some of theirs.” We are looking for evidence of alien technology, rather than the alien beings who created it. The two categories might merge in advanced intel- ligent machines, possibly including interstellar probes. Such intelligences may be much more widespread than intelligent bio- logical societies. Although the planets may belong to organic life, Clarke proposed, the real masters of the universe may be machines. We creatures of flesh and blood are transitional forms.*” Even if alien biological entities have attempted interstellar radio com- munication, Davies thought it nearly certain that machines, with their unlimited patience, will dominate the airwaves; a randomly received radio message is overwhelmingly likely to originate with one of them. Such a The Consequences of Contact Alien Machines