Life Beyond Human Has to Play by the Rules - Issue 98: Mind

There are many ways to think about alien, extraterrestrial life forms. Science-fiction writers do it all the time. Scientists, more interested in nonfiction, think about how to receive signals that real aliens might send, as well as what sort of signals we might send to "them." SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is a real, ongoing project, with a real budget overseen by real researchers. Others partner with biochemists and evolutionary biologists to investigate how life might have begun on Earth and whether, and under what circumstances, it could also exist elsewhere in the universe. But not many scientists have gone beyond to speculate on what alien life might actually, seriously, genuinely be like. One exception is Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Cambridge University, whose recent book, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy, might remind readers of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Zoologist's Guide, though, is definitely science and not fiction.