The scientists were wrong. Oumuamua really was an alien spacecraft. It had entered our solar system. It had searched for intelligent life, or what the Oumuamuaians considered intelligent life, and, finding nothing worthwhile, nothing notable, nothing to extraterrestrially write home about, it simply accelerated and left.
Of course, such interstellar treatment immediately reminded me of Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta: Personal, psychological, historical documents relating to visit by Johot (George Sherban) Emissary (Grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days by Doris Lessing, where Rohanda (later named Shikasta, and even later named Earth) is visited by the Canopean Empire. However — and this is where our fates diverge — whereas Canopus saw something of value in Rohanda and encouraged the evolution of those pre-humans, the oumuamuaians have taken the opposite stance: we would be a waste of their time and effort and power. We were, in a word, a disappointment.
• • •
To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
