Martian Linguistics

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(Simon Conway Morris, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, University of Cambridge)

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(Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford)

Ideas of <> and <> are key to the project of seeking life on other planets. US Air Force encounters with flying saucers after 1945 and the search for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), pursued since 1960, both point to the necessity of composing and understanding interplanetary languages to allow meaningful exchange if contact were ever established. These themes are also explored in science fiction stories across the period to the present, responding to the changing understanding of the possibility of communication. This book traces the major questions that structure the search, together with the episodes raising (and dashing) hope of contact, the languages proposed as means of exchange, and some of the novels that explore this history. Taken together, these elements pose the question: can we ever cross the boundary between our and other minds?