First, there was Stephen Hawking’s April 2010 warning to avoid contact with aliens from space.
Then in September we have Mazlan Othman, Director of the Office for Outer Space Affairs for the United Nations purportedly saying we need to be ready to meet and great aliens when they come to Earth. Mazlan’s office eventually convened an October press conference to explain what she really meant to say. Mazlan categorically denied “that she had been appointed or would in the future be appointed as an ambassador for extraterritorial life forms…” (Why not? The UN wants to be in charge of everything anyway!)
Today we have a newly released film, Skyline, quoting Stephen Hawking’s comments about aliens are not necessarily good.
cp
A hat-tip to Hawking
National Post (Canada), p. B2.
by Chris Knight
November 12, 2010
The astrophysicist’s warnings become a sci-fi reality in Skyline
“Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and arguably one of the smartest people on the planet, warned us about the possibility of aliens from outer space.” So begins the teaser trailer for Skyline, a science-fiction alien invasion movie that opened today without any advance screenings for critics. (See the Post’s review in Monday’s paper.)
The film may be science-fiction, but the quotation is science-fact. Hawking did in fact release a statement some time ago in which he suggested that first contact with intelligent aliens might have the same effect on us Terrans as first contact with Europeans had on First Nations people. “Maybe we should have listened,” the trailer continues bleakly, before showing crowds of people being unceremoniously vacuumed up into giant, decidedly unfriendly looking alien ships.
So: Do aliens suck? Well, a second trailer is still pretty tight-lipped about what’s going on in the film, but this much is certain. (1) Blue lights fall from the sky — first over Los Angeles, of course, which is Ground Zero for most alien takeover plans, but eventually across the planet. (2) Big ships follow, with that hyperreal look we’ve come to expect from the likes of District 9 and Monsters — both of which, like this movie, feature lots of special effects but few recognizable stars. (3) Let the vacuuming begin.
