She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing f… - David Brin

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world.

All right, she said. You've convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.

And yet we’ve flashed from caveman to world wrecker in just three hundred generations. One moment there are these barefoot Neolithic hunters, bickering over a frozen caribou carcass. Turn around, and their children’s children talk about tapping energy from pulsars.

Way back, about a century ago, physicist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues, taking a lunch break from the Manhattan Project, found themselves discussing life in the cosmos. Some younger scientists claimed that amid trillions of stars there should be countless living worlds inhabited by intelligent races, far older than ours. How interesting the future might be, with others to talk to! Fermi listened patiently, then asked: “So? Shouldn’t we have heard their messages by now? Seen their great works? Or stumbled on residue of past visits? These wondrous others … where are they?” His question has been called the Great Silence, the SETI Dilemma or Fermi Paradox. And as enthusiasts keep scanning the sky, the galaxy’s eerie hush grows more alarming.