Posthuman Blues

Are we sharing the planet with "aliens"?

There's a new book called "The Hair of the Alien" that supposedly offers forensic evidence of nonhuman visitation. The "alien" in question is a so-called "Nordic" -- one of the tall, blond humanoids encountered working alongside the archetypical "Grays" in many abduction narratives.

Perusing the author's blog, I found an illustration showing the supposed ET. Instead of fitting the Nordic stereotype, she strongly reminds me of descriptions of human/Gray transgenic hybrids (a subject explored in detail in Budd Hopkins' 1987 book "Intruders" and more recently in "Sight Unseen," coauthored with Carol Rainey).

The UFO mythos is full of strangely mannered beings that seem like crosses between homo sapiens and big-headed "Grays." One of my favorite accounts is the now-classic account of Antonio Villas-Boas, who supposedly encountered a gorgeous -- if unusual -- woman aboard a landed (?) UFO. They had sex, leaving Villas-Boas feeling as if he'd been used solely as breeding stock.

If copulation was the purpose of the abduction, it's probable Villas-Boas was right. But more disturbing is the implication that Villas-Boas and his seductress were genetically compatible, which would be radically unlikely if his encounter involved extraterrestrials. As bizarre as it seems, a more likely explanation for Villas-Boas' experience is that he mated with an unknown offshoot of the human species -- which in turn invites the idea that "they" might be living among us, camouflaged by an advanced technology. The idea may be less strange than it appears; in fact, it may prove significantly more plausible than the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Assuming, for sake of argument, that we share the planet with intelligent humanoids, their ability to hide would hinge, to a large degree, on their level of technological advancement. Humans (as we know them) seem to be only decades away from a technological "Singularity" with the potential to bend our evolutionary trajectory into a "postbiological" state. According to futurists such as Ray Kurzweil and Max More, it's entirely possible that humans just one- or two-hundred years from now might possess abilities that would seem truly godlike even to denizens of our jaded, science-driven age. Therefore it's not unreasonable to postulate an unseen civilization in our midst -- perhaps living in space colonies, clandestine underground settlements, or even at the bottoms of lakes and oceans.*

Arthur C. Clarke is fond of reminding us of the "magical" qualities associated with a sufficiently advanced technology. Given the present onrush of scientific achievement, it might behoove ufologists to rethink our presumed status as Earth's dominant species.

*See "Invisible Residents," zoologist Ivan Sanderson's treatise on underwater intelligences.