Alien Love in a Future World Part 4: Finale

Thank you all for following the Alien Love in a Future World series here on Nero's Niche.

It seems this week was a slow week for the survey so the results from the last post still stand.

Overall, I'm happy to see that most of the responses were positive in terms of being open to the possibilities that the future may bring to people. Often in science fiction, inter-species relationships are used to illustrate the inter-racial and inter-cultural relationships that occur right now here on Earth. That my survey got any negative results at all was a bit of a surprise in this regard.

One of the classic roles of science fiction is to illustrate what might be and to serve as a mirror for society. As a genre science fiction, and speculative fiction as a whole, show us that no matter the time or place people are people. It's an important message, and one that illustrates we are connected to both the people who have come before us and those who are yet to be born. On an even broader scale, romantic elements and themes in science fiction are even more important. That we can imagine being in love with a space alien, or even a digital intelligence, shows that there is a possibility of love, at least on some level, is a universal capacity.

One day we may (probably) meet intelligences other than those born here on Earth, and we will definitely live among those not born but made by our own hands in the near future. People often say that when we do live among those so different from us, we will have problems getting along due to the basic "alienness" between us. I can't deny there will be issues, but at least where space aliens are concerned we will have some common ground. All living things need food, shelter, and some means of reproduction. Complex, self-aware living things will need a means of getting along—an ability to serve mutual interest—to carry out that reproduction and to have an advanced society at all. It gives me hope to think that when we reach the point where we do need to learn to live among them, the capacity for love and romance could serve as a basis for common ground.

Below are the final results of the survey, reproduced for your convenience.