The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 3, 2006

Official News - page 2

THE TENACITY OF TERRESTRIAL LIFEFORMS

by Hazed

When humankind first ventured out of the Solar System and started to visit and colonize planets in other star systems, there was a great deal of fear of alien lifeforms. Humans had always been prone to a rather ugly xenophobia, and once they came into contact with the multitude of races out there in the Galaxy, worries about skin color seemed mild compared to the hysteria some people went into at the sight of a tentacle or an aural fringe!

It wasn't just intelligent aliens that humans feared. There was a great deal of concern about plants and animals which, were they brought back to Earth and the other Sol planets, would wreak havoc with the native ecosystems and wipe out terrestrial species. To give the humans' ancestors their due, this wasn't just mindless species-ism; there were grounds for concern. There were plenty of examples in Earth's history where the exploration of the globe, particularly during the Victorian age of adventure, had seen plant and animal species taken from their native lands to other countries, sometimes with catastrophic results. It was not unnatural, then, to anticipate some problems from an alien giant hogweed equivalent!

Nobody could have anticipated what actually happened. The reality is that far from Earth species being threatened by alien interlopers, it's the terrestrial plants and animals that do the threatening. For reasons nobody has been able to explain, flora and fauna from the humans' native planet is extremely hardy and adaptable. It has proved capable of thriving in many different alien environments, and unless steps are taken to resist it, it overtakes the native species on the planet and replaces them. Some alien plants and animals are now extinct, having been entirely replaced by the Earth equivalents. I, and many others, regret that we will never again be able to taste the Capellan Vjattz, a succulent tree rodent which has been completed supplanted by the far less tasty squirrel from Earth!

Incidentally, social commentators have drawn analogies between this astonishing plant and animal virility, and the way humans spread rapidly throughout the Galaxy to become the dominant species, both politically and economically. But that's an argument that brings rival sociologists to blows, so let's not go into it now!


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page