Caitlín R. Kiernan

I’m reasoning by analogy here: the question is whether our species ever becomes as tenacious in the galaxy as life has become on our planet. The Earth has experienced catastrophes that wiped out 90% of all species, shrugged, and kept going. I don’t think our current civilization could do that— we’re shortsightedly wrecking the only biosphere we have right now— but if we don’t annihilate ourselves in the next thousand years, we might develop that capacity. The universe is a very hostile place (Philip Plait’s Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End gives lots of great examples), but if we get to the point that we can adapt ourselves consciously to changing conditions, we might very well become like cosmic mildew, always coming back even after getting hosed down by a gamma-ray burster. The analogy only holds, though, if we are as willing to change as much as life does to cope with changing conditions, and that could mean leaving behind many traits we currently see as fundamental to being human.