What Will They Look Like?

Abstract

This is the problem, met eyeball to eyeball (if, indeed, they have eyeballs at all!). We can easily see what they won’t look like: they won’t look like people, or indeed vertebrates – or insects, or echinoderms, or coelenterates… But I called my early lectures – and my book – “What Does a Martian Look Like?” and that meant that we could cheat: a beginning could be made with Martians… Possibly, on the one hand, they’re bacteria like ours, infected from Earth – or it may be that bacteria from early Mars infected Earth, so that we are the Martians! But that’s a trick, only applicable to Martians. How can we tell what real aliens look like?