They’re Made Out Of Meat and the absurdity of human nature

The greatest thing about short stories is that they can pack a punch in very few words. This format allows for greater versatility in storytelling, relying less on the narrative prose to deliver the message.

Terry Bisson’s short story They’re Made Out Of Meat is one of the best examples of this. It is told entirely in dialogues. Two extraterrestrial beings discuss their discovery of the human race and comment on the strangeness of our species. This short piece is amusing and provoking, and we’re about to explore the implications of this alien conversation.

I should issue a spoiler alert, but the story is really short, and you can read it for free here.

If you haven’t done it yet, I highly recommend it. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

This is The Science of Fiction.

Full short story: They’re Made Out of Meat

We’re made out of meat

We never get a description of the aliens in the story, but one thing is painfully clear: they’re not like us. And by ‘like us,’ I mean carbon-based individuals. 

In fact, it seems that, in Bisson’s universe, carbon is not the basic ingredient of life, as we assume here on Earth. An understandable assumption, I may add. All complex life we know of is made out of meat! However, the extension of this hypothesis to all life, even that which we don’t know, is called Carbon Chauvinism, a term coined by none other than Carl Sagan in the 1970s.

When advocating for the search for extraterrestrial life, Sagan pointed out that restricting the search to carbon-based life forms would limit our potential for contact and maybe lead us to miss the opportunity of getting in touch with other beings simply because we could not recognize the possibility of life.

Bisson plays with this idea in this short story, subverting the hypothesis to present a universe in which carbon-based life is not actually common. Some species undergo a meat stage in their development, while others have meat body parts. But investigating our call is the first time these aliens encounter an all-meat species. And they’re disgusted by us.

Do you know what the life-span of meat is?

If not meat, what else? Today, researchers have speculated that silicon could be as good a building block for life as carbon is. In fact, even on Earth, there are species of microorganisms and sea sponges that have support structures made of silica.

The study on the possible biochemicals that ignite life tackles the fundamental question of what life is. How has life come to be?

We once believed Earth was the center of the universe. Then the Sun, then the galaxy… And today, we understand there is no center. There’s nothing privileged in our position in the Cosmos. It could be the same with life. Carbon is the fundamental building block of life on Earth, but maybe there’s nothing special about it. Maybe there exist sentient beings in a form beyond our imagination. 

Alone in the universe

The aliens in the story never responded to our call out. They visited, sure. They even probed some individuals. But, in the end, they decided against initiating contact. Worst of all, they chose to isolate us from the rest of the galaxy’s social life, relegating our species to a dark corner of the universe.

Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone.

The story indirectly gives us an answer to the famous Fermi Paradox. Life should be pretty common in the galaxy, so ‘Where is everybody?’ 

Well, they simply don’t want to talk to us. Not because they are hiding, afraid of dangerous civilizations, or lurking in preparation for an attack like in the Dark Forest Theory. They see us but want nothing to do with us. 

This situation fits into the Zoo Hypothesis, although for less noble reasons. This hypothesis proposes that extraterrestrial intelligent life avoids contact to allow the human race to experience natural development without interference. However, in They’re Made Out of Meat, the reason is pure disgust. 

The xenophobia displayed by the aliens proves them not to be as great as they think they are. Despite the different morphology, this attitude is a super meathead thing to do.

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That’s it for today, folks.

One of the most fascinating aspects of science fiction is this potential to put a different perspective into a situation so basic that we barely spare a thought to wonder about what else. They’re Made Out of Meat is one of those stories.

If there’s a short story you would like to see here on The Science of Fiction series, let me know. I adore reading short fiction, way more than novel-length stories. So it would be a treat!

See you next post,

Ra.

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Carla Ra is a scientist by day, sci-fi writer by night.

You can check out her anthology ARTIFICIAL REBELLION here.