"And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill"

And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill is a short story about a reporter going to a service port full of spaceships to try and find someone to interview. He finds a drunken, bitter

man in uniform and asks him about the aliens around the port. Rather than getting a simple answer, the reporter gets a life story and lesson from the man about the human race’s unhealthy infatuation with aliens, going beyond sexual to just pure obsession.

This brought something to light that I had never considered: people’s obsession with aliens may not be reciprocated. Aliens may find humans boring, worthless, or dumb. If we were to discover an alien race, we’d be fascinated with the first lifeforms in space we find. The aliens, though, may’ve mastered space travel and humans may mean nothing to them. This imbalance could lead to a subservient position for the human race, desperate to do anything to not lose this new connection and opportunity.

People have always been obsessed with the unknown, and aliens are entirely unknown. It’s no surprise that both people in this short story and most likely people in real life latch on to the idea of alien life forms with such vigor. There was a lot about sex in this short story, which I don’t really care to read about, and the interviewer even comments on the man’s fixation with the topic. Yet, the story then shows how the problem isn’t with the sex itself, it’s just the human fixation on the alien.

We often think about aliens and what we would do, but it’s always interesting to ponder what aliens would think of us.