If humans were to create some kind of intelligent life form, what would it look like? My niece, who is still very young, once asked me this question. “Would you like to live inside a dolphin?”
I answered, “That sounds like fun.” But to be honest, I wasn’t that excited. I felt rather uneasy about it. I feel like there’s something strange about alien-like life forms. Perhaps it is because their appearance and nature are different from that of humans.
They don’t look human, so they aren’t human. In other words, they are “aliens,” and I feel that danger lurks there. This idea was not just a fantasy. For years I had envisioned writing a book about the possibility of earthlings encountering aliens. I think my niece’s words hit at the heart of the subject I had in mind. In a way, I think humans are becoming more like “aliens.” We have been on the brink of extinction many times, and what if we create an organism that looks nothing like us? It would be a completely different life form, and we ourselves might become one. And it would definitely be dangerous.
