The Hercules Text

Author: Jack Mcdevitt

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been underway for over five decades now. (For real, that is!) Somewhere out there, we thinkhope? fear?there may be life forms, alien but intelligent, who are sending out signals that tell us that we're not utterly alone in this vast universe. But what might they be telling us? The Hercules Array (we're in fictional territory now, in case you hadn't noticed) picks up what looks like an intelligent signal, and soon that's followed by a huge data dump, the Hercules Textall in need of being decoded and analyzed for what it might contain. When the decoding's done, it turns out that it contains not only the answers to just about every unanswered question about physics and the universe, but also about life and how to manipulate it. All the knowledge of the universe apparently at our fingertips. Now, what would you do with that? And, to ask a much more interesting question, why has this information been sent out for everybody capable of deciphering it to have? Why it's on the list: Because it asks some damn good questions, especially about the potential intentions with regards to us of anything ET. It also asks whether it's actually a good thing for us to know literally everything about the physical universe that there is to know. Can we handle this knowledge at our current stage of development? Read if you like: SETI related fiction. Thrilling, yet thoughtful, near-future SF.