The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

Alien . . .

What does alien mean to you? Alien corn . . . alien concept . . . alien national . . . alien life form?

Bug eyed monsters, giant squid, robots, supermen, fallout mutations? Snakes, cannibals. Communists, sexual deviants? What shape or posture triggers your recoil from stranger-danger?

Alien: alien . . . adj. 1) Belonging or pertaining to another; strange; foreign; esp. not belonging or owing allegiance to the same country; belonging to the citizens of a foreign state. 2) Wholly different in nature; incongruous; ... n. 1) A person of another family, race or nation. 2) A foreign-born resident of a country in which he does not possess the privileges of a citizen. 3) One excluded from certain privileges; one estranged, as from royal favor. . . .

(Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary)

There were three kinds of aliens in “Fortress Ship”: the Berserker, the offstage extraterrestrials, and the dog-ape Newton. The next selection contains still another kind of alienism—and an alienist.