Hey, Ivan Seeking,
Nice lively little chat you've got going here. It's an old idea but you cast it in a nice refreshing coat of paint. I like your casual reference to the ETs having to overcome light speed, since that is the obvious prerequisite from our less-than-100-yr-lifespan point of view. A nasty little detail that the ET-philes never seem to grasp. So it nails that issue squarely on the head.
What is amazingly similar about the CRAZY NUTTY and sometimes FREAKING PSYCHO ideation of ETs -and- the similarly COMPLETELY INSANE idea of this God of mythical proportions is: they arise completely out of stories we heard (generally in our youth when we were impressionable).
Who even used the word "flying saucer" until it came up in some early science fiction? Let's see: there was Isaac Asimov and his Foundation series (all human knowledge is condensed into a sacred library, then hidden away on a secret planet where none of the PSYCHOS will come after it and burn the books). And of course you had Orson Wells and his magical mystery tour when "1100 kilo cycles on your radio dial" (or some such station) was the rage of the day, you know, to get Ma and Pa Kettle a little worked up after spending the day watching Old Blue yawn and scratch his ear.
So those ideas were entirely planted in the public psyche by entertainers, nothing more, and yet people still gobble this stuff up like it's ambrosia from the PSYCHO-sphere.
Then, as I said, the Thumpers, I mean the get-down-and-pound-that-leather-covered-Good-Book crowd... what did they do when Ma 'n Pa were warming up by the heaters in the radio set? Maybe a nice coloring book scene of this poor dude being tortured and mutilated, wow, don't let the kids watch dirty movies of Fred and Ginger when they could be in the world of their coloring book reliving the most HEINOUS SADO MASOCHISTIC story ever told. That and all the little lambs, and gentle stable animals that will be led to their SLAUGHTER or IMMOLATION in adjoining stories of this wonderful God who keeps involving people in the MURDER OF THEIR CHILDREN, not to mention He Himself taking a personal role in turning whole communities into PILLARS OF SALT and creating other incentives toward right thinking, by preparing a LAKE OF FIRE TO BE CAST INTO WITH A BRIMSTONE AROUND YOUR NECK.
I think the worst of aliens were less scary, although monster movies like the Mummy and Frankenstein seemed to evoke a lot of ideas about RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD, still, the prospects for quality of life seem to have been rendered in a perhaps startling realism for a kid who may have until then believed heaven was rendered something like CANDYLAND.
By the way, my use of caps is not to annoy the readers, but to effectuate the incantations I am making with each, so as to ward off the ETs who might otherwise track me down by my IP addr and come at me for my neural tissue.
All seriousness aside. It's the same, isn't it? Tell a story, and if it's scary enough, it just never goes away.
Amen, bro. Perfect call.
