If scientists ever found an extraterrestrial being, what would it be like? A slow-blinking, long-fingered fellow like Steven Spielberg's E.T.? A wisecracking fur ball with a snout, like TV's Alf? A way serious pointy-eared genius like Mr. Spock from Star Trek?
No one knows the answer yet. But Bruce Coville can't stop thinking about it. He has dreamed up plenty of alien characters for his award-winning books, which include My Teacher Is an Alien, My Teacher Glows in the Dark, and Aliens Ate My Homework. He is convinced that if humans ever find aliens, the aliens will be very smart.
"Any alien culture that could get here would be way ahead of us in technology and civilization," he told TFK last week. "The idea that they would come here and not understand anything about our culture is ridiculous. It's not very imaginative."
Inventing Space Aliens
Coville spends a lot of time imagining why aliens would want to visit planet Earth. "It would have to be because they see us as dangerous," he says. "We make them nervous. We are, maybe, the only creatures capable of space travel who are still uncivilized enough to have wars."
Coville thinks an alien's looks should give clues to the kind of planet it came from. For instance, in Coville's "The Search for Snout," an alien called a chibble has a second, big-eyed body, called Seymour, to do its thinking. The chibble's planet trains the mental masters of the galaxy.
One of Coville's favorite movie scenes is from Star Wars. In the scene, Han Solo stops at a space hangout and meets lots of weird-looking life-forms. "That scene shows how the evolution of different creatures would be based on where they're from," he says.
So is Coville just playing make-believe to invent characters for his books? Or does he really expect humans to find intelligent life on other planets?
"Absolutely there's life out there," he says. "I think it's less likely we'll find something than something else will find us. The question is whether they'll want to talk to us or not."
Maybe they'll just want to read our books.