Perhaps stating the obvious here, but this is one of my favourite stories, so forgive me for feeling sharey. The best part of this is the utter simplicity—the defining quality, I believe, of good writing and good code alike. It turns the point of view around and slaps the unsuspecting reader with the understanding of just how little we can suppose of what life is like capital-E Elsewhere. If and when at last we get the chance to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species—assuming of course that we make it that far—the political and linguistic challenges will be fascinatingly unprecedented, and I can only hope I’m alive for it all.
As a side note, if anyone is hiring for a First Contact Emergency Linguistics Squad, I am permanently available for such a position. ;)
I am going to win an award for nitpicking, which is hard to do around here, but IT BURNS, so:
This story is entitled "They're Made Out Of Meat," just as it was when I first read it over a decade ago. It is not entitled "They're Made of Meat".
Yes, I know. But if you can't understand why someone might care about the difference, dare I suggest that you're not a writer? ;)
(The story is built around this phrase; the repetitions of the refrain in your head in an incredulous voice is half the point of the story. Every syllable must be presumed to be carefully chosen, and I agree with the author's choice.)
Though the picture is poor on that video, I think that adaptation is great, actually, and regularly show it to friends. I first discovered it when it was featured on BoingBoing (http://boingboing.net/2006/05/04/terry-bissons-theyre.html). Sadly, the high quality version has been lost to the copyright hammer. I wish someone had a backup somewhere...
This reminds me of a Fredric Brown short story I can't remember the name of in which an entity travelling through the galaxies encounters a planet upon which consciousnesses are, surprisingly, encased in finite bits of matter. There is matter, and there is consciousness, but never had this entity seen the two in some combination.
I don't know if there's a real "who came first" in speculative fiction, but I often think Brown's ideas were truly innovative. For instance, in his 1954 (very) short story "Answer", we see the basis for Skynet, and I've been as yet unable to find an earlier instance of this idea. http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm
Interesting! Asimov's "The Last Question" came out two years later. The title and the content are so similar - I wonder if Asimov was familiar with "Answer".
"Answer" is one of my favorites as well. Brown specialised in short shorts. Somewhere I have a collection of his where every other story is one of those. My favorite being, in it's entirety:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room; there was a knock on the door."
One of my absolute favorite short-stories. First came across it when I was on a SciFi reading rampage around the age of 8 or 9yrs old.. it completely struck me then, and still does each time I come across it again.
I owe it in part to SciFi stories and books like this for shattering any chance I had of narrow-minded thinking in life, and bringing perspective to Humans as a species and our place in the cosmos.
Completely agree. I too, discovered this story around that age, and I have always remembered it with clarity and passion. The other scifi short story I will never forget is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Not the same topic, but the same sort of punch in very few words.
Why? Are you so sure of your intellectual position (a position which, I disclaim, I happen to think is considerably more likely than the alternative) that you experience dissonance at the idea of space-going intelligences believing in God?
Religion is not going to disappear because humans go to the stars, either.
Ohmigod makes pretty clear that it’s about expressing surprise and astonishment, not any actual call to a deity. Even Oh my god is usually not understood as an actual call to a god. There are certainly people who do not believe in god but nevertheless use Oh my god from time to time – like myself.
Writing it differently severs any connection to god. Maybe that’s the purpose of writing it like that. It’s an exclamation that’s supposed to show surprise and astonishment, the content doesn’t matter.
Did you just say what I was implying and use it to defend the opposite point?
My/his point was that writing "oh my god" as "ohmigod" made the alien sound like a teenage girl, not that the possible appeal to a deity had any relevance to the story.
Yeah, it completely broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Here are beings that consider meat so far beneath themselves that they would rather forget the thinking meat ever existed than establish contact, but at the same time they use the interjections of a teen girl.
I partly agree, but presumably we don't expect them to actually be speaking English either. I would have thought it implied some kind of similar expression of general surprise, although honestly it didn't bother me all that much when I read it.
Let's consider it a somewhat free transcription and translation. Aliens who are astounded at the notion of thinking meat aren't going to be communicating in English.
I don't understand why a species would find an intelligent meat race so surprising and revolting if there are other species that go through a meat phase or are partially made of meat.
The video of this is often linked when people use the term "Meat Cloud" to describe tech companies who throw bodies at problems instead of process and automation.
I don't know where, but I did have a subscription to Omni when I was in 5th grade but that was 1986 or so. More likely I read it in the early days of the internet (pre-browser), when text was king and copyright nonexistent; when people painstakingly typed in great articles and bits of fiction like this one into the darkness of their computer screens at 2 AM.</i>
Note to danec: if you read this, it looks like your account was flagged between ~567 and ~579 days ago. Possibly someone didn't like an article you submitted, or your URL triggered an algorithm ("business opportunities" might be in some Bayesian phrase database or something).
This has been always one of my very favorite stories ever. Its how I convince people that sci-fi isn't just for geeks.
Challenging, funny, deeply thought-provoking. Its just the one of the best things ever. I never tire of reading it and people I tell about it come back and invariably rave about how great it is. I've had quite a few converts to the whole panoply of "speculative fiction" from their exposure to this wonderful little gem.
Sci-fi is only for geeks because when something gets accepted into the canon of good literature, we stop calling it sci-fi. The stuff that's left, that only geeks like, is "sci-fi".
Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, Gravity's Rainbow, etc. aren't usually what the label conjures up.
Salman Rushdie started as a Sci-fi author. Then he moved into "Magic realism", which is Fantasy without the barbarians and buxom wenches (or more eloquently written barbarians and buxom wenches).
"Literature" is the label for works that are good enough that everyone should read them, not just genre fans. "Romance", "Sci fi", "Travel", "Crime", "Comedy", "Detective", "Drama" and so on are works that aren't good enough for everyone to read.
Of course, there's writers who hack their way into the "Literature" section by imitating the quirks of a genuine pieces of literature, or just avoiding all the other categories.
No, "Literature" is the label for works of middle-class introspection, whereas "Genre" fictions are books that are about any other subject matter.
If you move from actually having a subject to making your subject a metaphor for middle-class internal conflicts, you have made the move from Genre to Lit.
Yes, that's why I refer to the kind of works you mention with the label "speculative fiction". They are really sci-fi but they have reached a level of social import and acceptance -- upon which they get labelled as "speculative fiction" rather than "sci-fi".
"Speculative" is just used to bring fantasy and alternative history and other "what if the world worked under different rules? " material under the same umbrella as lasers and robots and starships. It is not a marker of quality level.
I don't know where, but I did have a subscription to Omni when I was in 5th grade but that was 1986 or so. More likely I read it in the early days of the internet (pre-browser), when text was king and copyright nonexistent; when people painstakingly typed in great articles and bits of fiction like this one into the darkness of their computer screens at 2 AM.
Wow, this is a classic. It's been ages since I first read it.
Awesome to see the author has published it under a creative commons license.
Wonder how many great short SF stories people will never get to read because they are locked up under copyright without ever getting reprinted.
I assume none, because sci-fi readers tend not to be hampered by copyright.
Anyone who likes this would also probably enjoy Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad [1], which is the same conceit writ large. I highly recommend it.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Cyberiad-Stanislaw-Lem/dp/B005DI94CE/r...
Perhaps stating the obvious here, but this is one of my favourite stories, so forgive me for feeling sharey. The best part of this is the utter simplicity—the defining quality, I believe, of good writing and good code alike. It turns the point of view around and slaps the unsuspecting reader with the understanding of just how little we can suppose of what life is like capital-E Elsewhere. If and when at last we get the chance to make contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species—assuming of course that we make it that far—the political and linguistic challenges will be fascinatingly unprecedented, and I can only hope I’m alive for it all.
As a side note, if anyone is hiring for a First Contact Emergency Linguistics Squad, I am permanently available for such a position. ;)
And if hiring for first contact Emergency psych trauma.. count me in..:-P
> if anyone is hiring for a First Contact Emergency Linguistics Squad, I am permanently available for such a position.
I'd like to see your resume. So I could show it to a group of randomly selected passengers at the international terminal. And a dolphin.
I am going to win an award for nitpicking, which is hard to do around here, but IT BURNS, so:
This story is entitled "They're Made Out Of Meat," just as it was when I first read it over a decade ago. It is not entitled "They're Made of Meat".
Yes, I know. But if you can't understand why someone might care about the difference, dare I suggest that you're not a writer? ;)
(The story is built around this phrase; the repetitions of the refrain in your head in an incredulous voice is half the point of the story. Every syllable must be presumed to be carefully chosen, and I agree with the author's choice.)
Seconded. Could an admin please change the story title?
Sorry! The edit button expired. Admin please help :\
Heh, I realized what story it was as this page was loading. It has been a while!
A pretty bad short film adaption
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE
I rather liked it, a bit dated maybe.
Though the picture is poor on that video, I think that adaptation is great, actually, and regularly show it to friends. I first discovered it when it was featured on BoingBoing (http://boingboing.net/2006/05/04/terry-bissons-theyre.html). Sadly, the high quality version has been lost to the copyright hammer. I wish someone had a backup somewhere...
http://youtu.be/QnFSqVfNrXY seems an oddly appropriate adaption.
This reminds me of a Fredric Brown short story I can't remember the name of in which an entity travelling through the galaxies encounters a planet upon which consciousnesses are, surprisingly, encased in finite bits of matter. There is matter, and there is consciousness, but never had this entity seen the two in some combination.
I don't know if there's a real "who came first" in speculative fiction, but I often think Brown's ideas were truly innovative. For instance, in his 1954 (very) short story "Answer", we see the basis for Skynet, and I've been as yet unable to find an earlier instance of this idea. http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm
Interesting! Asimov's "The Last Question" came out two years later. The title and the content are so similar - I wonder if Asimov was familiar with "Answer".
"Answer" is one of my favorites as well. Brown specialised in short shorts. Somewhere I have a collection of his where every other story is one of those. My favorite being, in it's entirety:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room; there was a knock on the door."
YES! i heard this (with great sound effects to boot) on npr's studio 360 a couple of months ago:
http://www.studio360.org/2011/nov/04/theyre-made-out-of-meat...
I read the story in Omni when it was first published, but forgot about it until I heard it on studio360.
I watched a version or two on youtube after, but I think the studio360 radio version is better. My son liked it too, he was laughing.
One of my absolute favorite short-stories. First came across it when I was on a SciFi reading rampage around the age of 8 or 9yrs old.. it completely struck me then, and still does each time I come across it again.
I owe it in part to SciFi stories and books like this for shattering any chance I had of narrow-minded thinking in life, and bringing perspective to Humans as a species and our place in the cosmos.
Completely agree. I too, discovered this story around that age, and I have always remembered it with clarity and passion. The other scifi short story I will never forget is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Not the same topic, but the same sort of punch in very few words.
I have my own version of this, if you prefer your short stories sung to the tune of old country songs...
http://flurf.net/batpage/TerryBissonMeetsAnOldCowpoke
Loved it! But the "omigod"s threw me off...
It's creative commons. Fork it ;)
Why? Are you so sure of your intellectual position (a position which, I disclaim, I happen to think is considerably more likely than the alternative) that you experience dissonance at the idea of space-going intelligences believing in God?
Religion is not going to disappear because humans go to the stars, either.
I think it's not so much religion as the usual connotations of the phrase, particularly as seen online (OMG).
'Ohmigod' != 'Oh my god'. The meaning of the phrase is beside the point.
Ohmigod makes pretty clear that it’s about expressing surprise and astonishment, not any actual call to a deity. Even Oh my god is usually not understood as an actual call to a god. There are certainly people who do not believe in god but nevertheless use Oh my god from time to time – like myself.
Writing it differently severs any connection to god. Maybe that’s the purpose of writing it like that. It’s an exclamation that’s supposed to show surprise and astonishment, the content doesn’t matter.
Did you just say what I was implying and use it to defend the opposite point?
My/his point was that writing "oh my god" as "ohmigod" made the alien sound like a teenage girl, not that the possible appeal to a deity had any relevance to the story.
Yeah, it completely broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Here are beings that consider meat so far beneath themselves that they would rather forget the thinking meat ever existed than establish contact, but at the same time they use the interjections of a teen girl.
I partly agree, but presumably we don't expect them to actually be speaking English either. I would have thought it implied some kind of similar expression of general surprise, although honestly it didn't bother me all that much when I read it.
They're also speaking English. Does that not throw you off?
Accept it as an adaptation, a translation. Would a боже мой! be better?
Let's consider it a somewhat free transcription and translation. Aliens who are astounded at the notion of thinking meat aren't going to be communicating in English.
I don't understand why a species would find an intelligent meat race so surprising and revolting if there are other species that go through a meat phase or are partially made of meat.
Perhaps because those those species are borderline atrocious, but their non-meat parts is what keeps them within the realm of what is reasonable?
Brilliant! Has the feel of a classic Asimov story.
That is because it is very similar to an actual short story written by Asimov. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_This_Thing_Called_Love...
I can't find that story online, but it has a similar ending vis-a-vis the alien's decision.
Famous people tend to get credit for their whole genre.
The video of this is often linked when people use the term "Meat Cloud" to describe tech companies who throw bodies at problems instead of process and automation.
Wow I've never read this before. Simply amazing. So succinct, yet so powerful.
First time for me too. I agree, its a brilliant piece of writing.
if you like this, you might also like; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(novel)
I found a better version and with better cast. Its in Black-n-White though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-9t9BIBLKw
Dead comment:
danec 2 hours ago | link [dead]
Thanks for linking to this story!
I remember reading this a long, long, time ago.
I don't know where, but I did have a subscription to Omni when I was in 5th grade but that was 1986 or so. More likely I read it in the early days of the internet (pre-browser), when text was king and copyright nonexistent; when people painstakingly typed in great articles and bits of fiction like this one into the darkness of their computer screens at 2 AM.</i>
Note to danec: if you read this, it looks like your account was flagged between ~567 and ~579 days ago. Possibly someone didn't like an article you submitted, or your URL triggered an algorithm ("business opportunities" might be in some Bayesian phrase database or something).
This has been always one of my very favorite stories ever. Its how I convince people that sci-fi isn't just for geeks.
Challenging, funny, deeply thought-provoking. Its just the one of the best things ever. I never tire of reading it and people I tell about it come back and invariably rave about how great it is. I've had quite a few converts to the whole panoply of "speculative fiction" from their exposure to this wonderful little gem.
Sci-fi is only for geeks because when something gets accepted into the canon of good literature, we stop calling it sci-fi. The stuff that's left, that only geeks like, is "sci-fi".
Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, Gravity's Rainbow, etc. aren't usually what the label conjures up.
Salman Rushdie started as a Sci-fi author. Then he moved into "Magic realism", which is Fantasy without the barbarians and buxom wenches (or more eloquently written barbarians and buxom wenches).
"Literature" is the label for works that are good enough that everyone should read them, not just genre fans. "Romance", "Sci fi", "Travel", "Crime", "Comedy", "Detective", "Drama" and so on are works that aren't good enough for everyone to read.
Of course, there's writers who hack their way into the "Literature" section by imitating the quirks of a genuine pieces of literature, or just avoiding all the other categories.
No, "Literature" is the label for works of middle-class introspection, whereas "Genre" fictions are books that are about any other subject matter.
If you move from actually having a subject to making your subject a metaphor for middle-class internal conflicts, you have made the move from Genre to Lit.
DAAAAMMN thats a fine definition.
Yes, that's why I refer to the kind of works you mention with the label "speculative fiction". They are really sci-fi but they have reached a level of social import and acceptance -- upon which they get labelled as "speculative fiction" rather than "sci-fi".
"Speculative" is just used to bring fantasy and alternative history and other "what if the world worked under different rules? " material under the same umbrella as lasers and robots and starships. It is not a marker of quality level.
Never said it was a marker of anything. There's good and bad speculative fiction like there's good and bad any other sort of fiction.
You probably already know it, but in case you don't: you'll like http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html as well.
I read this a long time ago but was never able to find it again. Thank you so much for the link! It's such a powerful short story.
Yes, I knew this one. What is scary is that I have dreams like this. Which is the point, I guess.
Thanks for linking to this story!
I remember reading this a long, long, time ago.
I don't know where, but I did have a subscription to Omni when I was in 5th grade but that was 1986 or so. More likely I read it in the early days of the internet (pre-browser), when text was king and copyright nonexistent; when people painstakingly typed in great articles and bits of fiction like this one into the darkness of their computer screens at 2 AM.
Keep going!! It's like a sequel to the Twilight Zone "How To Serve Man" episode... very cool. Lots of places to go here.
This is an old short story, published over 20 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theyre_Made_Out_of_Meat
http://goo.gl/pJUlD
All rightie then.. I think I need to step away from the keyboard and pay attention to real-life for a bit... :-|
Apostrophe http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theyre_Made_Out_of_Meat
So much more easy to read ths on an iPad safari in reader mode :-)