Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:m27ihfongv.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> ted@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) writes:
 
>> In article <qp9nq39ul2n5no3825bdtkr4usanj4l3f6@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>> David Johnston  <david@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>>>On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:04:17 +0100, Peter Bruells
>>><usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>>>>Finding a child in an alien space craft crashlanded on Earth
>>>>seems - at least to me - establish that it wasn't born on
>>>>Earth.  

>>>That does not seem to me to be a justifiable basis for
>>>discrimination. 

>> Actually I would argue that it *doesn't* establish that it
>> wasn't born on Earth.  Because we know there are humans on
>> Earth, and don't know that there are humans anywhere else, it
>> argues more for some sort of alien abduction gone wrong.  
 
> Which will fly out of the window if the child is actually being
> tested.

Does it?  How do you distinguish between "completely human-looking 
alien", "human whom aliens have given various odd characteristics", 
"human grabbed by aliens because he has various odd 
characteristics", and "human who, due to his odd characteristics, 
got himself into an alien space****p"?  Especially in the DCU, where 
all four have happened?

Back during the Invasion, the Dominators grabbed and experimented 
on enough powered Earthlings to form the basis for founding 
*multiple colony worlds*.  (These included some children-- one 
joined the briefly-seen Blasters team under the name "Ben Steel 
(and his bear, Hans)", and spent time fighting interstellar baddies 
in yet another space****p.)  If one of the Dominators' ****ps had 
crashed, leaving only one infant survivor...

(Likewise, in the Silver Age, Superbaby spent time in many, many 
alien space****ps that had nothing to do with his origins.  If one 
of them had crashed-- due to his antics, or coincidentally-- any 
conclusions drawn from the scene would have been spurious.)

If it somehow happened in the real world, Kal-El breaks so much of 
what we think we know either way that it would be at least as hard 
to come to a conclusion about his origins.  Duplicate humans from 
beyond the stars seems staggeringly unlikely, but reactionless 
motion and energy from nowhere even more so.  I'd guess either the 
aliens started with a human, or the kid was a complete artifact, 
but really, at that point, who knows?

Mike