The Universe Of Things

Abstract

I begin with a short story called “The Universe of Things, ” by the British science fiction writer Gwyneth Jones (2010). The story is about an encounter between a human being and an alien. It is part of Jones’s “Aleutian ” cycle: a series of novels and stories set in a near-future Earth that is visited, colonized, and ultimately abandoned by an alien humanoid race. The Aleutians (as these aliens are called) have technologies that are superior to ours. Also, they are of indeterminate gender; human beings tend to be discomfited by this. If anything, the Aleutians vaguely seem to be more “feminine ” than “masculine”; but human beings usually refer to them with the pronoun “it. ” For both of these reasons, the Aleutians ’ presence on our planet is traumatic and humiliating. It’s not that they do anything particularly nasty or unpleasant; but their very existence somehow diminishes us. We find ourselves in a position of abject dependency; even the most affluent white male Westerners must now count themselves among the ranks of the colonized. The Aleutians ’ presence on Earth undermines our inveterate anthropocentrism. “Man ” is no longer the measure of all things. We can no longer think of ourselves

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