by Elton Gahr

Created on: August 04, 2009

What would you do if someone came up to you and told you that they were a Martian. The answer is, if you are like most people that you would simply assume that they were insane, but not all that dangerous and move on. Yet we naturally assume that if we meet aliens none of that will ever happen. There is of course the natural assumption that we would look different from them, but we don't know anything about aliens, so let us assume for a moment that they are telepathic, able to create images of anything they can imagine in their minds. How then would you convince them you were human and not someone who was simply insane?

This is the dilemma that the second expedition to mars has in "The Earth Men" by Ray Bradbury who reach mars to find that no one seems to care at all about their arrival, in fact everyone seems to be a bit annoyed at them bothering them until finally someone sends them into a building.

Everyone here is quite excited at the prospect of earth men and they treat them as they expected to be, until other people begin to admit that they are also earth men, but it is clear immediately that these aliens don't know anything about earth. They are from countries that don't exist and their descriptions of the planet are wrong.

It is then that the humans discover that they are considered insane, but this shouldn't be a problem they think. They aren't insane and so they will simply have to prove it. But the more real everything they show them as proof of who they are is the more convinced the Martians become that they are incurably insane. A mild delusion can be fixed after all but a truly powerful delusion like the astronauts is impossible to cure and the only solution is euthanasia.

One of the reoccurring themes of science fiction is the attempt to explain to people something that they aren't willing to believe. It is nearly impossible to convince anyone of anything that they don't already believe at least a little and when it is something of true importance that difficulty becomes even more pronounced so how do you convince something to someone logically when the real truth is that none of us really think all that logically? The answer I fear is that if things are truly important to us we must find people who already agree in some fashion, because it is the only real option.

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