Will the aliens come to eat us, bonk us or do our hair?

A review of yet another book about aliens, Aliens: Why They Are Here by Brian Appleyard, but this time it’s also about what other writers write about them (Philip K. Dick, Stanislas Lem, Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery). ‘Appleyard makes a good case for Stanislaw Lem, not only as a writer but a thinker about what non-human experience would be like. Lem's message is that if we ever encounter aliens, 'they will not deliver rebukes for our aggression, warnings about the environment or cosy spiritual sermons. They will not abduct and interbreed with us. They will not control our minds with the steady gaze of their enormous black eyes. They will not even attack us with their rayguns or disruptor beams'. Whatever their level of technological development, they won't have the power to rescue us from our loneliness, to resolve the tangle of emotions which results from our longing for company and fear of the Other. Does it matter if aliens are 'real' or not if their existence, and even their presence, would make no difference to our place in the cosmos?’ Myself, I'd like to believe that aliens are very bonkable, sort of like green Drew Barrymores.