“Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. […] The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragons: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical.” – Stanisław Lem
“Xenolinguistics is the kind of science that would happily draft a treaty for negotiating verb conjugations with invisible aliens, then congratulate itself for resolving a cosmic misunderstanding that never happened, with interlocutors who never arrived, in a universe that wasn’t listening. The “scientific” discipline of xenolinguistics resembles those Byzantine, bizarre, interminable, and sterile debates about the sex of angels.” – Robert Sheckley
Humanity has always imagined that the universe is dying to talk to us.
As if somewhere, on a distant planet, a civilization of hyper-intelligent beings spends its evenings wondering: “I wonder how that bipedal species is doing—the one that can’t even communicate in traffic?”
We dream of First Contact the way a child dreams of their favorite toy coming to life and congratulating them on their creativity.
Humanity has always fantasized about chatting with extraterrestrials, as if the universe were waiting patiently for us to pick up the cosmic phone and say something intelligent.
Which extraterrestrials? The mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?
The only kind science ever manages to classify, the three ET species humanity excels at discovering!
This is awesome, considering we can’t even communicate with our own species without starting a war, a divorce, or at least a very long comment thread, starting with „Fuck you! Fuck you very much, motherfucker!”
Humanity has always believed it is ready to communicate with extraterrestrials.
This is touching, in the same way a toddler wearing a cape believes he can fly.
We imagine ourselves standing proudly on the cosmic stage, clearing our throat, and delivering a message so profound that alien civilizations will weep in admiration.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, two humans cannot agree on the meaning of the word “fine.”
We dream of First Contact as a grand diplomatic event, a moment of interstellar clarity.
In reality, if aliens ever send us a message, we will immediately misinterpret it as a threat, a scam, or a political advertisement.
Half the planet will insist the message is fake news.
The other half will insist it’s a prophecy.
And a small but vocal minority will claim it’s a gluten free recipe.
Humanity cannot communicate with itself.
Humanity cannot even communicate with its pets.
Humanity cannot communicate with its appliances.
But humanity is absolutely convinced it can communicate with Aliens.
Science fiction has spent decades imagining elegant solutions: telepathic beams, mathematical symphonies, tentacle semaphore, colour changing head patches, pheromone poetry, gravitational Morse code, and cosmic hallucinations. Writers have invented ansibles, tachyon radios, quantum communicators, and devices that violate causality so aggressively that the universe should sue for damages.
And yet, despite all this imaginative brilliance, humanity still cannot interpret a simple email without assuming hostility.
Imagine an alien intelligence receiving our first broadcast.
They decode it carefully, expecting wisdom, philosophy, perhaps a message of peace.
Instead, they discover non-stop pornography, moronic reality shows, commercials for hair loss treatments and fake boobs, and heated arguments between strangers who have never met but are absolutely certain the other is wrong.
If aliens ever attempt to communicate with us, they will quickly realize that the greatest barrier is not biology, not physics, not mathematics — but the fact that humans are constitutionally incapable of understanding anything, including themselves.
They will send us messages in light, sound, geometry, colour, telepathy, and pure thought.
We will misinterpret every single one.
Aliens: “We come in peace.” Humans: “They’re threatening us!”
Aliens: “Here is a gift of knowledge.” Humans: “They’re trying to hack our brains!”
Aliens: “We wish to understand you.” Humans: “They want to steal our jobs and fatherland!”
Aliens: “Please stop screaming.” Humans: “They’re screaming at us!”
The tragicomic truth is that humanity is a species that builds communication satellites but cannot communicate across a dinner table.
A species that dreams of decoding alien intelligence but cannot decode its own stupidity.
A species that imagines cosmic harmony while living in perpetual terrestrial static.
If extraterrestrials ever attempt First Contact, they will abandon the effort within minutes.
They will mark Earth as “Unresponsive,” “Unstable,” or “Dangerously Confused.”
They will block our frequency. They will delete our number. They will label our planet as “Do Not Contact — Species Unable to Process Basic Information.”
And they will leave, shaking whatever appendages they use for heads, muttering in their own language:
“Why did we think these creatures were ready? They cannot even communicate with themselves.”
Humanity will stand alone, staring at the sky, wondering why the universe refuses to talk to us.
And the universe, in its infinite silence, will be laughing.
And “Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language” is the bombastic, tenure‑friendly equivalent of Lem’s solaristics — a grand scholastic opera about entities that may not exist, the modern version of medieval debates on how many billion angels can jitterbug on the tip of a needle, except now the angels have tentacles, a grant proposal, and a peer‑reviewed appendix.
Xenolinguistics is the latest scholarly crusade to classify the unclassifiable — a modern moral fable in which professors solemnly debate the grammar of beings who may never exist, much like medieval theologians calculating the ethical obligations of angels who refuse to show up for the hearing.
Xenolinguistics is the academic equivalent of shouting into the void and awarding yourself a medal for the echo — a discipline that dissects hypothetical syllables of hypothetical minds in a cosmos so indifferent it will never bother to confirm whether the experiment had a subject.
We dream of decoding alien mathematics (which ones? the mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?), deciphering tentacle semaphore, interpreting stellar vibrations, and translating the emotional pheromones of space dolphins — yet we can’t interpret a text message from our cousin without assuming he’s a moron and he’s very angry.
Our civilization has invented ansibles, tachyon radios, quantum communicators, telepathic uplinks, and musical light shows for UFO diplomacy.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, two humans standing in the same room routinely fail to understand each other’s tone of voice.
We imagine that aliens (which aliens? the mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?) will send us elegant mathematical symphonies, but if they ever tune into our broadcasts, they’ll hear political shouting matches, conspiracy podcasts, and advertisements for dietary supplements that definitely do not work.
Science fiction has spent a century trying to solve the problem of interstellar communication.
SF writers have invented languages for squid creatures, colour changing head patches for chromatic aliens, and entire planets that communicate through hallucinations.
They’ve imagined cosmic intelligences that speak in geometry, stars that converse through semantic confusion, and monoliths that communicate by turning astronauts into fetuses.
And through all of this, humanity nods wisely, pretending we’re ready for the great galactic dialogue.
We are not ready.
We are barely ready to communicate with dolphins, and dolphins are literally on the same planet.
We built machines to record emotions and plug them into other minds, hoping this would solve human misunderstanding.
Instead, it proved that sharing feelings directly is just as confusing as sharing them verbally.
Drugs were supposed to help us communicate better; they helped us communicate louder.
The truth is simple and humiliating: If aliens (which aliens? the mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?) ever arrive, they will not be impressed.
They will not marvel at our technology. They will not admire our culture. They will not congratulate us for sending probes into space.
They will ask one question: “Why do you keep trying to talk to us when you can’t even talk to yourselves?”
And we will have no answer.
Because we are a species that builds communication satellites but cannot communicate across a dinner table.
A species that dreams of decoding alien intelligence (which one? the mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?) but cannot decode its own stupidity.
A species that imagines cosmic harmony while living in perpetual terrestrial wars.
If extraterrestrials (which extraterrestrials? the mythical, the chimerical, or the purely hypothetical?) ever attempt First Contact, they will quickly realize that the greatest barrier is not distance, not biology, not mathematics, not physics — but the fact that humans are constitutionally incapable of understanding anything, including themselves.
They will send us messages in light, sound, geometry, colour, pheromones, telepathy, and pure thought.
We will misinterpret every single one of them.
And then, inevitably, we will ask them to repeat it.
Very slowly. In English. Preferably with subtitles.
