
"They're Made out of Meat?" Short first contact sci-fi story - JumpCrisscross
http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
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mechanical_fish
I am going to win an award for nitpicking, which is hard to do around here,
but IT BURNS, so:

This story is entitled "They're Made Out Of Meat," just as it was when I first
read it over a decade ago. It is _not_ entitled "They're Made of Meat".

Yes, I know. But if you can't understand why someone might care about the
difference, dare I suggest that you're not a writer? ;)

(The story is built around this phrase; the repetitions of the refrain in your
head in an incredulous voice is half the point of the story. Every syllable
must be presumed to be carefully chosen, and I agree with the author's
choice.)

~~~
mhartl
Seconded. Could an admin please change the story title?

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rickmb
Wow, this is a classic. It's been ages since I first read it.

Awesome to see the author has published it under a creative commons license.

Wonder how many great short SF stories people will never get to read because
they are locked up under copyright without ever getting reprinted.

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Drbble
I assume none, because sci-fi readers tend not to be hampered by copyright.

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prospero
Anyone who likes this would also probably enjoy Stanislaw Lem's _The Cyberiad_
[1], which is the same conceit writ large. I highly recommend it.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Cyberiad-Stanislaw-
Lem/dp/B005DI94CE/r...](http://www.amazon.com/Cyberiad-Stanislaw-
Lem/dp/B005DI94CE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328312996&sr=8-1)

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nitrogen
Dead comment:

 _danec 2 hours ago | link [dead]

Thanks for linking to this story!

I remember reading this a long, long, time ago.

I don't know where, but I did have a subscription to Omni when I was in 5th
grade but that was 1986 or so. More likely I read it in the early days of the
internet (pre-browser), when text was king and copyright nonexistent; when
people painstakingly typed in great articles and bits of fiction like this one
into the darkness of their computer screens at 2 AM._

Note to danec: if you read this, it looks like your account was flagged
between ~567 and ~579 days ago. Possibly someone didn't like an article you
submitted, or your URL triggered an algorithm ("business opportunities" might
be in some Bayesian phrase database or something).

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evincarofautumn
Perhaps stating the obvious here, but this is one of my favourite stories, so
forgive me for feeling sharey. The best part of this is the utter
simplicity—the defining quality, I believe, of good writing and good code
alike. It turns the point of view around and slaps the unsuspecting reader
with the understanding of just how little we can suppose of what life is like
capital-E Elsewhere. If and when at last we get the chance to make contact
with an intelligent extraterrestrial species—assuming of course that we make
it that far—the political and linguistic challenges will be fascinatingly
unprecedented, and I can only hope I’m alive for it all.

As a side note, if anyone is hiring for a First Contact Emergency Linguistics
Squad, I am permanently available for such a position. ;)

~~~
pavel_lishin
> if anyone is hiring for a First Contact Emergency Linguistics Squad, I am
> permanently available for such a position.

I'd like to see your resume. So I could show it to a group of randomly
selected passengers at the international terminal. And a dolphin.

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eof
A pretty bad short film adaption

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE>

~~~
AceJohnny2
Though the picture is poor on that video, I think that adaptation is great,
actually, and regularly show it to friends. I first discovered it when it was
featured on BoingBoing (<http://boingboing.net/2006/05/04/terry-bissons-
theyre.html>). Sadly, the high quality version has been lost to the copyright
hammer. I wish someone had a backup somewhere...

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foxit
This reminds me of a Fredric Brown short story I can't remember the name of in
which an entity travelling through the galaxies encounters a planet upon which
consciousnesses are, surprisingly, encased in finite bits of matter. There is
matter, and there is consciousness, but never had this entity seen the two in
some combination.

I don't know if there's a real "who came first" in speculative fiction, but I
often think Brown's ideas were truly innovative. For instance, in his 1954
(very) short story "Answer", we see the basis for Skynet, and I've been as yet
unable to find an earlier instance of this idea.
<http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm>

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commieneko
"Answer" is one of my favorites as well. Brown specialised in short shorts.
Somewhere I have a collection of his where every other story is one of those.
My favorite being, in it's entirety:

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room; there was a knock on the door."

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plessthanpt05
YES! i heard this (with great sound effects to boot) on npr's studio 360 a
couple of months ago:

[http://www.studio360.org/2011/nov/04/theyre-made-out-of-
meat...](http://www.studio360.org/2011/nov/04/theyre-made-out-of-meat/)

~~~
toddkaufmann
I read the story in Omni when it was first published, but forgot about it
until I heard it on studio360.

I watched a version or two on youtube after, but I think the studio360 radio
version is better. My son liked it too, he was laughing.

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NnamdiJr
One of my absolute favorite short-stories. First came across it when I was on
a SciFi reading rampage around the age of 8 or 9yrs old.. it completely struck
me then, and still does each time I come across it again.

I owe it in part to SciFi stories and books like this for shattering any
chance I had of narrow-minded thinking in life, and bringing perspective to
Humans as a species and our place in the cosmos.

~~~
satori99
Completely agree. I too, discovered this story around that age, and I have
always remembered it with clarity and passion. The other scifi short story I
will never forget is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Not the same
topic, but the same sort of punch in very few words.

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etfb
I have my own version of this, if you prefer your short stories sung to the
tune of old country songs...

<http://flurf.net/batpage/TerryBissonMeetsAnOldCowpoke>

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andrewguenther
Loved it! But the "omigod"s threw me off...

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rsanchez1
Yeah, it completely broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Here are beings
that consider meat so far beneath themselves that they would rather forget the
thinking meat ever existed than establish contact, but at the same time they
use the interjections of a teen girl.

~~~
archangel_one
I partly agree, but presumably we don't expect them to actually be speaking
English either. I would have thought it implied some kind of similar
expression of general surprise, although honestly it didn't bother me all that
much when I read it.

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baddox
I don't understand why a species would find an intelligent meat race so
surprising and revolting if there are other species that go through a meat
phase or are partially made of meat.

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dalke
Perhaps because those those species are borderline atrocious, but their non-
meat parts is what keeps them within the realm of what is reasonable?

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jinushaun
Brilliant! Has the feel of a classic Asimov story.

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whatajoke
That is because it is very similar to an actual short story written by Asimov.
Please see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_This_Thing_Called_Love...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_This_Thing_Called_Love%3F_%28short_story%29)

I can't find that story online, but it has a similar ending vis-a-vis the
alien's decision.

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goodweeds
The video of this is often linked when people use the term "Meat Cloud" to
describe tech companies who throw bodies at problems instead of process and
automation.

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aorshan
Wow I've never read this before. Simply amazing. So succinct, yet so powerful.

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alan_cx
First time for me too. I agree, its a brilliant piece of writing.

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ljf
if you like this, you might also like;
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Skin_(novel)>

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BlackGamma
I found a better version and with better cast. Its in Black-n-White though.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-9t9BIBLKw>

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Craiggybear
This has been always one of my very favorite stories _ever_. Its how I
convince people that sci-fi isn't just for geeks.

Challenging, funny, deeply thought-provoking. Its just the one of the best
things ever. I _never_ tire of reading it and people I tell about it come back
and invariably rave about how great it is. I've had quite a few converts to
the whole panoply of "speculative fiction" from their exposure to this
wonderful little gem.

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wheels
Sci-fi is only for geeks because when something gets accepted into the canon
of good literature, we stop calling it sci-fi. The stuff that's left, that
only geeks like, is "sci-fi".

Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, Gravity's Rainbow, etc. aren't
usually what the label conjures up.

~~~
wisty
Salman Rushdie started as a Sci-fi author. Then he moved into "Magic realism",
which is Fantasy without the barbarians and buxom wenches (or more eloquently
written barbarians and buxom wenches).

"Literature" is the label for works that are good enough that everyone should
read them, not just genre fans. "Romance", "Sci fi", "Travel", "Crime",
"Comedy", "Detective", "Drama" and so on are works that aren't good enough for
everyone to read.

Of course, there's writers who hack their way into the "Literature" section by
imitating the quirks of a genuine pieces of literature, or just avoiding all
the other categories.

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pessimizer
No, "Literature" is the label for works of middle-class introspection, whereas
"Genre" fictions are books that are about any other subject matter.

If you move from actually having a subject to making your subject a metaphor
for middle-class internal conflicts, you have made the move from Genre to Lit.

~~~
NHQ
DAAAAMMN thats a fine definition.

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PythonDeveloper
Keep going!! It's like a sequel to the Twilight Zone "How To Serve Man"
episode... very cool. Lots of places to go here.

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eof
This is an old short story, published over 20 years ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theyre_Made_Out_of_Meat>

~~~
Drbble
Apostrophe <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theyre_Made_Out_of_Meat>

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tbsdy
So much more easy to read ths on an iPad safari in reader mode :-)

