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• 1 2016-05-18T12:15:41-07:00 "Escape Felicity" 3 plain 2016-05-18T12:17:10-07:00 Frank Herbert, well known for his Dune series, published “Escape Felicity” in the June, 1966 edition of Analog magazine. The story centers on Deirut, a lone human explorer in search of habitable worlds, who is afflicted with a constant, aching need to return home, known simply as “the Push.” Deep within an immense cloud of hydrogen gas, he finds a planet eerily similar to Earth, inhabited by humanoid creatures that worship the number five. Although these creatures seem somehow familiar to Deirut, he soon finds himself completely outwitted and technologically outmatched. He is sent home with a newly strengthened “Push,” but no memory of his encounter.
   
  “Escape Felicity” is an unsettling story that twists the reader’s expectations. Humanity’s encounter with alien life is not one between equals or even close competitors. Instead, in “Escape Felicity” humanity seems more like children playing with a father’s tools. The advanced computers and translation devices Deirut possesses do not impress the aliens as he expects, instead, it is humorous to them that he even needs them. With the help of the computer, Deirut slowly gets a grasp on their strange language, while the aliens break down English in their heads with just a few sentences as reference. Their machines appear to be simple, steam powered constructions, but they use them, not because they can’t build anything more advanced, but rather because they’ve chosen to perfect steam technology with an efficiency that makes further advances superfluous. They choose steam. Their fuel consumption is probably very clean and efficient; they know enough to protect their own environment, and feel obligated to in the wake of their belief that interplanetary contact is utterly pointless. They perfectly anticipate Deirut’s arguments on this point, as if this dance is all old hat. They send him back into space with barely a second thought, as though sweeping up a pile of broken glass. Once they’ve rendered Deirut unconscious their conversation reveals that they are merely herdsmen, lacking traditional authority, and yet they dispatch the alien invader with precision and intent.
   
  There’s a strange tension present throughout “Escape Felicity.” It is, at its heart, an alien story, but Herbert’s answer to the questions of first contact is not one we’re accustomed to hearing. The six-fingered inhabitants of Deirut’s strange earth have no desire to make war, peace, or trade. They view humanity as a pest, and nothing more. The human ego loves to see itself at the center of attention, as the movers and shakers of the universe, but all of that means nothing here. Deirut is simply shipped back home with a wiped memory for his trouble. The final message of the story is deeply uncomfortable: that, in the grand scheme of things, humanity might not matter.