A lot of Stanislaw Lem's books deal with attempts to explore alien worlds that turn out to be inhabited by starfish aliens, and with the multiple ways the human protagonists are capable of messing up the encounter despite their best intentions. Let me quote Wikipedia:
"One of Lem's major recurring themes, beginning from his very first novel, The Man from Mars, was the impossibility of communication between profoundly alien beings, which may have no common ground with human intelligence, and humans. The best known example is the living planetary ocean in Lem's novel Solaris. Other examples include swarms of mechanical insects (in The Invincible), and strangely ordered societies of more human-like beings in Fiasco and Eden, describing the failure of the first contact. In His Master's Voice, Lem describes the failure of humanity's intelligence to decipher and truly comprehend an apparent message from space."
]]>He can camouflage it as concern over unforeseen long term effects of novel treatments all he likes but I can recognise the sound of a religious fundamentalist sacrificing unborn children on his god’s altar when I hear it, and I’m assuming it’s only a matter of time until a recognisable equivalent turns up in the laundryverse...
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