Being Small II: Containment

By Joseph Dlhopolsky

First contact stories typically end with the first contact. One and done: the spunky humans defeat the advanced invaders, often by virtue of a plot twist that may or may not be believable. For example, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Another popular alternative is that everybody walks away, with the human audience agreeing that, "Yeah, wow, those aliens really are different." Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters, Carl Sagan's Contact, and the movie Arrival are examples of this genre.

The Being Small saga breaks this pattern. The first book does indeed describe the first contact. The second answers the question, "What comes next? How do people react? What do the aliens do?" It continues the story of the four members of the Hokule'a crew. In the course of the narrative, it suggests that we humans are not as smart as we think we are. To emphasize this point, it presents how humans and the Earth might be perceived by an alien intelligence that has just discovered them and finds them "interesting." The fundamental premise is that we humans won't have a complete understanding of who we are until someone from outside looks at us and tells us what they see.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1078125996
• ISBN13: 9781078125994
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"