They're Made Out of Meat

They're Made Out of Meat

Infobox short story
name = They're Made Out of Meat
author = Terry Bisson
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction
published_in = OMNI
publication_type = magazine
publisher =
pub_date = April 1991

"They're Made Out of Meat" is a Nebula Award-nominated short story by Terry Bisson. It was originally published in "OMNI". [cite journal |last=Bisson |first=Terry |authorlink=Terry Bisson |coauthors= |year=1991 |month=4 |title=They're Made Out of Meat |journal=OMNI] It consists entirely of dialogue between two characters, and Bisson's website hosts a theatrical adaptation. [cite web |url=http://www.terrybisson.com/meatplay.html |title=They're Made out of Meat (play) |accessdate=2008-02-03 |first=Terry|last=Bisson |work=Terry Bisson SF Story Showcase] A film adaptation won the Grand Prize at the Seattle Science Fiction Museum's 2006 film festival. [cite web |title=Science Fiction Short Film Festival Winners Announced |work=Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame |url=http://www.sfhomeworld.org/make_contact/article.asp?articleID=236 |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20060521202739/www.sfhomeworld.org/make_contact/article.asp?articleID=236 |archivedate=2006-04-12 |date=2006-02-09]

The two characters are sentient beings capable of traveling faster than light, on a mission to "contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe." Bisson's stage directions represent them as "two lights moving like fireflies among the stars" on a projection screen. They converse briefly on their bizarre discovery of carbon-based life, which they refer to incredulously as "thinking meat." They agree to "erase the records and forget the whole thing," marking the Solar System "unoccupied."cite web |url=http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html |title=They're Made out of Meat |accessdate=2008-02-03 |first=Terry|last=Bisson |work=Terry Bisson SF Story Showcase]

The story was collected in the 1993 anthology "Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories", [cite book|last=Bisson |first=Terry|title=Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories |edition=1st (Hardcover)|year=1993 |month=11 |publisher=Tor |location=New York, NY |isbn=978-0312854119] and has circulated widely on the Internet, which Bisson finds "flattering." It has been quoted in cognitive, cosmological, and philosophical scholarship. [cite book |last=Boden |first=Margaret A. |authorlink=Maggie Boden|title=Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=nQMPIGd4baQC|accessdate=2008-02-03|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0199292388|pages=1386 |chapter=16.v.d] [cite book |last=Wolff |first=Milo|editor=Richard L. Amoroso et al. (eds.)|title=Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale|series=Fundamental Theories of Physics, Vol. 126 |year=2003|publisher=Springer |location=Netherlands|isbn=978-1-4020-0885-6|doi=10.1007/0-306-48052-2_55|pages=517-524 |chapter=55: Cosmology, the Quantum Universe, and Electron Spin] [cite book|last=McGinn|first=Colin|authorlink=Colin McGinn|year=1999|month=5|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=0465014224|title=Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World]

See also

* Carbon chauvinism
* "Roadside Picnic"

References


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