Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien
There's an entire genre of these kinds of books that extrapolate generalities (life throughout the Universe) from a single data point (life on Earth), but the truth is, that's not even an educated guess.We do not know if our evolutionary pressures are universal. We do not know if the evolutionary solutions developed here are appropriate even on other Earth-like planets, much less everywhere. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions could lead to radically different planetary environments, necessitating radically different mechanical solutions to survival, some (many, most?) of which we will never have even imagined.What creatures would form under an intense magnetic field? In methane? In close orbit around a dim star? In a hot cloud nebula? Could we even recognize them as alive, much less intelligent? Definitely not if we're looking for bats and monkeys and octopusesNo, I think the whole genre of "life is much the same everywhere" suffers from a profound lack of imagination