Written by Steven Paul Leiva
Read by Jeff Cannata
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged


A unique science fiction first-contact novel told from the aliens' point-of-vie-
w; a 21st-century Gulliver's Travels with Homo sapiens as the Lilliputians.
The last thing the factfinders - who call themselves Life - expected
to find while traveling in space in The Curious on a mission from their
planet, The Living World, was other life. But one day they stumble upon
the third planet out from a backwater sun and find it teeming with a
vast diversity of life, including one sentient and cognizant, if primitive,
species that they dub: Otherlife. Being not only from The Curious but
inherently curious themselves, they begin to study the Otherlife and
their alien culture, discovering such strange things as: marriage, intoxicating
drinks, weapons of minor and mass destruction, the gleeful inhaling
of toxic substances, two-parent families, layered language, genocide,
non-nude bathing, and - the strangest thing of all - religion. This
first contact between Life and Otherlife, disconcerting for both, has
moments of humor and moments of horror - and neither escape the encounter
unchanged.