Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

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This episode is sponsored by Audubor.

They say that for your 25th anniversary, you should give your spouse silver, and for your 50th, gold.

I wonder what people might give in the future for their 500th anniversary.

So today's episode is coming out on Valentine's Day and it seemed a good time to turn our discussion to the various challenges, changes, and advantages the future might bring us in terms of forging and maintaining relationships, be they romantic, plutonic, or familiar.

The future is not simply a place of giant megastructures and advanced technology, we can't

discuss the civilizations that might arise without contemplating that human component,

and certainly romance is a big chunk of that.

Of course it's a popular topic in science fiction too, and often challenges us to look at

our core assumptions about human behavior in the future.

Unfortunately, it also often paints a picture in which marriages, or at least long-term

monogamous relationships, are very rare, and often

the author makes it clear that's a sign of enlightenment in their eyes, rather than simple

personal freedom of choice in a society that need not worry so much about things like

accidental pregnancies or STDs. That's always rubbed me the wrong way, partially because of the implied boredom, that people

who lived for many centuries would have to regard lifelong marriage as an unrealistic thing.

They may be right of course, but boredom, as we discussed with life extension on other occasions,

has always struck me as a hand wave.

I can't really imagine being bored with existence and indiant because I'm a few centuries

...