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

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

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Everything in the world displeases me, but above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.

Frederick Nietzsche In the vast landscape of philosophical ideologies, nihilism stands as a provocative and

enigmatic concept that is both

fascinated and disturbed thinkers for centuries here on Earth. However, it would seem like

a potentially universal concept that we would expect both aliens and artificial intelligence

to encounter and contemplate, a convergent point of evolution for any intelligent critter, that all civilizations

should discover the concept of nihilism and perhaps inevitably embrace it, and perhaps

embrace their own ruin in the process.

So for today's sci-fi Sunday, here on SFIA, I thought we would explore what a civilization

might be like that had come to embrace

nihilism, or some form of nihilism, and ask what sort of impact that might have on their

future in space. We will ask ourselves that this might be a solution to the Fermi paradox,

that civilizations tilt toward nihilism and may either perish or see an end to galactic dreams because of it.

But to see how nihilism might impact a civilization, we should start by explaining what it is,

which is made more difficult as the term has branched out a bit.

Deriving from the Latin word nihil, meaning nothing, nihilism is a philosophical perspective that asserts the inherent

meaningless, purposelessness, and futility of existence. It paints a stark, often unsettling

portrait of a human condition, challenging conventional notions of value, morality, and purpose.

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