Hey, it's Flora, and you are listening to Science Friday. Breaking news out of eastern Oklahoma,

a hole in the sky has opened and through it an unidentified turtle-shaped craft has descended.

Alerts say this is first contact. That is the plot of the sci-fi thriller, hole in the sky, and I'm very sorry if you're having more of the world's flashbacks.

In the book, author Daniel H. Wilson imagines this moment where we first meet alien life.

And, you know, everyone plays their role.

The military dude wants to bomb it. The NASA

scientist desperately wants to make sense of it. And Jim, a Cherokee man who's watching all of this

unfold in his backyard, is just trying to survive it. So today we are talking with Daniel H. Wilson

about his book, how he blended his

Cherokee culture with sci-fi, and what our conception of aliens tells us about ourselves.

Daniel, welcome to Science Friday. Hey, thank you for having me. How long have you been a sci-fi consumer,

not just a writer, but a reader? Oh, I mean, since I could read.

Really?

Yeah, I always just loved thinking about the future, thinking about technology.

I loved short stories because they were often set up like mouse traps, where you read, you read, and it's sort of a setup, and then at the end it sort of snaps shut and you just feel something.

You either feel sad or amazed, you know, thinking of the nine billion names of God, that sense of awe that you get on the last page, or flowers for Algernon, where you just crumble.

So, yeah, I grew up loving that.

I wanted to do that from an early age.

It did not work out for me at age 16, unfortunately.

Well, you also pursued science, right?

It was the consolation prize to science fiction.

And I literally, I mean, I chose my early career path as if I was looking at a character sheet for Dungeons and Dragons.

...