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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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Carl Popple.

The universe, which others call the library, is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number

of hexagonal galleries.

In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft bounded by a low railing.

For many hexagon one can see the floors above and below, one after another, endlessly.

The arrangement of the galleries is always the same. 20 bookshelves, five to each

side, line four of the hexagon's six sides, the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling,

is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto

a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens

onto another gallery, identical to the first, identical in fact to all.

To left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments, one is for sleeping, upright,

the other for satisfying one's physical necessities. Through this space too, there

passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance.

In the vestibule there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this

mirror that the library is not infinite.

If it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication?

I prefer to dream that burnish surfaces are a figuration and a promise of the infinite.

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