We humans can’t help but be equal parts fascinated and repelled by the concept of the alien. We live in a universe so large we can’t even begin to grok how big it is: a universe chock full of suns (did you know that if it weren’t for interstellar dust, our sky would be so full of stars we wouldn’t even be able to see space? That it would be blazingly, blindingly bright, day and night? Sort of an extension of Asimov’s famous story, “Nightfall.” Imagine how different our concept of our universe might be then!), many of which appear likely to be chock full of planets.

SF writer Fred Saberhagen, who died recently after a two-year battle with cancer, came up with some of the most imaginative concepts in the literature. Best known, perhaps, is his Berserker series. In his books, self-replicating machine intelligences travel throughout the galaxy, hunting out and destroying biological life wherever they find it.

The series is an one of the earliest and most definitive appearances of the Singularity in science fact or fiction: the notion that an artificial intelligence(s) would eventually develop free will, outpace us intellectually, and render humans either dead or irrelevant. Robert Charles Wilson toys with many different aspects of the Singularity, simulated life, and consciousness; e.g., in Darwinia and Spin. Wil McCarthy’s Bloom is another excellent examination of the concept, using nanotech/ programmable matter to create a Singular super-intelligence. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time has one of the most malevolent alien/computer intelligences ever imagined.

Many other SF authors have made use of this notion. But it is SF writer and computer scientist Vernor Vinge in particular who is known for bringing the concept of the Singularity into modern discussions of technological progress. His excellent science fiction novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, and many of his other works, pivot on this concept. (By the way, I’m mentioning all these books because they are really good—go read them!) It is difficult to write an SF novel involving space, nanotech, or computer technology these days, without coming within shouting distance of the Singularity in one form or another. (This is partly, I believe, because we are in the heliopause of the Singularity already.)

Some SF writers, who aren’t interested in writing about the Singularity, are irritated by this fact, but I think grappling with this concept is resulting in some of the best hard SF in recent memory (see above examples). Check out Charles Stross’s Accelerando and Chris Moriarty’s Spin Control, for instance (I can’t stop recommending good SF books! Help!)

The concept of the Singularity has a clear association with the question of whether a superior alien intelligence originating elsewhere in the universe—if there are such beings—might come around someday, and harbor ill intent toward us. After all, we have daily evidence of our own perfidy toward each other; it’s hard to have confidence that a technologically superior race would show mercy toward us.

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