"Se as estrelas são deuses" , uma novela de 1974 de Gordon Eklund e Gregory Benford .
Aliens vêm ao sistema solar para falar com o nosso sol. Eles acreditam que as estrelas são sencientes.
"We left our homeworld a great many of your years ago. I cannot tell you exactly when, for reasons I'm certain you can understand, but I will reveal that it was more than a century ago. In that time we have visited nine stars. The ones we would visit were chosen for us beforehand. Our priests—our leaders—determined the stars that were within our reach and also able to help us in our quest. You see, we have journeyed here to ask certain questions."
"Questions of the stars?"
"Yes, of course. The questions we have are questions only a star may answer."
Acho que os alienígenas foram descritos como parecidos com as pequenas girafas.
There was one Earth animal that did resemble these creatures, and this was why Reynolds felt happy and relieved. The aliens were sufficiently alien, yes. And they were surely not men. But neither did they resemble blobs or wolves or sharks or snakes. They were giraffes. Nice, kind, friendly, pleasant, smiling, silent giraffes. There were some differences, of course. The aliens' skin was a rainbow collage of pastel purples, greens, reds and yellows, similar in its random design to the colorfully painted walls. Their trunks stood higher off the ground, their necks were stouter than a normal giraffe. They did not have tails. Nor hooves. Instead, at the bottom of each of their four legs, they had five blunt short fingers and a single wide thick offsetting thumb.