“If and when aliens make first contact, who should answer? Maybe humankind should turn to people like me, translators of science fiction. We’ve already thought through this kind of problem.”

That’s the opening sentences of my essay When Star-Stuff Tells Stories: Translating science fiction as a metaphor of technology and wonder. Calque Press has just published a limited edition of it as a 24-page pamphlet, and you can learn more and buy it here.

It’s one of a series of essays and other short works published by Calque. They’re meant to provide an opportunity for writers to think aloud about their own experiences and knowledge — and they are beautifully printed on high-quality paper. The publisher is fussy about the look and feel.

Here’s Calque’s description of When Star-Stuff Tells Stories:

Starting from the very earliest forms of human communication, the ways in which language developed into languages, and created the role of the translator, Sue Burke offers an invaluable guide to the importance and difficulties of translation on Earth, and gives us fascinating speculation about what might happen if we ever do come into contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. This pamphlet addresses questions of what communication is, and how the translator is uniquely positioned to work at escaping the bounds of the medium and bringing pure meaning into an intelligible form.