Telescoping Time

'It takes an alien race to show us our humanity' - Eric Brown in 'Kethani', 2011. The James Webb telescope, six times more powerful than the Hubble, will be launched in the next few years. It may well show us for the first time, alien artifacts on planets in orbit around other stars. It is more likely than any previous human endeavour to lead us into contact with intelligent life from beyond the solar system. In 2011, the second Earlyworks Press Science Fiction Challenge was launched. We asked authors to produce stories which would make a realistic contribution to the debate about how humans and extra-terrestrial species might prepare for contact and learn to co-operate rather than destroy each other through fear or prejudice, by accident or design.