The Great Silence
Author: Ted Chiang
Type: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction, Philosophical Fiction
Reading Month: June 2026
Our Monthly Pick for June 2026 (Category: Short Read) is Ted Chiang’s philosophical short story The Great Silence.
In it, Chiang poses a simple question: Mankind invests so much effort in searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life — despite the vastness of the universe making such success practically more than unlikely (while theoretically very possible, see Fermi Paradox) — so why do we overlook the obvious and fail to listen to the intelligent life already on earth, namely the many animal species that exist and are in urgent need of our attention?
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You can access the original story for free via Electric Literature.
