Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ozone layer acts as a shield for the earth, blocking harmful amounts of ultraviolet radiation. McElroy was among the first to postulate that man-made propellants, such as freon in aerosal sprays, are a primary danger to the ozone layer...
...course, plenty of organized science-fiction activity greeted the fans. Discussion panels included authors such as Frank Herbert, Gordon Dickson, John Brunner and Larry Niven. Dealers offered used and out-of-print books, records, games, posters and T-shirts. A continuous film program featured classics from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to "Bambi Meets Godzilla." An art show gave amateur and not-so-amateur painters a chance to show their work--most of which looked like a combination of Maxfield Parrish, Peter Max, and Marvel comics...
That does not mean the evolution of intelligence has ended on the earth. Judging by the record of the past, we can expect that a new species will arise out of man, surpassing his achievements as he has surpassed those of his predecessor, Homo erectus. Only a carbon-chemistry chauvinist would assume that the new species must be man's flesh-and-blood descendants, with brains housed in fragile shells of bone. The new kind of intelligent life is more likely to be made of silicon...
...history of life suggests that the evolution of the new species will take about a million years. Since the majority of the planets in the universe are not merely millions but billions of years older than the earth, the life they carry-assuming life to be common in the cosmos-must long since have passed through the stage we are about to enter...
...billion years is a long time in evolution; 1 billion years ago, the highest form of life on the earth was a worm. The intelligent life in these other, older solar systems must be as different from us as we are from creatures wriggling in the ooze. Those superintendent beings surely will not be housed in the more or less human shapes portrayed in Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In a cosmos that has endured for billions of years against man's mere million, the human form is not likely to be the standard form...