What if you were walking down the street, turned a corner and met yourself coming the other way?  Would you believe what you were seeing?  Would you even say hello or simply give yourself a wide berth and pass on by – staring as you went?  Would you offer to pay back the sawbuck you owe yourself?  It is very hard to know how we would feel about confronting humanity from another world… isn’t it?  When we think of science fiction, alien life forms are depicted as non-human – likely to make our position in the universe more acceptable, even superior.  If they even look human, they have non-human powers and a hidden agenda.  More often than not, these aliens have superior physical abilities, advanced technologies and are way smarter than us.  Whether that means aliens with these attributes just have green skin or they are monster insects as in the 1997 film, Starship Troopers, they are out to dominate the universe and we are in the way.  This disparity created as a buffer between us and them makes it seem impossible to envision humanity existing anywhere except on earth… why not? 

So, this is one of the essential ingredients of The Twins of Demeter. People from earth encounter other humans – from another world. Is that possible? The questions asked about encountering entertains that possibility, and finally embraces it. As discussed in the Afterword of the book and largely quoted in the first paragraph, science fiction largely embraces just the opposite. Even when off-worldly beings are encountered, there is the anticipation of hostility, unavoidable conflict. Our expectations about science fiction is that the human species better go armed into space because anything living will be assumed hostile. In Part 2 of the novel, the potential for hostility is deflected by the off-world human Kasam who says, “Does not a man with a cat seem more friendly than a man with a weapon.” In other words, if the objective is friendship and possible cooperation, carrying a feline creature in your arms makes a visual statement about intent – and also occupies the hands and arms so that the presence of a weapon is unlikely or the weapon unusable.