One tenth of stars may support life

[ElHombre]

Ran,

The story you refer to is by David Brin, author of the Uplift series of novels. It was in the first edition of a SF magazine. I've still got it somewhere in my collection. I can try to dig it out and give more details if anyone is interested.

 

[Straybow]

It appeared in Analog magazine 10ish years ago, but I don't think it was Brin (to my knowledge he was never published in Analog).

(One of these days I'm gonna start making a log of all the crap I read so I can remember correctly.)

 

[Straybow]

Wow, did I get that wrong. He is published in Analog many times, although most of his appearances were long ago. I'll look up the '96 story, but I'm pretty sure that isn't it.

Just a Hint, short story, Apr 1981
The Tides of Kithrup, novelette, May 1981
Tank-Farm Dynamo, short story, Nov 1983
Xenology: The New Science of Asking, 'Who's OutThere?', fact article, May 1983
The Crystal Spheres, short story, Jan 1984
The Deadly Thing at 2.4 Kilo-Parsecs, fact article, May 1984
Just How Dangerous is the Galaxy? fact article, Jul 1985
The Dogma of Otherness, guest editorial, Apr 1986
An Ever-Reddening Glow, short story, Feb 1996
Stones of Significance, novelette, Jan 2000

 

[eiladayn]

Wouldn't it be a kick in the head if we found out we were just the result of someone's littering, although I think there are better places to dump garbage than a garden world like earth Meracury for instance. I do like Brin's stuff BTW, he's quite a writer, I really liked the Postman and hated what Hollywood did to it, talk about butchering! The Uplift books are cool too, another Saganist, but good writing.

Pappy

 

[Straybow]

Well, in the short story, Earth wasn't itself a trash dump, it was that some visiting aliens dumped their unprocessed garbage, which then evolved into everything on Earth.

 

[eiladayn]

Even better--we're a proto-trash dump! Hah!

Pappy

 

[Ran Targas]

It does put things in perspective!

 

[ElHombre]

two of the funniest things i thought about that story was 1) it took *lawyers* to keep the earth from permanent second-class status and 2) the new national anthem was inspired by the 'war of 1812 overture' with a toilet flushing instead of cannons.