Fairy Tale Spotlight: Think Like a Dinosaur [Short Story Review]

[I do not spoil the ending of this story.]

"Think Like a Dinosaur" is a science fiction short story written by James Patrick Kelly. It was published in 1995, making it one of the rarer reads for me. I tend to read stories from much earlier, but something about this one called to me quite hard.

The whole idea of the story is that you have a race of aliens that look a little like dinosaurs. Although they have emotions, they are very cold and pragmatic about everything. However, the thing that is the most important to them is balance. Everything must exist in a state of harmony, and the equation must always be balanced.

This is where the concept of teleportation comes into play. The aliens have a technology that can do a complete scan of a person and then transmit that information to another world in the galaxy. From there, the entire person will be assembled and brought to life. But here the dinos have a problem: there are now two copies of the person, one on each side of the transmission, causing the equation to become imbalanced. A button is pressed, and the person on the transmission side is quickly vaporized/murdered, bringing harmony back to the equation. Interesting, yeah?

This kind of gets into the whole Star Trek transporter debate as to who is really on the other side once the transmission is complete. You might also say that the person on the transporter pad is being killed at the moment he is transported away. It's something I have thought about for a long time, and this story tries to deal with it in a clever way.

The main character of the story is a human named Michael who is charged with being the human liaison with the dinos in helping other humans migrate back and forth between Earth and the other planets. The dinos constantly see humans as "weepy," or, in other words, they just don't have the maturity as a species to mess around with teleportation technology. They equate human sensibilities with their own immature children. To think like a dinosaur, you have to embrace the cold logic of balance.

Michael's ultimate test comes when there is a mistake made by the dinosaurs during a transmission. The dino thinks that it was not successful, so the passenger, a young woman, is removed from the machine. But that was a mistake. She did actually arrive on the other side. Once this is confirmed, Michael then has to make a difficult decision. The dinos want the equation to be balanced. If Michael cannot murder this woman in cold blood, the dinos may likely pull all teleportation technology away from the immature humans forever. What will he do? Will he retain his humanity.... or will he think like a dinosaur?

I entirely recommend "Think Like a Dinosaur," but it is a little hard to find on its own. Even though it is still available in the written form, I would like to point out that there are a couple of other ways to experience this story. There is an excellent episode of "The Outer Limits" that tells the entire story without alteration. It is the 8th episode of Season 7, in case you are wondering. You can also find an audio drama of this story from the excellent Seeing Eye Theater series. All versions of "Think Like a Dinosaur" are good, and I recommend them all. Enjoy!

This blog was written on February 26, 2023.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. Also stop by my Amazon.com listing by clicking this link: https://www.amazon.com/T.K.-Wade/e/B07BQK9RTZ

Check out my books! Thanks!