Young Writers Society

For the past couple of months, I've been toying with the idea of a story where the protagonist loves learning about the extraterrestrial, to the point where she dreams of someday becoming an astrobiologist and discovering alien life. The story would eventually involve her meeting actual aliens - something you may recall me asking about in the Aliens thread I made awhile back.

After some thought, I think I've decided to make this a podcast in lieu of a traditional novel. I just need to learn more about the extraterrestrial life my character is so enchanted by. Whether that's through books, internet articles, YouTube channels, or TV shows, I don't really care. I just want some good sources I can go to.

As of right now, my knowledge of alien encounters comes solely from Buzzfeed Unsolved. I'd love to learn more so I can weave that knowledge into my podcast, so please leave any helpful stories or resources in this thread!

So this isn't a direct "alien encounter" in the proper sense, but it's more a general alien-related conspiracy theory:

There are a lot of "aliens built x ancient culture" theories, which will likely be something your character interacts with. You'll have to decide how much she believes them, which will shape her character a fair bit.

These theories have a lot of problems to them, when it comes to worldview, as they mostly occur with cultures whose languages we haven't translated yet and whose knowledge has been mostly lost (or misinterpreted— such as Egyptians having detailed illustrations of how they built the pyramids but academics are taking centuries to catch up).

There's an underlying base assumption that ancient humans could not have been that advanced, and this assumption is really annoying for people whose cultures are claimed to have been made by aliens.

If she doesn't believe them, then she'll be far more likely to look for the truly outside of the realm of possibility. If she does, then she'll be more likely to believe that possible but difficult to imagine things are as the result of aliens.

Answering that question will help give a more exact direction for stuff she's interested in!

Thanks for the help, @Rosendorn! I have heard theories like those before, but it wasn't something I had considered prior to you mentioning it. It will definitely be an interesting thing to have as a point of discussion over the course of the podcast.

On a hunch, I tried googling "Alien documentaries" and got a review on a new documentary that has a bunch of books in the suggested products. That same website has a whole tag on aliens which might be useful.

Skeptic.com seems to be run by a not for profit dedicated to promoting scientific skepticism (According to wikipedia), so while it might not be the most accurate for those who believe, it will likely point you towards a bunch of higher profile believing sources that you can investigate, and the skeptic side of it can help you flesh out where your character's suspension of disbelief ends and what she would agree with on the website vs what she doesn't.