YOU WANT TO COME OUT INTO SPACE, SON, you’ve got to train up for it. And I can tell you, it’s not going to be the picnic you thought it might be. Nor is it like any of those comic book fantasies that you’ve been reading about in the science-fiction paperbacks and watching on TV, like Star Trek or Dan Dare.

No sir!

And it’s not like that Alien film, either! Although Alien is perhaps more realistic in some aspects, but it only begins to address the issue of just how strange and different alien lifeforms can really be.