Humans have been attempting to send messages to the stars since … I’m going to say the early ’70s. I mean, theoretically some caveman could have yelled, “Hey! Stars! You suck!” a hundred thousand years ago, but he was an idiot.

But of all the messages sent into space, which ones are good? Which ones conform to quality standards? That’s what I’m here to tell you.

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The Pioneer Plaques

These are identical, gold-plated plaques attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. They feature a picture of the solar system, a picture of the probes and a pictorial representation of the hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen. Ring any bells? No? Well, it also has a picture of a naked man and woman on it. Ah, yes. Now you remember.

Many people considered this nothing more than interstellar porn. Others objected to the fact that the man is the one waving his hand, presumably to give the woman time to bake the aliens a nice batch of muffins. My objection is that the people depicted have no body hair at all. Aliens are gonna come down and think we’re living in symbiosis with our pubes.
Grade: C

The Voyager Record

I love that we sent an LP. It’s so delightfully retro! I expect alien life forms to discover it and say, “Clearly, this is the work of a truly groovy civilization. We do not know what to expect when we visit their planet, but we should prepare ourselves for an extremely mellow experience.” In actuality, the funkiest track on the album is “Johnny B. Goode,” which I think is a poor choice. I mean, I’m not sure how one carries a guitar in a gunnysack, and I was born on this planet.
Grade: B

The Arecibo Image

This is actually a short binary message beamed into space. When decoded, it creates an image that looks remarkably similar to an Atari 2600 videogame. The apparent object of the game is to maneuver your guy through the cavern and up the waterfall, bypass the attacking spacecraft and grab a delicious slice of cake while avoiding the evil letter M. I’d play that game.

It should be noted that the human depicted here is also naked, but he’s a pixel guy so it’s fine. We don’t want aliens to know we have genitals, but it’s OK if they mistake us for table lamps.
Grade: A

The Teenage Message

This was beamed into space in 2001. It starts with some radio-transmission Doppler-tuning boring-boring-boring thing, segues into theremin music — THEREMIN MUSIC — and finally ends with some more binary images, including the logo of the Teenage Message program itself. So lame.

It’s called the Teenage Message because it was put together by Russian teenagers. I think that will be apparent to anyone who receives it. “Blaxnorvag! What is this tedious message from another world?” “I don’t know, Jerry, but it sounds like something put together by Russian teenagers.”
Grade: D

Television Signals

A common science fiction trope involves aliens intercepting our television shows and being so impressed that they use it as a basis for their entire civilization. That’s pretty egotistical. Even human beings don’t base their entire lives on one long-defunct television show. Well, except for Firefly fans.

Presumably aliens who can detect our faint signals can get any channel on any planet, and I hear Canopus has some pretty compelling public-access shows. Still, we should use this to our advantage. We need to immediately produce a television show about benevolent aliens who come to Earth and give human beings candy and hugs and play Super Smash Brothers Brawl with them, but don’t use Pit because he’s cheap.
Grade: C-

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a futurist, a futurologist and a futilitarian.

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