The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

The distinctions of chemistry, gravity, atmosphere, temperature, nourishment, technology, and overall biological organization between the Ul Kworn, for example, and an Earth man are obvious; either one would find it nearly impossible to visualize the other’s existence as anything other than a fantasy.

The difficulty of seeing through the eyes of childhood, for adults, is slightly less than the problem a child must have trying to see a world he has never known (a world of much smaller dimensions, less sharp smells, duller colors, less sunshine and more artificial light, different food and clothes and technology) as adults might see it.

Now here is one more alien’s-eye view, from the core of the culture-image itself.