Came across review of 3 books on alien life in New Scientist.
The gist is that alien life may well be stranger than anybody can imagine. If that is the case, then it may be that the universe is full of "life" but that it takes on forms which make no sense to us, and thus it may prove difficult to communicate even to relatively intelligent aliens. Just as a thought experiment, it may be that intelligent species are on planets but make use of totally different senses for communication. It is known that insects (such as ants) communicate primarilly through chemical-means. Even if aliens communicated via aural/auditory means, the frequency of speech would be different based on alien atmosphere makeup and pressure differences compared with Earth. So just getting to the communicating-basic-ideas phase with aliens will be difficult. And what makes for "basic ideas" may be up for interpretation. Advanced intelligent aliens may presume that Fermat's Last Theorem to be part of their kindergarten math curriculum.
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