Leighton Brett Cooke

"Alle Menschen werden Brüder"

-- Schiller / Beethoven

"Intelligent life takes a stand!"

-- Shizumaat, Talman

Drac: "Irkmaan.!"

Earthman: "You piece of Drac slime....Come on, Drac, come and
get it."

Drac: " Irkmaan vaa, koruum su!"

Earthman: "Are you going to talk, or fight? Come on!....Kiz da
youmeen, Shizumaat! [translation: "Shizumaat, the most revered
Drac philosopher, eats kiz excrement."]

Drac: "Irkmaan, yaastupid Mickey Mouse is!" ( Novella, p. 122) ¹

These are fighting words. But for the mention of Mickey Mouse,
Earthman and Drac would have immediately come to blows. Given
that they are fighter pilots for two different species at war, now
crash-landed on a neutral planet, we have every reason to anticipate
that the battle they began in the skies above Fyrene IV will be
reengaged on the ground. And this happens in the ensuing scenes of
Barry B. Longyear's Enemy Mine, a novella which won a Hugo
Award, then was made into a feature-length film, under the direction
of Wolfgang Petersen, screenplay by Edward Khmara, and finally,
was expanded as a "boovie," this time with David Gerrold as
coauthor. Whereas there is no proof of an exobiology and this story
can hardly be accepted as a plausible account of human-extrater-
restrial relations, these indubitable signs of literary success suggest

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