I read a ton of science fiction as a young person. When I finally stopped dragging my collection of paperbacks around, I donated the 800+ volumes to a university library with a SF special collection. You might therefore conclude UFOs in our skies are triggering some strange scenarios in my imagination.
Imagine, if you will, a space-faring species shows up here and finds humans as charming as we find dogs, cats, and other pets. Perhaps they’d “adopt” some number of decorative humans and keep them around for company, perhaps breeding them selectively for docility, good humor, and conformation to shapes the aliens find attractive.
Some generations hence the resulting folk might not much resemble present day “wild” humans. I presume human life spans might be considerably shorter than that of the aliens. One supposes they’d neuter most “tame humans” for convenience, as we do our pets. Think of this as the “dog model.”
The alternative “cat model” would value humans as attractive predators. Not so much altered from their original state, perhaps kept in part to eradicate pests the highly evolved aliens feel squeamish about liquidating.
Then there is the “bee keeper” model which would keep and observe reasonable-sized human colonies just for the fun of observation and perhaps some unique product we’d produce. Or the “aquarium model” where humans would inhabit an artificial habitat for decorative purposes within an alien environment in which we could not otherwise survive, one with a chlorine-based atmosphere for example.
I guess the ultimate is to view our Earth as a sort of ant colony existing for the entertainment of celestial superbeing(s). Brrrr, that is a chilly thought which encroaches on religion.
