Abstract
People often joke about the certainty of death and taxes. Astronomers can add another certainty to that short list: Sooner or later someone will ask, "What do you think about the possibility of life out there?" Most questioners are looking for a particular answer. Science fiction novels The Planetary Society, and countless movies, from E.T. to Contact to Planet of the Apes, suggest that extraterrestrial life is a given and help conjure images of how that life looks. To answer questions about such life takes as much diplomacy as answering my wife when she asks, "How do I look?"