Michael P. Murphy

“In a 1991 short story first published in Omni magazine titled “They’re Made out of Meat,” sci-fi author Terry Bisson makes you regret being human. We are treated to a conversation between two ethereal aliens, where one tries hard to explain to the other that Earth humans are made entirely out of meat. A snippet of their pithy dialogue captures the astonishment:29 They’re made out of meat. Meat? Meat. They’re made out of meat. Meat? There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat. That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars. They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines. So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact. They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines. That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat. The first alien later attempts to describe how humans communicate: You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization