The New Sun by Joc Le Fetilist a Didero

Voltaire is asking questions, kind of like the questions of science fiction. But when his aliens get together, o, it's a first context story. What do they talk about? They talk about whether descart or thomas aquinas is correct about the nature of the soul. The aliens in our first contact stories are much more likely to discuss whatever the big concerns are of that decade a yo. Does technology make us less what we are? Are there alien races with pespeces and siborgness than we have? Those aren't the quest voltaire asked; he thought it his moment. He doesn't have this enormous multi-decade accumulation of fictional concepts. Ah