Zoo hypothesis  

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The zoo hypothesis is an academic speculation regarding the assumed behavior of technically advanced alien civilizations.

Appearance in fiction

• In Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker, great care is taken by the Symbiont race to keep its existence hidden from "pre-utopian" primitives, "lest they should lose their independence of mind". It is only when such worlds become utopian-level space travellers that the Symbionts make contact and bring the young utopia to an equal footing.

• Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel (first published in 1951) and its later novel adaptation 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) feature a beacon which is activated when the human race discovers it on the moon. An alien race has apparently visited us in the distant past.

• In Childhood's End, a novel by Arthur C. Clarke published in 1953, the alien cultures had been observing and registering the Earth's evolution and human history for thousands (perhaps millions) of years. At the beginning of the book, when mankind is about to achieve spaceflight, the aliens reveal their existence and quickly end the arms race, colonialism, racial segregation and the Cold War.

• In Star Trek (1966), the Federation (including humans) has a strict Prime Directive policy of nonintervention with less technologically advanced cultures which the Federation encounters. The threshold of inclusion is the independent technological development of faster-than-light propulsion. In the show's canon the Vulcan race limited their encounters to observation until humans made their first warp flight, after which they initiated first contact.

• In Julian May's 1987 novel Intervention, the five alien races of the Galactic Milieu keep the Earth under surveillance, but do not intervene until humans demonstrate mental and ethical maturity through a paranormal prayer of peace.

• In Robert J. Sawyer's SF novel Calculating God (2000), Hollus, a scientist from an advanced alien civilization, denies that her government is operating under the prime directive.

• In "Hard to Be a God" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, the (unnamed) medieval-esque planet where the novel takes action is protected by the advanced civilization of Earth, and the observers from Earth present on the planet are forbidden to intervene and make overt contact. One of the major themes of the novel is the ethical dilemma presented by such a stance to the observers.