Cosmic Striptease

What would happen if aliens contacted Earth and they were all very, very naked? Cosmic Striptease is a short story from the 1950s written by Harlan Ellison. This story is mostly an easy read, the language is similar to today, however it is a science fiction story so you have to recognize there is made-up science in it - the most complicated part is the beginning few paragraphs so it would help to read that part over twice. This story speculates about first contact with a superior race and how that could change the customs and morals on Earth - it's a little bit funny.

Word Discovery

Let's begin by discovering things about words!

It's going to be so great if you can download and print the above word maps to support your Word Discovery learnings! If you don't have access to a printer or a second screen while you are watching, grab some paper and write down the important words as we go. By writing the words you are studying, you are improving your ability to remember them by using adding an additional neural pathway to reading, speaking and hearing.

Reading the story

The video has captions so you can follow along on the screen, but I encourage you to print the above pdf of the story so you can read it a second time (and maybe even a third!) time on paper. When reading on paper, you can highlight or underline interesting words and write your reactions in the margins! That's top-tier engaging with a text!

Engage further with this story! 

Now that you have read the Cosmic Striptease take your learning further by participating in the chat below.
What is your personal reaction to this story? 
Did you enjoy it, why or why not? 
Did you find the story easy to understand or did the science fiction confuse you?
Do you think people are more or less likely to believe in aliens today than in the 1950s?
Do you think this story was sexist?
What are your thoughts about the characters? 

Investigating Language
Choose another one or two words in the story and try to learn more about them. 
Look up the word in a dictionary, online or paper, and see if the word has any other meanings. 
If a word has an unusual spelling, search etymology of the word and find out where it comes from. 
Does the word have prefixes or suffixes? Can you use morphology to find out what it means and connect it to other words that share a morpheme? 
Search up synonyms or antonyms to the word.