Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Here's an interesting article on aliens to make your brain hurt:

 

http://atomicrockets.posterous.com/aliens-r-us-the-ten-errors-of-science-fiction

 

Enjoy.

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

IMHO that article is 80% philosophical (add word here).

the good 20% is - SF does tend to anthropomorphise aliens both physically and mentally.

 

however note that:

Fiction does (and should) concentrate on the interesting.

No-one is really going to read a first contact between people and alien bacteria.

SF does tend to concentrate on contact and interaction with intelligent beings.

(not necessarily sentient) which means creatures that interact usefully with the environment and other beings.

 

beings that develop advanced technology are either immortal (unlikely evolution-wise) or socially cooperative (at least within family or clan). Evolution also drives competition between groups who may be genetically diverse. Although this does not demand "leaders" (types of sexual selection tends to do this however) it does push toward things like land grabs, wars, etc.

[Tasha]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Here's an interesting article on aliens to make your brain hurt:

 

http://atomicrockets.posterous.com/aliens-r-us-the-ten-errors-of-science-fiction

 

Enjoy.

 

Basically SF has those things because they make for stories that are both interesting and give the Reader a chance to identify with the Aliens.

 

Given how big the Universe is, it's unlikely that we are the only intelligent life in it. Now depending on the limits of Physics we may just may live in a neighborhood that has no life in it (besides us). It may be that Intelligent life is so rare that we will never encounter it. It may also be that any aliens may be leaving our little planet alone while we go though our cranky phase. Perhaps if we live though this and evolve further we may rate contact. Who knows. No matter what we should be on the lookout for signs of intelligent life on other planets. We should also be working to colonize other worlds so our civilizations don't have their egg in one basket (earth).

[Guest Celt]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

IMHO that article is 80% philosophical (add word here).

 

Only 80%? You forget Sturgeon's Law "Ninety percent of everything is crap".

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I think that Sturgeon's Law is 80% (you know)

[Guest Celt]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I think that Sturgeon's Law is 80% (you know)

 

Actually the final word should be 'crud'. linkage

 

But I stand by the 90%

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I have to agree with dmjalund's initial assessment: the bulk of this article is really just so much twaddle. A lot of what it demands on what "life" is like would make really boring stories, and most of the rest talks as though these extreme cases of "not like us" should be the rule rather than the exception (which may or may not be true, but why assume it is?). On the whole he seems like another one of those people who are so bent on "thinking outside the box" that they reject any notion that something valuable is inside the box.

 

The examination of "why haven't we contacted aliens yet?" is vaguely thought-provoking from an abstract point of view but ultimately useless, at least IMO.

 

Sorry, Xavier -- I don't mean this to be disparaging to you directly, but while this did succeed in making my brain hurt, "interesting" is barely descriptive except as a euphemism.

[mattingly]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

[austenandrews]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

The article is so broad as to be fairly meaningless. You can replace the word "aliens" with just about anything and the list wouldn't change much. It does bear mentioning that the universe might be weird in a number of ways that often go unspoken, but to claim that "all works of science fiction" ignore these ideas displays a rather limited knowledge of the genre.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Actually, I think it's about time someone did start asking these types of questions about alien life, especially in SF. Peter Watts' Blindsight was a start, as were Gerrold's Chtorran novels. Greg Egan's Diaspora has some original ideas, too. But most depictions of aliens in popular SF are beyond lame: sticking a forehead appliance on an actor wearing a period costume and calling him an "alien" has become status quo in SF on both the large and small screen. And it's been that way so long that the status quo has become a pathetic joke.

[Guest Celt]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

John W. Campbell Jr asked writers to do this decades ago "Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man."

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I don't mind keeping in mind that aliens might be different - and well - alien. I do think we have to keep in mind that they will be results of evolution (cybernetic aliens - by definition - must have been constructed by evolved beings at some stage) And that evolution, with its simple demand that survival means adaptation. And that anything we can interact meaningfully with must also have behavior based evolution. means although Intelligence of aliens can be very alien, it should still follow evolutionary rules that we already recognize and understand (more or less).

[ThistledownJohn]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

 

The Fermi Paradox exists in the insect world as well! Who knew?

[austenandrews]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

But most depictions of aliens in popular SF are beyond lame: sticking a forehead appliance on an actor wearing a period costume and calling him an "alien" has become status quo in SF on both the large and small screen. And it's been that way so long that the status quo has become a pathetic joke.

TV & movies are, luckily, not the extent of SF.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

TV & movies are, luckily, not the extent of SF.

 

Agreed. My initial impression on reading the article is that the author needs to turn off the TV and read some books!

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

The Fermi Paradox exists in the insect world as well! Who knew?

 

In this case, more like "The Formi Paradox."

[Markdoc]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

The author makes a decent point though: it is unlikely (by which I mean mindbogglingly improbable) that aliens will be anything like us. To say "Well it makes it more interesting if we can identify with them" is just a crutch for weak writing. A good writer can make you identify with things that are alien. The reason I read relatively little scifi these days (and watch none on TV) is because Xavier has it right, I think. The bulk of it is overwhelmingly lame: the most interesting scifi I have seen recently on the big screen is stuff like Moon, where there are no aliens or authors like Ian Banks where the aliens are .... well, alien. Heck, half the human cultures described there are pretty alien. Avatar, on the other hand was really pretty - but there wasn't actually a single alien in the movie: just humans in different bodies.

 

cheers, Mark

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Move and TV sci-fi is made to be palatable to the lowest common denomenator. The average TV viewer can in no way shape or form understand, identify nor empathize with a creature truly alien from what we know and understand as life. And while a Hive-minded fungul-like being that likes to exist inside the bodies of living creatures (slowly killing them in the process) might make for an interesting Creature-of-the-week episode, we couldn't have something like that as a main character. It simply wouldn't work.

 

Put some bumpy head ridges on a big black dude and call him Worf and you've got TV GOLD right there!

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

The author makes a decent point though: it is unlikely (by which I mean mindbogglingly improbable) that aliens will be anything like us. To say "Well it makes it more interesting if we can identify with them" is just a crutch for weak writing. A good writer can make you identify with things that are alien. The reason I read relatively little scifi these days (and watch none on TV) is because Xavier has it right' date=' I think. The bulk of it is [b']overwhelmingly[/b] lame: the most interesting scifi I have seen recently on the big screen is stuff like Moon, where there are no aliens or authors like Ian Banks where the aliens are .... well, alien. Heck, half the human cultures described there are pretty alien. Avatar, on the other hand was really pretty - but there wasn't actually a single alien in the movie: just humans in different bodies.

 

cheers, Mark

 

You sir, are the audience for which hard Sci-fi is written. Movies on the other hand, are written to appeal to individuals with I.Q. scores far, far lower than yourself. Considering the cost of the average SFX-laden sci-fi epic, selling it to a mere 5% of the movie watching population based on content would be financial suicide.

[austenandrews]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

One could make a sort of anthropic principle/self-selection argument in favor of more humanlike aliens. If life is sufficiently common in the universe that spacefaring humans meet countless sorts of aliens, it's not unreasonable to presume that some aliens will be more humanlike than others. (Convergent evolution on Earth can shape very different life forms into very similar structures; given a wide enough sample size, there's no reason to claim that noticeably humanlike aliens couldn't evolve under the right conditions.)

 

One might further posit that the closer the alien is to a human, the more its interactions with humans will conform to human-only interactions. It's reasonable to expect that humans would interact more with familiar aliens than with unfamiliar ones. Furthermore, interactions that are more humanlike will adhere closer to human-only dramatic conventions. Given these two factors, it follows that we would see more stories about humanlike aliens than about not-very-humanlike aliens.

 

Am I wrong?

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

This will still leave (unless we act particularly snobbishly) us dealing with a large majority of beings who although must be considered sentient, are however rather alien. Beings who are as tough to understand as the mental workings of an octopus.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

This will still leave (unless we act particularly snobbishly) us dealing with a large majority of beings who although must be considered sentient' date=' are however rather alien. Beings who are as tough to understand as the mental workings of an octopus.[/quote']

 

Heh. The aliens in Watts' Blindsight make octopi look like our intellectual 'next of kin', not to mention a lot more cuddly.

 

I could go on and on about this *&^%$#@ book, but I won't. If you're interesting in something different, follow the link and browse the reviews. Then read the book!

[Tasha]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Actually' date=' I think it's about time someone did start asking these types of questions about alien life, especially in SF. Peter Watts' [i']Blindsight[/i] was a start, as were Gerrold's Chtorran novels. Greg Egan's Diaspora has some original ideas, too. But most depictions of aliens in popular SF are beyond lame: sticking a forehead appliance on an actor wearing a period costume and calling him an "alien" has become status quo in SF on both the large and small screen. And it's been that way so long that the status quo has become a pathetic joke.

 

It's still a bit too expensive to CGI aliens. Also if you make the aliens too alien the audience won't really emphasize with them. This is ok if you are going for aliens like the Starship Troopers movie, but if you want to have species that the average person can relate to you have to make them more human.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

It's still a bit too expensive to CGI aliens. Also if you make the aliens too alien the audience won't really emphasize with them. This is ok if you are going for aliens like the Starship Troopers movie' date=' but if you want to have species that the average person can relate to you have to make them more human.[/quote']

 

This is precisely my point -- making the aliens 'more human' automatically makes them 'less alien.' Most authors/producers/whoever are so focused on what their audience can 'relate to' that the term alien might as well be meaningless in popular SF.

 

But Austen Andrews made a very good point: TV and movies aren't the whole of the genre. You don't need CGI aliens to write a good book, and the same is true for SF-RPG's of course.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

There's also a danger of making aliens different just for the sake of making them different. Human have many features that are simply the most likely to occur chemically or biologically, if not downright required for sapience. Carbon and water based chemistry, air-breathing, bilateral symmetry, upright stance, manipulating limbs, binocular vision, minimum head size, and so forth are probably at least very common, and some of them universal by necessity.

 

That said, there are still plenty of variables that can't be done with human actors: number of limbs, number of digits, boniness (that is, arms and fingers versus tentacles), and more. From what I've been able to pick up, while most sapient beings are probably mammals or something of the kind, but we're probably exceptional in our relative hairlessness.

 

And remember, television sci-fi isn't without those extremely bizarre creatures. Even the original Star Trek included at least two intelligent life forms based on energy, two based on silicon, and one that took a gaseous form.

 

As for the social and psychological aspects, if aliens are too alien then that aspect tends to become a focus of the story. If that's the intent, then fine; I've actually become a little interested, based on Xavier's mention, in Blindsight. In other cases I prefer to make the aliens different enough to seem alien, but not enough to distract from the heart of the tale.

 

Along similar lines, in my play Androids Don't Cry I do a lot of exploring the emotional makeup of the title character, Andrea 4-212. Some of the feelings are very similar to ours, but there are significant differences: machines don't feel romantic or erotic relationships, or have a desire to procreate. They might wish to have such experiences, having been exposed to it as a part of human life, but it's not something natural to them because that's not what makes a successful machine. What makes a successful biological entity is survival and procreation; what makes a successful machine is performing well the function for which it was built. Andrea was built to be a nurse, companion, and housekeeper, and so performing those functions for her owner is as important to her nature as surviving and having children would be to the average human. This becomes a significant issue halfway through the play, when the person she's nursing dies and Andrea must find a new function.

 

The same principle can be applied to alien psychology. Think about why we as humans behave the way we do, and what's made that sort of behavior successful; if certain aliens behave differently, what has made that different behavior successful? As with some of the biological things I mentioned before, we could be the exception rather than the rule -- but why is that so?