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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 2359022" data-attributes="member: 12332">Hrmmm... I remember reading a book a while back, putting it down and thinking:  "So that was, what ... SciFi Nam?"The main characters end up landing on a planet to complete some mission ... they're fighting another race in a grand genocidic war.  Turns out, this planet has something they both want on it ... but the planet itself is unbelievably hostile.  Almost everything is poisonous.  Half the plant species have active defenses, which are all pretty uniformly deadly.  And all of the animals are dangerous.  Finally they start getting hit by odd "tribesmen" which they trace back to a certain type of plant apparently producing ambulatory attack drones.  Read alot like Armor ... in the jungle.  Was okay, as far as books went, but too much nam movie inspiration.  Some guy eventually goes batslop crazy, goes native, and becomes 'one' with the jungle, etc..Having a human enemy is okay ... I think "Alien" often really stands in for "radically different culture".  Sort of a grand American mythological symbol.  We didn't really understand Nam.  Why and how the Vietcong fought the way they did, how to survive in the jungle, trying to fight a war in a horribly ALIEN place full of very alien people.  In five to ten years I imagine the sci-fi books coming out will deal alot with insurgencies and terrorism under alien guises.If you want to get into cultural implications and role playing between the sides, then go human(oid).  If you want to keep the other side truly "Other" then going with something horribly alien is a good bet.  You can FEEL like you have nothing in common with a human being on the other side of your gun, but that's hard to put over in a book or game, so the alien stand-in works well.Bugs make good choices because they're alien in appearance, most people have a psychological dislike for them, and evolutionarily speaking an intelligent life form is much more likely to develop out of a highly prevalent giant inset species than a serpentine species is likely to evolve arms but not legs.  The evolution of arms suggests a need for limbs.  You can lose limbs ... snakes, whales, etc ... I'm not sure I can think of any species that started WITHOUT them and evolved in a set of general purpose manipulators.Currently I think all the rage is evolving out squid and other molluscs ... they've already got limbs, they're predatory and therefore have potential for higher thinking and the evolution of intelligence, and are pretty creepy looking.--fje</blockquote>

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