How alien should aliens be?

[Umbran]

It's subjective, sure, but the topic is pretty subjective as it is.

Subjective doesn't begin to describe it. Plus, it's got an added feature that complicates the issue...

Imagine you've got a character. Highly logical sort, to the point of annoying other characters with it. No apparent sense of humor, etc. Typical vulcan, right?

Wrong. The behavior pattern is entirely plausible for a human being, too. Does that make this character less than 100% human? What about Hannibal Lector. Is he not 100% human? How about me. I was born on this planet, but I'm not archetypically human, I'm an individual. Do I only rank in the 95th-percentile? Playing the numbers game may clarify things in your mind, but it restricts your mind to certain paths, too, and forces some questions that are rather nonsensical.

All of which brings up an interesting point. People claim that all the aliens out there seem like humans in makeup. Their cultures and behaviors aren't all that far from what humans do, right?

Well, wait a minute. One of the things we treasure in humanity is flexibility, right? With such a wide variety of human behavior (ranging from nigh-vulcan to Hannibal Lector, from puritanical to 60s free love, from monogamous to polyamorous, conservative to liberal, etc) how likely is it that comprehensible aliens are going to lie terribly far from something we'd consider "human"?

We automatically look at this from a "humanocentric" point of view. But humans aren't tightly grouped around one center of behavior. We're spread all over the place. If we can imagine a behavior, we try it. So, of course aliens act like us. Because we act like everything.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Subjective doesn't begin to describe it. Plus, it's got an added feature that complicates the issue...

Imagine you've got a character. Highly logical sort, to the point of annoying other characters with it. No apparent sense of humor, etc. Typical vulcan, right?

Wrong. The behavior pattern is entirely plausible for a human being, too. Does that make this character less than 100% human? What about Hannibal Lector. Is he not 100% human? How about me. I was born on this planet, but I'm not archetypically human, I'm an individual. Do I only rank in the 95th-percentile? Playing the numbers game may clarify things in your mind, but it restricts your mind to certain paths, too, and forces some questions that are rather nonsensical.

No, it doesn't restrict my mind. Perhaps it restricts yours, but not mine - no offense. Just as we are unable to know how an alien would think or act, it's tough for one human to conclusively state what or how another human thinks (let alone an alien), or what is or isn't an effective method of clarifying one's thoughts. If you say that assigning percentages restricts your thinking, that I can accept; saying it restricts mine I can't accept. There is no way for you to conclusively know that, just as there is no way for any of us to conclusively know what an alien would think.

The fact that it is utterly and entirely impossible for us to even conceive how anything truly alien would think or act is what restricts us across the board (unless someone really is in contact with aliens ). The only recourse is to arbitrarily choose what we consider to be "typically human" and work from there. Attempting to do otherwise is akin to contemplating the "tree falling in the forest" question in its unanswerability. Personally, such discussions and contemplations grow tiresome for me fairly quickly.

Let me tackle some of what you point out. You picked the most obvious "Vulcan" traits, but in my analysis of them, and the assigning of a percentage value of how human they are, is based on more than that - they go into heat every 7 years, they have mind powers beyond those of humans, they have organs that restrict their emotions, they have copper-based blood...none of which any human has. The same goes with other aliens I mentioned - Narn are clearly not physically like humans except in the basic humanoid body structure (the males carry the young in a pouch, they have greater strength, thay are not what we would call mammals, for examples); Centauri have a few phsyical differences, including the equivalent of DNA that is totally non-human; and etc.

The point being that my assigning of such percentage values is based on more than how they act or think, by necessity - since it's impossible, literally, for us to ever "get in the head" of an alien, some consideration has to be given to the physical differences. Stemming from those physical differences would be cultural and, possibly, psychological differences that would, indeed, make them "less than human." Also, any human that possessed one or more of the physical differences mentioned above would likely be classified as "less than human," or perhaps it is better to say "other than human," to be more precise and less potentially offensive. In such a case, percentage values would likely be used as a good shorthand method of keeping the discussion clear.

 

[Umbran]

No, it doesn't restrict my mind. Perhaps it restricts yours, but not mine - no offense.

Okay, Colonel. If you wish to believe that you're immune to an effect that demonstrably affects the rest of your species, you're free to do so. The thing I refer to happens time and again in the physical and psychological sciences - choosing a scale and method of measurement channels one's mind into thinking on specific terms. This can be constructive, but also leads you into a rut. If you think this doesn't happen to you.... well, more power to you. I hope you don't take offense at my "Doubting Thomas" attitude on the point.

Just as we are unable to know how an alien would think or act, it's tough for one human to conclusively state what or how another human thinks (let alone an alien), or what is or isn't an effective method of clarifying one's thoughts.

I didn't say it would not clarify thoughts, Colonel. I said it would restrict your thinking. One can think clearly down restricted channels. Sometimes that's even necessary. But in a place where we hadn't even yet defined what counts as "human", it seems counterproductive to start measuring it.

Which brings me to it - if we cannot conclusively tell what either human or alien thinks, what's the purpose of a measure of "humanness"? What, exactly, are you trying to measure?

they have organs that restrict their emotions

Thoroughly aside, I'm not sure the above is true (unless you mean they've got a brain). They have certain syndromes where later in life they begin to fail to be able to restrict emotions, but the same basic thing happens to some humans, and we don't have specific organs for the task. The Vulcans came upon emotion control as a social development, rather than a biological one.

The point being that my assigning of such percentage values is based on more than how they act or think, by necessity

It seems to me that how they behave and think are simply more valuable and interesting when talking in terms of writing fiction. The fact that a critter's got an extra eye in it's head may be a plot point, but how it's thoughts and behaviors differ because of that eye are a matter of character development. The first is mechanics, the latter is psychology.

But then, I repeat, if the focus is on the mentation and behavior - it is highly plausible to have a human with behavior and thought that is more alien than that of an extraterrestrial. Having an extra heart, or six reproductive organs isn't material in comparison to sociopathic behavior, for example.

Also, any human that possessed one or more of the physical differences mentioned above would likely be classified as "less than human," or perhaps it is better to say "other than human," to be more precise and less potentially offensive.

Clealy to be less offensive. There are humans born with physical differences, or who develop them later in life. You certainly wouldnt want to call the "less than human". Do you want to call them "other than human"? A character uses wheels to get around instead of legs. How much other than human is he? Does it matter if he's a dolphin on land, a human cripple, or an "Uplift Universe" g'kek?

I don't ask that for reasons of political correctness. I ask it as a real part of the discussion - what makes a human human, and an alien an alien? If a member of homo sapiens, born and bred on Earth, can have many qualities that make them "alien", how is it really "alien"?

Are we saying that "alien" is no more or less than "differing in any manner from human norms"? I gotta wonder if that's useful.

By the measure of physicality, the Narn and Centauri of B5 were certainly alien. But they bugged some people specifically because psychologically they weren't at all alien. They were perfectly understandable people of other cultures. Fans loved them for that - we could wallow in Londo's angst, feel G'Kar's pain. So, were they alien, or not?

 

[Rackhir]

Gerggory Bentford's Galactic Center series (Great Sky River and others) has a large number of alien aliens.

Another series that has "alien" aliens though it makes it's points in a more comedic way is Phil Foglio's Galactic Gallimaufry - Buck Godot([http:\\www.studiofoglio.com).

Larry Niven's "Draco's Tavern" series of short stories (originally collected in the book Convergent series) is a good read with points to make on this topic.

One point about "alieness", in many respects other creatures on earth are as "alien" to us as we might be to other life forms, but the basic imperatives of life dictate a certain amount of similarity (need to survive, eat, breed). So if you have a species of intelligent life that has evolved under earthlike conditions, odds are that there are going to be very strong similarities and that mental differences would be no more different than between say a rainforest dwelling human and a nomadic desert human. Don't forget that human societies can have radically different points of views, beliefs, ways of thinking and life styles. That can lead to near total incompatability at a very violent level.

To get a truly alien creature you would have to have one that developed in a radically different enviroment with very different characteristics dictating the development of the creature. So different that we might not even be able to recognize each other as intelligent species.

 

[s/LaSH]

I think survival is the most recognisable trait, and one that divides the rock from the brain - a rock won't do things to survive, whereas life generally will (if it doesn't it won't live long).

Going from first principles is always a good idea - it not only gives you a biological basis for weird aliens, but it gives you other species for their homeworld and everyday life as well. More about pets in a moment.

Going from biology, you can find plenty of things that a race needs to 'take care of' to survive. To use examples from my homebrew universe, the eaxhr (YASH-er) have three genders, two of whom bond to create a family unit while the third is only peripherally involved in breeding and who live in huge bunkhouses. Oh, and they melt in water, but that's not important. What's important is that there are these big, scaly, muscly insect creatures* who have 'feminine' family units but also have these big collections of 'males' (the technical word is Makers) who live together in the hundreds.

* I know insects shouldn't have big muscles, or even get bigger than a grapefruit. Eaxhr are technically superinsects, evolutionarily about as far from insects as we are from fish, so their exoskeleton is subsumed and they have lungs of a sort, although their tissue holds a lot of the chlorine they breathe, allowing eaxhr to hold their breath up to an hour. They haven't shown much interest in calling vertebrates 'fish people', though. Chalk it up to a long and rich history on the intergalactic scene.

Then there's the ability to go beyond evolution. Given time, there will be genetically or otherwise engineered variant races popping up all over the place. These are races** that demonstrate clearer function than evolved ones.

** I know 'race' generally isn't used for sf, but it's the best label I've come up with because certain civilisations such as the T-kin aren't a species at all, but rather a sophisticated kind of conglomerate of many different species of fungus.

Most importantly, however, races that can voyage between the stars (and thus interact with humans on any meaningful level beyond 'Me Kirk, you monster, blam argh thud, poor devil doesn't know a phaser does he?') have developed a few things that humans can recognise and interact with. For starters, they have moving bodies (sometimes only their ship moves, but that's enough). That's generally a dead giveaway. Second, they act with self-preservation (possibly on a social scale, not individual, however). Self-preservation is a good commiseration point, incidentally.

When I write aliens, I make it a point to include motivations even if I won't write from their perspective. Even the malicious xre'ron hordes (genetically engineered amphibian soldiers with animal intelligence) have motives; they're animalistic, with just enough intelligence to know hate, thus making them the perfect shock soldiers. An example interaction with these soldiers involves fang-baring, impressive posturing, and various submissive behaviours. The primary difference here is that xrer soldiers (ron) don't have wants, they have behaviours. They won't say 'I want such-and-such', they'll say 'Kill! Kill!'.

I'm rambling. Does any of this make sense?

 

[S'mon]

How little alienness is enough?


Culturally, truly alien comlex aliens tend to appear only in literary sf. The best movie aliens are probably the 'one trick ponies' that embody one particular thing - the parasite Alien, the hunter Predator, etc.

For a political story, I can accept aliens that motivation-wise are stand-ins for other cultures, like the Narn and Centauri.

What's 'too little' IMO is when almost every alien species seems based off a small subset of modern southern Californian culture - the Star Trek phenomenon.

Physically, television sf has always had the problem of limited budgets. If they can't do aliens that at least look _slightly_ alien, I wish they wouldn't do them at all. Blake's 7 had almost no 'aliens', but lots of variant human cultures, apparently of Earth origin. If they look human, calling them 'aliens' achieves nothing in my book - they're human, why not admit it and construct the backstory accordingly? Either the story is set in the far future, or prehistoric aliens seeded the galaxy with humans, or whatever. Just don't pretend a human with a crinkle nose is an alien!