How alien should aliens be?

[Dagger75]

Since I have never seen an alien its really hard to tell what one looks like.

Here is my take.

What if having 2 arms, 2 legs a head with most of the senses located in one place the most effienct way for a species to evolve enough for space travel.

Dolphins may be smart and on another world dolphins may have culture, language and what not but it's hard to build to starships when you don't have thumbs. Even living underwater seems to pose its own problems. Its hard to have science when you can't burn something. That seems to be the easies way to cause chemical reactions.


Thats all for now

 

[Umbran]

Hm. Interesting topic.

An isolated thought-

One (admittedly influenced by another thread) is that humanity is not a thing upon which we can put a numeric value. Even just to be demonstrative, I'm not sure it's helpful. But, as I said, I'm being influenced by another thread, so don't worry too much about that...

Now, about aliens....

It's true that an author would have great difficulty depicting truly alien creatures. If the mentation and motives of a character are so odd as to be unintelligible by humans, the author really cannot get "inside it's head", and show you what is going on. Such creatures become forces of nature. You may be able to define rules upon which they operate, but winding out the underlying mechanic to the rule becomes difficult if not impossible. Such aliens are... well, they are like the weather. Frequently we can tell what will happen, but we know somewhat less about why it happens

Orson Scott Card addresses this somewhat in the Ender books. He has terms (stolen from Icelandic, I think) for different degrees of "alienness": framling, raman, and varelse.

The framling is one of your own people. You can understand them fully, and dealing with them is easy. We here on the boards are generally framlings to each other.

The raman is someone who is not of your own people, but is still comprehensible. It may take a little bit of work, but you can get into a raman's head, understand their needs and thoughts, and deal with them cogently.

The varelse is truly alien. So alien that no communication is possible. There is no abilty to understand and negotiate, or compromise. The inability to communicate is so complete that the alien might well be raman for all you know, but you cannot tell, because you don't understand anythign that they do.

This is seen in Ender's Game. The "buggers" are varelse. Humans cannot understand or negotiate. There is conflict, it turns bloody, and funally genocidal. It is only after the war is over that Ender discovers that the buggers were actually raman.

As to how alien some aliens are...

Well, here's the thing - it takes a lot of time and effort to make an alien deep and understandable. If there's a lot fo differences from humans, you will at first misunderstand most of it, and characterize the creature by the strongest features you do see - leading to the archetypes we see in D&D races, for example.

A good example of this are the Kzinti of Larry Niven's "Known Space". In most of Niven's own works, in which kzinti appear, but aren't the central characters, the kzinti are a characature "warrior/predator" race. However, when you specifically read the more in-depth treatment given to the kzinti in the Man-Kzin War series (a series in which Niven opened things up as a "shared world"), the kzinti are far more fully developed. They are alien, make no mistake, but rather than be a simple charicature, they are shown to have depth and variability and complexity. But it takes a lot of verbiage to get al that across...

 

[Mallus]

My not very helpful answer is:
Alien should be as alien they are needed for your story - and what you can afford.

If you need an alien to tell a story about a real world conflict, but don`t want anybody be offended, you can just take humans and add bumps on their foreheads ...
That is, basically the idea that leads us to Klingons, Bajorans, Vulcans, Centauri, Narn, Minbari.

If you need an alien whose motives cannot be understood, and which is "just" there to cause horror, make it more alien, give it bizare anotomy, and don`t explain to much about its cultere (better nothing at all), so nobody can understand, but everybody fear it..
This is the idea that creates Vorlons, or the Alien itself...

Mustrum Ridcully

What do you mean, not helpful? This is great. Err, mainly because I agree...

I think that sums up the two biggest uses of 'alien' characters; either as metaphoric stand-ins for real world peoples/problems, which can then be studied at a safe distance, or plot devices, who might have an enormous influence over a story, but an impersonal kind of influence, like the tornado in Twister, or the boat in The Poseiden Adventure.

I do think that the Vorlons represent more of Type 1 than Type 2. While they're certainly inscrutible, they're also pretty clearly metaphoric. They represent the evils inherent in blind faith, in a rigid, pervasive religious order. Or they represent JMS stealing wholesale from Michael Moorcock, since the Vorlons are a better portrayal of the Lords of Order than Moorcock himself ever wrote.

 

[Dhevan]

When it comes to TV and movies, it's rare that aliens deviate from the human standard pattern. Some of it is based on limited budget. It gets really expensive to have CG special effects every time you see a main character. It's also a matter of letting the actor be able to express themselves (with human based emotions of course), which is hard to do when your face is hidden under layers of latex. HR Giger's aliens were never meant to emote, so they were never a problem. On B5, all of the main ambasadors had fairly simple make-up that left their faces free to emote. This is one of the main reasons that Star Trek has the "bump-on-the-nose" aliens.

As for books, the authors can go farther afield, not limited by special effects. While I like Larry Niven's Pupeteers, the most "alien" aliens that I have read would be David Brin's aliens. Both Uplift trilogies had truly unique and interseting aliens that were not simply based on one prevailing human trait. They also have unique phisiology, and not limited to the human template (some were, but the more interesting were not).

The problem is that by making the alien too "alien", then there's no chance for the audience to identify with it. We can understand if someone gets angry because they are jealous, or threatened. These are normal human (and animal) responses. Unfortunatly, other than by observing animals around us, we don't have any examples of any other form of behaviour. (Which is why many aliens are based on the insect template. They act in a manner that is the most foreign to our own.) David Brin did an amazing job of interpreting Dolphin behaviour in "Startide Rising" (Dolphins influenced by Human genetic engineering) into something that still had identifiable emotions, but not human.

Personally, I get really tired of the same old aliens again and again. The worst is when the heroes go to an alien planet, break the law and somehow end up in a western style courtroom. "The defence rests your Gleshbak!" I certainly like it when the creators at least make an attempt at making their aliens differ from human by more than an extra wrinkle on their nose. The Shadows and Vorlons from B5 (more at the begining) were quite good for that. The best from B5 was the first season episode where Sinclairs girlfriend went out and encountered one of the elder races. Basically, it didn't even care that she existed. I've always liked stories where Humans were not necessiarily the most powerful force in the galaxy.

There really needs to be more veriety of planet types that would influence an aliens biology and behaviour: High/Low gravity, atmosphere, hot/cold climates, different atmosphere, etc. The thing that always dissapointed me about Star Trek was that every time they landed on a planet or met an alien race, they always breathed the same atmosphere.

Looking back at my long winded post, I realized that I just basically agreed with everything that was said already, but just took a long time to do it.

Here's my point: Even though I understand the limitations of actor and special effects, I would like to see more Aliens aliens rather than the old human in a costume.

-Dhevan

 

[Umbran]

Some of it is based on limited budget. It gets really expensive to have CG special effects every time you see a main character. It's also a matter of letting the actor be able to express themselves (with human based emotions of course), which is hard to do when your face is hidden under layers of latex.

In addition, two of the latest sci-fi series (Farscape and Andromeda) had problems with actors having makeup-related health problems. If the makeup puts your actors in the hospital, it seriously gets in the way of character development.

There really needs to be more veriety of planet types that would influence an aliens biology and behaviour: High/Low gravity, atmosphere, hot/cold climates, different atmosphere, etc.

Well, there are problems here.

One is a limitation of how hard your science will be. Gravity, for example - a world much lighter than Earth has problems holding an atmosphere (just look at Mars). Worlds notably heavier start giving you issues with simple body mechanics. In general, there are limitations on what kind of atmospheres are possible and plausible.

Another problem is fairly obvious - if the alien environments are alien, they cause difficulties. Just as it's difficult for actors to work in lots of latex makeup, it's hard to act in a mock-up environmental suit, too. How useful would a starship crewman be if he had to stay in his own room because the oxygen atmosphere the human characters need would kill him? Having differing environmental requirements limits character interaction.

You saw this in Brin's Uplift universe. There was a one intergalactic society of oxygen breathers, and another of methane breathers. They barely interacted, simply because they couldn't generally even use the same planets. There was little call for communication.

 

[Dhevan]

You saw this in Brin's Uplift universe. There was a one intergalactic society of oxygen breathers, and another of

True, but that was one of the reasons I liked it. Even though they didn't really have any reason to interact, there was always a possibilty they would (eventually).

Not one to ignore science, I just like the idea of nature surprising us with it's adaptivness. "No life could survive in this kind of envi---AAARGH!"

I remember reading Larry Niven's Intrigral Trees (sp?) and thought the low gravity ideas there were pretty fun.

Oh, and actors health is indeed a key issue.

-Dhevan

 

[Viking Bastard]

Orson Scott Card addresses this somewhat in the Ender books. He has terms (stolen from Icelandic, I think) for different degrees of "alienness": framling, raman, and varelse.

Indeed? Since the spelling doesn't exactly jump out to point any
fingers at Icelandic words, how are those phrases pronounced?

Now I HAVE to read those damn books.

EDIT: 'Framling' could be 'Framandi', which means 'Alien' (adjective),
but it's kinda extreme, not just "I don't really know him."

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Hm. Interesting topic.

An isolated thought-

One (admittedly influenced by another thread) is that humanity is not a thing upon which we can put a numeric value. Even just to be demonstrative, I'm not sure it's helpful. But, as I said, I'm being influenced by another thread, so don't worry too much about that...

Personally, I find it helpful. It's a good, quick way to help clarify one's thoughts. It's subjective, sure, but the topic is pretty subjective as it is.

 

[S'mon]

I do think that the Vorlons represent more of Type 1 than Type 2. While they're certainly inscrutible, they're also pretty clearly metaphoric. They represent the evils inherent in blind faith, in a rigid, pervasive religious order. Or they represent JMS stealing wholesale from Michael Moorcock, since the Vorlons are a better portrayal of the Lords of Order than Moorcock himself ever wrote.

Very good point - the opposed forces of the Shadows clearly represent Chaos and the Vorlons Order, in Moorcockian terms. I wonder if JMS has read Moorcock, though? The closest parrallel is to the first Corum series, I think.

 

[Mallus]

I wonder if JMS has read Moorcock, though? The closest parrallel is to the first Corum series, I think.

JMS named a character {the first Techomage introduced on the show} Elric. I'm guessing he's a fan of Moorcock.

Oh, and probably a fan of Alfred Bester work, seeing as he named a character Alfred Bester... {I like the fact that he's so unabashedly a SF fanboy}.