Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ColonelHardisson" data-source="post: 947760" data-attributes="member: 363">I guess you sort of asked and answered most of your own questions, which are, essentially, the ones that have been debated about this issue. It's true that most aliens in SF&F are human to some degree. That's by necessity, since it's really impossible for us to have any inkling of what a non-human intelligence would really be like. It's along the lines of trying to imagine anything that exists in more than the 3 spacial dimensions we're used to; our brains simply aren't wired to work that way, so it's impossible to do it. Therefore, aliens and non-human fantasy intelligences are often invested with one or more distinctly human traits that are exaggerated to appear as "not human." Clifford Pickover has a good book about this subject that's worth reading.I generally dislike the "humans in funny suits" type of aliens that populate the galaxies of so many scifi franchises. Star Trek attempted to provide a rationale behind this, but it's still tiresome. I'd like to see some attempt on the part of the writers or writers to make their creatures truly alien. However, there are some of these "humans in funny suits" that are intriguing, since they are used to explore interesting aspects of the human condition. The Centauri, Narn, and Minbari of B5 are good examples. The Vulcans of Trek are another. Larry Niven's Ringworld books explore a vast world of species all descended from the same root stock as humans, and which evolved to fill all available ecological niches. Still, all the foregoing "aliens" I would say range from 70-90% human.Niven also has a few more unusual aliens that range farther afield. Pierson's Puppeteers are a good example. They are strange enough to begin to feel truly alien in nature, but still share some common ground with humans. This common ground would have to exist with any real aliens we ever run across for us to be able to deal with them at all. Anyway, I'd say the Puppeteers are 40-50% human.Doc Smith had some of the most enigmatic aliens in his Lensmen books. Many of them were truly bizarre, with strange or unknowable motives and outlooks. Doc probably purposely went out of his way to make them outlandish to appeal to a pulp audience, and likely gave little real thought to what made them tick. This adds to their strangeness. I'd say any given alien from Doc's work is 30-60% human. Some may range higher, some may range lower. He does have a few on the low end of the scale.Perhaps the most truly alien creatures that I know of in literature come from H.P. Lovecraft. The "gods" of the Cthulhu mythos are, in fact, massively powerful aliens. Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep,Azathoth, and the rest are generally pretty dadgum alien. The less powerful aliens he wrote about were also very alien, such as the Mi-Go, the Elder Things, and the Shoggoth. They were so strange that trying to make sense of them could give one a headache. I'd say they range, collectively, as being 10-40% human, with 40% being the far upper limit for only a few, such as (maybe) Nyarlathotep or the Deep Ones.</blockquote>

Verification