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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 1935909" data-attributes="member: 22882">I suspect you're confusion Now with Then: then being either the past or the future.  The modern West, with its saftey obsession and triple-failsafes (not that they always work) is as much a historical abberation as an ilithid is a Monster Manual abberation.Much of human exploration has been propelled by skin-of-their-teeth near-lunatics, most of whom do indeed die trying.  We remember, and immortalize, the successful few, because we need them.  We don't advance without them.  We are, presently, in a society that denigrates them and looks down upon their way of life, but such a society is unlikely to ever achieve much in space.  The society that put men on the moon and space-raced the Soviets didn't have the present squemishness about the hard realities of exploration; nor have significant advances been made in space exploration and colonization since our society lost its heroic aspirations.The future is far more likely to belong to the heroes, as the past did, than to persist in its very recent and presumably abberant state.Alien, for instance, has some serious problems as hard SF.  The behavior of the crew isn't one of them.  The Nostromo is a cargo ship, diverted (on company orders) to touch down on an unexplored planet and investigate an anomaly.  Even if triple-failsafes are standard for explorers and researchers in their future, which seems historically unlikely, a cargo ship doesn't have them.  If an oil tanker ran aground on Atlantis tomorrow, would it send carefully calibrated exploratory robots ashore?  Didn't think so.  It would radio in, presumably to its corporate sponsors, and either they or curiosity might well cause its crew to have a look around.  When the Nostromo crew is being manipulated by one of their number specifically to bring back an organism from the planet, the likelihood of their taking foolish risks increases still more.The biggest problem Alien has as hard SF is that an interstellar parasite like the alien could engage in a very complicated biological process using a host selected, in effect, from any inhabited planet in the galaxy.The behavior of the marines in Aliens actually does stretch suspension of disbelief.  Not their confidence and later panic in the face of the unknown - those are perfectly normal reactions.  No, the wonky thing is that they left their massive, nuclear-equipped warship completely uncrewed in orbit around a potentially hostile planet.  Now, we the viewers know, or at least suspect, that the aliens can't crew a starship.  The company might even have an inkling of this.  But the marines don't, nor do they know why the colony has lost contact.  If the colonists had rebelled against... whatever overarching government they were subject to, or the company, or whatever... they could have easily hopped on their own landers, wrested control of the marines' ship, and been in position to defend themselves with overwhelming force.  I love Aliens, but this was just overly boneheaded even for an action/horror flick.</blockquote>

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