Aliens: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

**Tomsk** · December 23rd, 2003, 04:02 PM

What a brilliant idea! If we ever do meet an alien species, there will be stories springing up all over the place with characters of this other species.

How cool would it be to go to another planet and play an alien to another species! Imagine a famous actor going off and playing an alien. Who would be best I wonder?

**Mugwump** · December 23rd, 2003, 05:49 PM

Originally posted by Thekherham
What's your idea of a well-crafted alien?

I'd say that the most 'well-crafted' aliens are, paradoxically, the ones without any 'crafting' at all - their actions are almost totally incomprehensible, or alien.

A good example of such an alien would be Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. An ‘entity’ so fundamentally removed from human thought that it’s practically impossible to determine whether or not it is even alive.

That said, it is difficult for any author to conceive something so inhuman and run with it for two or three-hundred pages. Hence the number of novels which begin with an interesting alien premise, only to end with the aliens reduced to something altogether too human – much to the detriment of the story.

Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep, which I am reading right now, contains a good example of how an SF author can simply ‘lose the plot’ with his or her aliens.

The ‘Tines’ are a race of fairly intelligent dog-like animals that possess the ability to ‘meld’ themselves into collective mind, with each member of the dog ‘pack’ effectively functioning as a single organ servicing the willpower of the collective.

On the surface, this looks all well and good – and to be honest, I was quite intrigued until I discovered that the dogs live in astonishingly human stone ‘castles’ and ‘villas’.

Why on earth would a four-legged animal/alien want to build a human castle? Wouldn't they find some alternative architecture, more in keeping with their nature?

As if this isn’t bad enough, Vernor Vinge appears to grow bored with the dogs after the first 150 pages, and pretty soon you are left wondering whether they indeed are human, and the author has just been japing at your expense.

**lemming** · December 24th, 2003, 11:19 AM

Why on earth would a four-legged animal/alien want to build a human castle? Wouldn't they find some alternative architecture, more in keeping with their nature?

But... they do... there're references all through the book to how they need large spaces to keep enough distance between themselves and others, so the thought-patterns don't mech and get confusing, etc.

They build shelters to stay out of the rain, just like early humans did. *shrug*

And no, they're not human. I, personally, got a lot more bored with the "godshatter" and "zones" thing, in that book. If you're already not liking it, I'd ditch it immediately and go for A Deepness in the Sky instead...... though Vinge has taken some flack for those aliens, too, I think it's a far better book.

As for aliens, I like the ones in The Gods Themselves, and also the garuda from Perdido Street Station (Mieville) and the flouwen from The Flight of the Dragonfly by Robert L. Forward.

**Mugwump** · December 25th, 2003, 06:02 AM

Originally posted by lemming

But... they do... there're references all through the book to how they need large spaces to keep enough distance between themselves and others, so the thought-patterns don't mech and get confusing, etc.

They build shelters to stay out of the rain, just like early humans did. *shrug*

Of course they do, but by Vinge’s descriptions these are very much human constructions. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that a four-legged telepathic dog could evolve to the point where it could build, or indeed - would want to build, marble-domed castles.

Remember, the buildings that we see around us and the contents therein are constructed so to meet the requirements of human beings, with two arms and two legs. One only has to consider the difficulties endured by wheel-chair users to understand that a minor divergence from ‘standard human design’ (two wheels instead of two legs) has considerable impact upon how we construct the world about us.

The ‘Tines’ in Vinge’s novel are so fundamentally removed from the standard human model that it seems silly to think that they would ever choose to design their buildings in such a way that a human would feel right at home living in them. And as for them running around with steel hand-axes in their mouths – that idea seems utterly preposterous.

And no, they're not human.

In my opinion, you could remove six or seven passages from the book and the reader simply would not be able to tell if the protagonists were non-human. Indeed the opening chapters of the novel, where Vinge deliberately disguises the nature of the Tines for a short period in order to surprise the reader about their true appearance later on, appear to back this claim up

I, personally, got a lot more bored with the "godshatter" and "zones" thing, in that book. If you're already not liking it, I'd ditch it immediately and go for A Deepness in the Sky instead...... though Vinge has taken some flack for those aliens, too, I think it's a far better book.

I’ll finish the novel, as I am loathe to put down a book before its ending. Yes, ‘godshatter’ is somewhat bizarre and smacks of deus ex machina. As for the ‘zones’ – well I haven’t quite made my mind up yet. Certainly you would expect there to be regions inside a galaxy where civilization has advanced further than in others. However, the idea that each zone comes complete with its own laws of nature is completely ridiculous, and the novel suffers at the hands of this lunatic premise.

**revenant** · December 28th, 2003, 04:24 PM

their are some good star trek aliens.. like those big ones from the first episode encounter at farpoint.. and then later in the first season.. i think.. the little ones they find at that terraforming place... i thought they did pretty well when the show was about exploration.. and not klingon politics.

**lemming** · December 29th, 2003, 02:47 PM

I'm sorry Mugwump, there's just no way I have time for this debate right now. I'm not saying at all that your points aren't worth answering & considering... just can't do it. I barely have time to come here at all right now.

Vinge does the "aliens are almost like humans except XXXXX" thing a lot and he does it on purpose. In A Deepness In The Sky he even calls the alien universities things like "Princeton", etc... if that kind of thing is going to annoy you, it's going to annoy you and there isn't much I can say about it except that I don't credit it to lack of imagination. By limiting the number of differences his aliens have from humans, he's able to really focus in on the effect of those particular differences in a way that he couldn't if everything were different, and I think that's why he does it.

Sorry, again, to not be responding to your actual points. I agree with you that the Zones thing is extremely bizarre (and smacks of fantasy, even) but at least they're original. I still don't like 'em, but... shrug... that's just me. Now, back to work.

**Mugwump** · December 29th, 2003, 03:43 PM

Originally posted by lemming
I'm sorry Mugwump, there's just no way I have time for this debate right now. I'm not saying at all that your points aren't worth answering & considering... just can't do it. I barely have time to come here at all right now.

No problem at all. And in any case, it's not as if either of us can arrive at some unquestionable statement of truth.

<grin>

**SusF** · December 30th, 2003, 05:10 AM

As for favorite aliens, I still have a fondness for Larry Niven's Puppeteers. Nessus and Hindmost, though I much prefer Nessus.

Three legged, two headed, they were very unusual.

Susan

**revenant** · December 30th, 2003, 08:43 AM

Originally posted by SusF
As for favorite aliens, I still have a fondness for Larry Niven's Puppeteers. Nessus and Hindmost, though I much prefer Nessus.

Three legged, two headed, they were very unusual.

Susan

not only that.. but werent their social philosophies extremely alien as well?

**Oorag** · January 3rd, 2004, 02:02 AM

I haven't read too many "space" science fiction, but I thought the Ousters of the Hyperion books were pretty cool. I liked the idea of humans setting off into space, and adapting so completely that they basicaly become aliens. The way Simmons uses them throughout the series is also very interesting, but I won't delve into spoiler country.

**SusF** · January 3rd, 2004, 08:28 AM

Yes, they had an interesting philosophy as well. Also the humans dubbed them "puppeteers" but it turned out to be very aptly named, since they manipulated human events as well as others.

Susan

**NeonKnight** · January 6th, 2004, 07:07 PM

Originally posted by SusF
As for favorite aliens, I still have a fondness for Larry Niven's Puppeteers. Nessus and Hindmost, though I much prefer Nessus.

Three legged, two headed, they were very unusual.

Susan

What an excellent idea for a thread! thanks!

Oh yes Niven does do aliens so well! The Kzin, Puppeteers, Moties and even the monster/alien that lived in the river story he did were all richly imagined aliens.

There have been complaints about the humanoid aliens in TV series, and I've got to agree with that. But I think Fred Pohl and his HeeChee are a most imaginative way of explaining why humanoids were common in his universe.

Wasn't there a TV series called V where the aliens started playing aliens on TV?

"Mother" was another good alien from a short story I read years ago. Can't remember the author right now, but it was this big lump of flesh that somehow convinced human males it was actually Elizabeth Hurley (insert own fantasy woman here) and than ingested the pitiful human male. Great stuff!

**Shehzad** · January 6th, 2004, 09:38 PM

Originally posted by NeonKnight

"Mother" was another good alien from a short story I read years ago. Can't remember the author right now, but it was this big lump of flesh that somehow convinced human males it was actually Elizabeth Hurley (insert own fantasy woman here) and than ingested the pitiful human male. Great stuff!

Yum.... Elizabeth Hurley.....

**Thekherham** · January 7th, 2004, 12:00 AM

'Mother' was written by Philip Jose Farmer, who also did the 'Riverworld' stories.

I've read the story.

**Gallowglass** · January 21st, 2004, 05:21 PM

"V" had a very good premise - aliens arrive in giant saucer-like ships to hover over our largest cities throught the world and to our surprise, the aliens sound a little different but look just like us!

Except a bunch of little things start being noticable - small rodents go into a panic when one of the Visitors come close, one visitor goes into a nitrogen tank to rescue a human and is unaffected by the cold, etc.

Then we find out the Visitors are aliens - lizards.

But they ruined it in the end using the hybrid girl. Ah well.