Fantasy Not Involving Humans, Earth, or the Like

[Wojciehowicz]

I have been avoiding reading in sci-fi and fantasy for a while, so as to avoid subconsciously taking in other people's styles. I'm trying to get my own down. So, I haven't noted whether there is such a thing as fantasy/adventure that takes place on an alien world. That is, the ancient mythology of an alien race not involving humans or the usual human story touches like elves and dwarves and so forth.

Are there examples of such a thing?

I've been working of late on some fleshing out of the ancient history of Wahlan and the Hallain, especially the several plagues that swept their largest continent over the millenia (causing violent insanity and aggression, nearly wiping out their civilization a number of times). Would there be any possibility of this being reasonable or am I just wasting time on something that amuses me more than it would someone else?

 

[hippokrene]

Would there be any possibility of this being reasonable or am I just wasting time on something that amuses me more than it would someone else?

I think it's reasonable. As Community tells us, not even sharks observe shark week, but we do.

WALL*E featured a robot lead. Watership Down is about rodents. ET kinda looks like a penis with giant eyes. This is no way took from people's ability to empathize and care for the characters.

 

[PeteMC]

The first half or so of The Silmarillion fits this description I would have thought. Whether it would work so well if the readers didn't already have a reason to care about the setting I don't know.

That said, who cares? If that's what you want to write, write it!

 

[Pugio]

Most of the examples I can think of come from YA lit where animals take the place of humans. Hip already mentioned Watership Down, and there's also Redwall, Wind in the Willows, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I think a long as creatures you're writing about have some qualities that an audience can anthropomorphize you should be good. Or if you're writing a species that's very, very different from humans psychologically, that might be a bit of a harder sell, but it could still be very interesting.

 

[A. Lynn]

Well, I'll give you the short answer: it will be a very splintered group of people who read the work you'll create. Heavy sci-fi does not always seem welcomed by readers, though I do not know why.

Now the long answer: I tried taking on such a feat in writing. When I was done, I let somebody critique it, to which they told me that it would not "work" because it had no way for the human readers to "relate" to the short story. It was on an alien world, with an alien culture, infrastrucure, etc. I think I have it around somewhere. It was titled "To Darkside."

My dad encouraged me on it however. So, I submitted it to Writers of the Future anyways, and I did not win but somebody hand-wrote on the top of my rejection letter that they would like to see me write another story. Sometimes I wish I knew who had done such a thing.

Maybe I should rewrite?


Good luck to you

 

[hippokrene]

If I were to ever do something like this and get it published, I'd prefer it if the book were illustrated. Something like The Way of Kings.

One of the biggest hoops for me, as a reader, is imagining what things look like. The more unfamiliar the setting or species, the more time I spend trying to puzzle out what something looks like as opposed to just reading and following along.

 

[Hereford Eye]

Stories are about people or people's reactions. Consequently, you get anthropomorphized aliens no matter how hard you try not to. Any motivation assigned to the alien has to make sense to the humans in the story and/or reading the story.
That makes it the most difficult trope to pull off, i.e., inventing an alien with motives humans cannot comprehend. Even though this, in fact, ought to be the case for most instances of first contact. The story will always be human reaction to the alien.

 

[Pugio]

That makes it the most difficult trope to pull off, i.e., inventing an alien with motives humans cannot comprehend. Even though this, in fact, ought to be the case for most instances of first contact. The story will always be human reaction to the alien.

Solaris is a pretty good example of what a first contact with a truly alien species might be like. Maybe not the most gripping read, but a good thought exercise none the less.

 

[Wojciehowicz]

Stories are about people or people's reactions. Consequently, you get anthropomorphized aliens no matter how hard you try not to.

Well yes, I wasn't going so far as totally alien to human cognitive abilities. True though.

Any motivation assigned to the alien has to make sense to the humans in the story and/or reading the story.

They make sense to me, but I'm not other people. Finding an excuse to explain to the reader is hard when you have no obvious provocation to do so as you might with let's say Farscape where John Crichton is the link between the humans watching and the alien settings. Chorus duties are generated in the aliens by their need to explain to him, which is actually explanation to the audience.

So far I'm putting in footnotes to explain things as I go which are left in the original language for a reason, or constitute reactions that most modern readers would think odd, that sort of thing.

 

[Wojciehowicz]

Or if you're writing a species that's very, very different from humans psychologically, that might be a bit of a harder sell, but it could still be very interesting.

Hallain are that. Their sexes are naturally possessed of a strange animosity towards each other. They take a very rugged self-responsibility attitude toward things that happen to them and their genders are if anything hardest on their own for showing weakness in the face of the other. Their national pastime is a game where the object is to cross a triangular field and beat the living hell out of anyone in their way. They sell themselves into servitude not just willingly, but eagerly, in a constant drive to maintain power and influence through ubiquitousness.

They used to be more like humans, but even in those ancient times, saw the world quite differently.

Put another way, would let's say the history of the Narn from Babylon 5 or the Vulcans of Star Trek or Luxans of Farscape be interesting for humans if there were no humans involved? I'd find it fascinating but it's probably a harder sell the farther removed it is.

 

[Hereford Eye]

Remove all the humans and you still have human plots, human emotions, human motivations. Take something simple such as Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal. Nothing is human but everything is human. All the motivations of all the creatures are perfectly human and therefore perfectly recognizable..

Maybe greed, hate, envy, love, hope, joy are as universal as quarks but, given the existence of aliens, I wonder. That's the problem with aliens: they aren't human. We can only understand them to the extent their motivations agree with ours.

 

[hippokrene]

Any motivation assigned to the alien has to make sense to the humans in the story and/or reading the story.
That makes it the most difficult trope to pull off, i.e., inventing an alien with motives humans cannot comprehend.

Half the time, I have no idea what motivates my mother or girlfriend to do the things they do. Then they turn around and complain that *I* make no sense. Even my close friends have been known to surprise me.

I understand other humans in broad terms, but for specific people, it takes lots of time and study to understand what makes them tick and act the way they do.

Characters in books, TV, and films tend to be immediately accessible because they're designed that way.