What makes an alien an alien?

[creatorofPreten]

I just read through the thread on what kind of aliens are peoples favorites, and I heard a lot of complaints about humanoid aliens. And I thought, "that figures, of course the story I am writing now is something everyone is going to hate." LOL

So then I had some questions. What makes an alien an alien? What is the definition? Where is the line crossed from Human to Alien?

In my story, there is a planet called Pretenia, and on this planet lives people. I don't know if I can call them human since they don't live on earth or in our world, but they are just like humans. They call themselves Pretenians.

Throughhout the rest of my created universe are other people. But they are different from the people who live on Pretenia. Some differences include hair that grows in two colors, right eye and left are different colors, each eye has three colors mixed in. Their skin is light brown on top, pale underneath and, their blood is pale blue. They are also bisensory (what we would understand as telepathic, but more so).

But other than that they are people just like the people who live on Pretenia. Do I have to call them aliens? Can't they simply be a different race of people?

 

[JunkMonkey]

I would guess that would depend on the story. If everyone, on the whole gets on with everyone else and peace and harmony reign throughout the galaxy then everyone would just be 'people'. If, on the other hand there is division and discord, then 'they', the other lot, are going to be labelled 'alien'.

Just as on Earth in the present day, people are just people all over the world until someone decides, for whatever reason, that a particular group are suddenly 'the enemy'. Thus Mr Ahmed down the road suddenly stops being Mr Ahmed and becomes a 'Raghead' (or whatever pejorative floats to the top of the cultural Fox News driven scum media's list of nasty things to call people this week).

You say "Can't they simply be a different race of people?" Yes they could; it's your universe you can do whatever you want. But if these blue-blooded telepaths are that different (I assume from the blood colour they have a totally different body chemistry) then they are not a different 'race'* but a different 'species'.
A different species living on a different planet. Sounds like a good rule of thumb, working definition of 'alien' for SF purposes to me.



*whatever the hell that means.

 

[DougFarren]

Aliens - in the scifi sense of the word

Here on good old early 21st century Earth, in the land known as the United States, we have "illegal aliens". Are these scifi aliens? No. You must define the context in which the word "alien" is to be used. In science fiction, anyone not descended from the home planet of your species is an alien - usually. But the difference can be blurred.

For example, if I was born on the planet Proquendabo of parents whose parents were born there I would still consider myself human and thus a non-human would be considered an alien. If I visited Earth, depending on the laws in effect at the time, I might be considered an alien - but only in the sense that I was not born a citizen of Earth. If, however, my people had lived on Proquendabo for so long that we had diverged from our original species in some noticeable way (such as developing a thick leathery skin) then I might consider humans to be alien.

If nature, in her grand experiment to create life, ended up creating a race of people indistinguishable from humans on the outside we would still consider them to be alien because they are not ultimately descended from humans. I believe the true test of what is an alien lies partly in the DNA and mostly in our perception.