{"id":8250,"date":"2013-04-01T10:20:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T16:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8250"},"modified":"2013-04-01T10:19:13","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T16:19:13","slug":"a-is-for-aliens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/a-is-for-aliens\/","title":{"rendered":"A is for Aliens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cantina\"<\/a>Alien races–what would science fiction be without them?\u00a0 They’re as fundamental to the genre as elves and dwarves are to fantasy.\u00a0 If you’re reading a book and an alien being from another planet shows up on the page, that in itself is usually enough to make the story science fiction.<\/p>\n

My first exposure to aliens came from Star Wars IV: A New Hope, which I saw as a kid sometime back in the early nineties.\u00a0 The cantina scene with the weird, catchy music<\/a> and all the frighteningly creatures both scared and fascinated me.\u00a0 Here were a bunch of humans, mingling with these things that looked like monsters as if nothing were strange or unusual.\u00a0 In fact, it soon became clear that these weren’t monsters at all, but regular people–that is, as regular as you can be without being human.<\/p>\n

I think the main reason for including aliens in a space opera story is that it makes the setting feel more exotic and otherworldly.\u00a0 It can also add all sorts of interesting possibilities for plot and character, depending on the different capabilities of the various alien races and the way their culture shapes them.\u00a0 Babylon 5 is a great example of this, with the characters from each alien race interacting with each other in ways unique to their various cultures.<\/p>\n

One way to think of science fictional aliens is to put them on a spectrum with two extremes.\u00a0 On the one side, you have the more familiar aliens–the races from Star Trek, for example, which are basically human-like except with weird skin or bone ridges to physically distinguish them.\u00a0 On the other side, you have the truly bizarre–the kinds of aliens that are so different from us, we cannot possibly conceive their thoughts or the way they see the world.<\/p>\n

The main advantage of the more familiar alien types is that they’re easy to understand and relate to.\u00a0 Yeah, they may look weird, but they don’t think or act much differently than the Russians, or the Arabs, or whatever human culture they roughly parallel.\u00a0 In fact, it’s not uncommon in fiction of this type for the aliens to be less “alien” than the Japanese (at least, in Western fiction–obviously, it’s different in manga and anime).\u00a0 This, in turn, is the main weakness with aliens of this type: they are so readily understandable that it’s easy to lose that sense of otherness.<\/p>\n

The main advantage of the more extreme kind of alien is that it can make a much stronger impact, which makes for a more compelling and thought-provoking story.\u00a0 For example, the Hypotheticals in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin<\/em> trilogy are so fascinating because we know so little about them.\u00a0 They have the power to shape entire worlds, manipulating space and time itself, and yet none of the reasons behind what they’re doing make sense–if indeed there’s any reason behind it at all.\u00a0 Or in Octavia Butler’s Xenogensis<\/em> trilogy, it’s not too hard to figure out what the aliens are trying to do, but the way in which they do it, impregnating the main character through their tri-sexual biological capabilities makes for a profoundly disturbing story.<\/p>\n

The disadvantage, of course, is that aliens of this kind are much more difficult for readers to relate to.\u00a0 If the aliens are so advanced that their thoughts transcend our own, or if their sensory organs are so different that we cannot possibly conceive of how they see the world, then it’s very difficult for us to get inside of their heads.\u00a0 For this reason, aliens of this kind tend to become more of a force of nature than actual characters–or characters in the aggregate, in the way that humanity is the main character of most of Arthur C. Clarke’s books.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’m more of a fan of the extreme alien type.\u00a0 The universe is so vast, and our understanding of it is so lacking, that it rings a lot truer to me.\u00a0 The odds that we are alone in the universe are so infinitesimally small<\/a> that refusing to believe in the existence of aliens would be akin to believing in 1492 that the Earth is flat, and yet if\/when we ever make contact, I can’t help but wonder how different from us they’ll be.\u00a0 So much of what we take for granted is just a fluke of our particular circumstances here on this planet–the chance combination of so many variables that changing any one of them would completely rewrite the story of how our species evolved, much less our civilization.<\/p>\n

There is a place for the more familiar aliens of space opera, though. They make for some very entertaining stories, provide a fun escape from this world when that’s what we need.\u00a0 They also give us a chance to look at ourselves through a lens that strips away our stereotypes and prejudices.\u00a0 We might have some very strong opinions about immigrants, for example, or people of a different race or color, but none of us are prejudiced against Sand People, or Klingons, or Androsynth.\u00a0 In space opera, most alien races are loosely based on real-world cultures, so it’s possible to draw parallels without all the cultural and historical baggage.<\/p>\n

In a sense, all fiction is just the culture speaking to itself, so when we read about aliens we are really reading about ourselves.\u00a0 Encountering the Other in a non-threatening fictional world enables us to face the real-world Other with understanding and compassion.<\/p>\n

I haven’t written very many alien stories yet, but I have a couple cooking in the back of my mind.\u00a0 Genesis Earth<\/strong> has an alien encounter with a bit of a twist to it, but the characters in my Star Wanderers<\/strong> and Gaia Nova series are all human (well, mostly).\u00a0 If\/when I do introduce an alien race, I plan to do it right, which will almost certainly involve a first contact story.\u00a0 But that’s for Saturday’s blog post, not today’s.<\/p>\n

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