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How do you create an alien species?
Anyone who watches or reads enough Star Trek, Babylon 5, and other science fiction, such as Poul Anderson or Robert A. Heinlein, understands intuitively how to go about creating a new alien race. There are plenty of others. I just mention my favorites.
I have observed the simple key is to extract one common characteristic from humanity and make that character flaw or trait the basis of the alien's culture. With Klingons it's a militant code of honor, for example.
One can also anthropomorphize an animal into a humanoid, such as a dog or a cat. It is possible to idealize human and animal characteristics in the form an alien in any likely mix depending on the purpose of the character.
What is the ideal space creature like? One possible answer is the octopus. What would you create? What purpose does it serve in your story?
Discussion started by Steve V , on 15 December 02:56 PM
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Well, I always start with some amino acids (the ones found inside meteorites), blending them into a chemical soup; finally I add a dash of gamma rays. Viola! Life!
OK, really now, my series of books will encompass a variety of alien life, both sentient and less so. I'm attempting to make them really "alien", yet have attributes (at least in their motivations) which we can understand, if not relate to.
Easier said than done.
OK, really now, my series of books will encompass a variety of alien life, both sentient and less so. I'm attempting to make them really "alien", yet have attributes (at least in their motivations) which we can understand, if not relate to.
Easier said than done.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 17:06
Maybe instead of thinking of it as light and sound addiction it would be more like a complex form of conditioning and hypnosis, but it amounts to the same thing.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 13:26
I've already vetoed any psychic linkage, but the light show could be part of their complex sound and chemical based system of communication. Thanks, rmoore080.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 04:53
Pehaps an Addiction to the communicatins of the queen, a psychic/metal addiction that limits their movements away from the hive. And any lengthy distance causes them to suffer or have withdrawl
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 04:36
That IS a great idea! And maybe instead of a drug addiction, it could be an addiction to something else - say a pattern of lights and sounds projected through devices hung on walls or carried in hands/claws/palps, which takes all of their attention and compels them to behave in certain ways and obliterates their own original rational thinking. Hmm, I dunno - sounds too fantastic to me.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 04:31
Great idea! Thanks, Shlbloink! An addictive drug could help explain how thier society could evolve at the same time as sentience, it could be a natural subsance in the food of the workers. Sometimes, if the drug is in short supply, the workers start acting on their own free will in ways that have unpredictable results...
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 04:20
Have you thought about using addiction as a means of explaining the complusive actions of the bees? It would be a different view on a known metodology. Addiction would open up a wide range of variant stories for you, and add a different dimension to the direction you story can take.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 04:04
I'm thinking about how to go about creating an insectoid sentience based on bees or ants. In Starship Troopers Heinlein created the Arachinids who turned out to be controled by great Brain Bugs who used psychic power to direct their mindless minions. I'm thinking of a slightly different tac as I have already delt with psychic powers in my novel, The CFR Collusion. I think it would be better to show how the subordinate bees or ants think and feel about their lives, which are driven by compulsions they cannot understand. On the same planet there will be free thinking wasps who attack and feed on the hard work and toil of the bees and consider them mindless herd animals. Just so the wasps will not seem like complete vampires sucking out the life essence of their victems they can also have productive activities such as raising crops, like leaf cutter ants do in the wilds of insectoid earth. Recent study of language in elephants makes it evident that there are different abilities in earth mammals. We already knew about apes who were taught American Sign Languge, so why not alien insects who can use ideagraphs and numbers? In order to introduce the story I'm sure I will throw in those dregs of galactic sentience, the Monotreme Mole Rats, who are trying to colonize the planet with the help of thier Human alies.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 03:09