Not really. They acted very human. Jealousy, resentment, obsequiousness, and a very human hierarchical society. Most of the time, they reacted very predictably, like dull-witted thugs.
Science fiction is also showed us mysterious worlds we could imagine, like Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Time Machine.
I see points here, and they are understandable. . . Yet, is there an argument? I see what you state at first, but it feels like you didn't finish your thoughts. I see no station, to get off your train. Sorry, "I hate form/grammar police as well..."
He doesn't come out and say it, but he feel aliens are too human. They don't diverge enough from human culture.
The aliens are kind of too human. To me, aliens, like the Predator, are realistic. They don't need to speak English, share a similar culture, and express similar human emotions. They should all be different and weird to humans. There are too many lazy writers who make aliens human because either they real too many books with human characters, or they want their readers to fully understand the aliens as if the aliens are humans.
That's not my feeling on it. If humans ate their first born, how long do you think we would have lasted? If we did last, how long would it take to become an FTL culture? I think when you get to sentience, there is a propensity to start thinking philosophically, ethically, morally and how that affects the entirety of your race. I have to wonder how a species like the predator survived with such a strong hunting instinct. I would think they'd hunt their world into extinction.
But, they probably would have become extinct long before that by hunting their planet to death. Say we hunted predatory animals to death (lions, tigers and bears, oh my!) then the major culling force of herbivores is gone and they begin to eat up the flora. Ecosystems, while resilient, can be damaged beyond repair. I just think that once a species gains consciousness, it's imperative for them to think critically of their world and their behavior if they are to survive.
The aliens are humans in every Sci-Fi story. In whole or in part. Usually more in part because their alienness allows the story to focus on just that one part to a degree of magnification not readily available to a story written in the real world. That's the point of Sci-Fi. Even the great shai hulud of Arrakis represents facets of the human experience, of dynamics of the greater gestalt culture. Writers who do that of which you speak aren't lazy; they're using the genre for its correct purpose, it's dharma.
I guess that is what I'm trying to lead to, but didn't have a word for the concept. These things we call facets of humanity are necessary for survival and growth of the species.
Or the facets are our foibles and our failings. An example I often use to speak about the purpose of science fiction is Octavia Butler's Oankali books. The idea explored in those books being a primordial flaw in human evolution, that we were/are creatures with a social structure exactly like what we call pack animals (think wolves). This facet of our nature is extremely old, having been with us since the beginning. The other half of the flaw is our intelligence, an infinitely younger part of our history, acquired just an eye-blink ago on an evolutionary scale and because of its near fetus nature it is the servant of our pack nature, not the other way around. Her aliens in these books are our salvation after near complete species wipeout due to nuclear war (the books were written in the 80's, nuclear war weighed heavy on us in those days). Their salvation comes at the price of interbreeding with them in order to breed out that flaw. The story evolves into an exploration of how we have come to love and sometimes even worship this inherent flaw in our nature. The Oankali (the aliens in the books) are extremely alien to the human players in the story, but to the reader they are very human, like infinitely patient parents. Through them we are able to explore a thesis posited by the writer into basic, fundamental paradigms of human behavior. That is science fiction at its pinnacle, at its apex.
I don't think "realistic" is the right word. We have a sample size of zero on which to base assessments of what is realistic. I could come up with plausible reasons why aliens might be very human-like, or why they might not. Neither is inherently more realistic than the other (or at least if it is, we can't determine it, because we have met zero real alien species).
Uh oh. I better read those books as there seems to be some overlap between her story and mine. Mine is much the same. Humans are verging on nuke war. As a show of superiority and as a kind of intimidation factor, the US sends a staffed mission to Jupiter. There it crashes into BES a cybernetic intellect who has been acting as a segue to the Coalition for new civilizations branching out. However, because she is more machine than living tissue, she chooses someone from the human race to be a liaison, a role called a Ro'shaan who gets a cerebral implant that gives him the memories and experiences of 15 others who have held the role of Ro'shaan. So, the Ro'shaan is liaison (having been one of each of the 15 races of the Coalition) and living archive of past lives and history. Someone who remembers because he/she was there. All civilizations have that one war that brings about an change of attitude, a global epiphany. The Fifteen of the Coalition are the ones that survived. Humans are heading in that direction. Maybe five years from the start of the story. However, they won't survive without outside help and that help won't come because the powerful and greedy that precipitated the war escaped to safer areas, planning to retake power after war's end. Ro'shaan and BES have to kill them and install a new government that does not embrace those primitive ideas of acquisition, consolidation and rule. The story and script follow's Ro'shaan Dante's POV.
I like a lot of your ideas. You're thinking outside the box, that's for sure. It's this kind of thing that makes for excellent sci-fi (and other writing as well.) The 'what if' factor.
Since you're talking TV/films rather than books, I'd like to say that the most 'perfect' fusion of sci-fi adventure, character development, the role of technology AND how humans view themselves in relation to the rest of the Universe ...look no further than Farscape. In that superbly-conceived show, we see how a particular human copes in a completely alien environment. We watch as his ambivalence turns into acceptance of his new life, and, when given the chance to return to his old life on Earth he passes it up. We also get to see how other humans might react to proof that there IS life 'out there'—life that's more technologically advanced than 'we' are. The most important thing about Farscape is that it never takes the stance that all humans (or all other races) will react the same. Some are curious, some are excited, some are scared, some want to exploit opportunity ...the reaction is as individual as we all are. Some of the actual 'technology' used on Farscape is probably laughable ...but that's not the point. This is about what might happen if aliens suddenly appeared, and all of present-day earth had to revise its thinking. Would we rise to the challenge, or not? How the aliens get here is irrelevant, really.
I hadn't thought about Farscape in quite a while. It was much better than the average TV show when handling both human and alien characters, not so much in strangeness as in diversity as Jannert mentioned.
Farscape was good. I didn't like the conclusion to the series. Would had been better. I understand that writers make aliens act human if the story focus only on the alien characters. Readers have to understand crap in order to keep reading. Alien Chronicles is a good example. It's like the alien version of Moses with animal like creatures, which we are further to.
Wow, this is becoming a very good discussion! The mention of Octavia Butler, reminded me of something I meant to read so long ago and forgot about. "Thanks!" By the way, I was in a local second-hand book store this afternoon; looking for a few titles on discount. . . They had a huge sign by the SciFi/Fantasy section, saying. "We're bringing Science Fiction back! So take these books to the forest, and read them there!" The poster had a picture of a futuristic city, beside one of a fantasy/forest setting... I had a chuckle from that.
It's huge. Hardbacks are 6$ at most. I picked up L. Ron Hubbard's Dietetics, off the discount shelf. The CD audio-books, 3 part volume/ 12 disks in all. For 3$!!! (I know... Don't give me the flack about it eluding to Scientology.) They also have a free shelf. I picked up "a guide to creating lovable fiction characters" from there. It has helped me a lot! Not to mention, I found a worn copy of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World , on that shelf 10-ish years ago. That series really got me to the point I am today. Some of my Orson Scott Card collection came from the free shelf, as well. I find that very funny, being that he is a native to these parts.
It's about telling a good story in a good way. Forget the technological knowledge. Forget the adaptations into other genres. Forget the haters. Forget what others are doing. Make it good. That's what matters. Everything else is tangential. If a romantic subplot enhances the story, include it, if it doesn't, drop it. Same for technobabble, mixing genres, parody, what have you. If a novel is too much, try a short story. If it's too little, write a sequel. Do everything that matters. And what matters is if it is the most enjoyable story it is possible for it to be. Does punctuation matter? Yes, because without it the story will be ambiguous and hard to read. Is factual accuracy important? Yes, because people enjoy knowledge, logic, cohesion, trutworthyness and to have the world they're delving into follow its own rules. Do any of these things matter by default? No! If there's no planets, you don't need to know what planets even are. If there are no women, you don't need to know what it is to be one. If the MC isn't mentioned by name, he doesn't need to have one. But the moment you have those things in your story you will need interest, knowledge, skill and patience. Without it you will fail. You will fail because you'll be working with this story for a long time, whatever than means for you and your story. Nothing is to be forgotten, abandoned, unthought. No stone is to be left unturned, no possibility rejected without consideration, no sentence written without it being read or checked back on later. There are billions of books out there. You need to be spoecial. You need to work you damn ass shit hardest to ensure your story becomes a one in a billion story rather than one in a million, one in ten million or one in a hundred million. To get one more reader. To get one more star by that reader on Amazon. To do your fullest, to do what you set out to do, to have done something that took hard work, patience and brilliance to create, something noone else could make, something to be very, very, very proud of.
Damn! That is some great info! Yet, it is presented like a protein bar. . . I think you would do your writing a good justice if, (You /inhale. Take a breath, and space your ideas out a bit better!.) This ^^^^ 'chunk' is hard to follow. . .
Haha, thanks, and, BTW, that's not how I write paragraphs in novels! It was written in a stream-of-conciousness kind of way, and on purpose. I'm not allowed to edit it, so I can't space it our or add spelling corrections, but I have this much to say: *trustworthiness *that *special *your
