How can I write creative alien races?

Hello Writing-Community,


When you write science fiction, you got one problem when it plays in space or on other planets: Alien races!

I mean it’s boring when you often use classic ones like the Grey alien. As a science fiction reader I want creative races.—Non-humanoids too.

So, do you have some tips how to avoid classic alien races?


Bye,

beehoney

 

First and foremost I think about what I want to say with this race. I try to hone it down to something simple. Are they there to talk about greed, conquest, knowledge, divinity, etc.? When I know their roll in the story, I think about what kind of form evokes that idea, at least in my own mind. I wrote a story a while back that won a contest here in the forum (you'll see the medal in my user badge). That alien was in the story to talk about selflessness. I thought about animals that embodied that idea for me. Horses came to mind. Such large animals, yet they can be so gentle and helpful. Elephants too. They obviously have a sense of community and caring. They help one another and stop to take notice of elephant skeletons on the savana. Put the two together and you get something kinda like a chalicothere. Kinda. That's the form the alien took.

 

I think most of what you mean falls more into portrayal and execution,
and not using generic models and tropes. Oddly enough this can also
be used as an argument within the Fantasy community as well, so as
to write the same old thing based upon common core creatures.

Though when it comes to Alien life, it is complicated to not put
in the bias to have them take a shape similar to our own in some
capacity to our own likeness. Though you might have trouble creating
a convincing advanced species that lives exclusively in an environment
under water (makes metallurgy pretty much impossible). Likewise some
hyper intelligent life form that has no ability to use tools, because they
do not have limbs that allow them to do so, and there for have to be
found out by another space faring culture to help them produce their
advanced technology. So in some way it is favorable to have at the very
least an intelligence and a way to create and develop as a species. And
use of telepathy and telekinetic powers is more magic than realistic.

Another thing most forget is that you are limited (depending on how
realistic you want them to feel) as to what they can be based from
in terms of genetic materials, and base elements in their DNA structure.
No one is going to believe in a species who's base genetics is built on
the chemical bonds of Jello. So having a rudimentary understanding of
atomic chemistry and bonding properties is a good idea.

Finally complex life does not include intelligence. From some documentaries
it is speculated that complex life can evolve under various conditions, though
they merely adapt to be best suited for simplicity of survival and perpetuation
of their own species. So yes to an outside observer they will appear and behave
in a way that is alien to us, but if we have no way to communicate with them then
they are similar to animals. Instead it would preferable to find creatures that
exhibit tool use and writing, then try to bridge the gap in language to share information.
Obviously they would be just as curious of us as we are of them, and probably
not want to just exterminate us without some reasoning. Even a more advanced
species would still want to study us, before jumping to conclusions on whether
to help us/destroy us/ignore us. They show qualities similar to our own, and
explore them in ways we do not understand (and us to them).

I feel I have rambled enough, but I think you understand where I am going.
It has more to do with intellect, culture, and how advanced (or not) they are,
more so than simply being some fantastical mass of atoms that simply exist
in a form that looks cool and bizarre. Takes a bit of imagination is all to take
something common such as the Greys and turn them into a rich species with
culture, language, and other aspects that are Alien to Humans.

 

@Wreybies Your idea to "hybrid" two things is great! But with regard to animals: There are animals out there which look like sci-fi. For example, the zorse (mix made of zebra and horse). That wouldn't be a big problem! Do you also have a methodfor humanoid races?

 

@big soft moose Yeah! The method is easy. I gave an example to Wreybies. You know, with animals which look like sci-fi. There does exist a giant crab in Japanese sea too.

 

Well, if you look up images of chalicothere, they're roughly humanoid in appearance. Roughly. It's not in my nature to create "Star Trek Forhead Appliance" aliens. Those are just humans. There's not enough there for me to buy into my own visual metaphor.

 

I guess I'm going to be going directly against everyone else's suggestion, but I say don't have them look anything like Earth creatures, unless there's a reason for that in the story. They come from a different planet possibly even a different solar system or Galaxy. They aren't going to look like humans, or any other earth species. They're going to be alien, and they're going to seem strange to us.

The first thing to consider if your universe origin. It doesn't necessarily have to come up in the actual story, but it is, at least for me, critical to designing any form of alien. If you're going with an evolutionary background, you'd pretty much be assuming completely different beginnings from us, probably not even sharing anything but the most basic traits of life with Earth species due to likely starting from a different cell.

Now, if you're going with an intelligent design, there might be more similarities as a sort of copy/paste effect. Especially true in the case of the theory that we're all in a virtual simulation.

 

Convergent evolution is a useful thing to think about, and brings you back to what sort of an environment they come from: the probabilities are pretty good that creatures that developed in an environment similar to say Ice-Age Europe will have some of the features that our own did. Not precisely the same, but using similar traits for survival. So it helps to think about where they came from and how this would have impacted on their development.

A fun place to start your thinking might be the books of Dougal Dixon (I have two and have downloaded pictures from the third, and adore them all) about speculative biology (his Man After Man is wonderfully creepy). You can just adapt some of the ideas that appeal to a different starting animal or whatever...

Also Wayne Barlowe is an SF artist whose aliens I find give me ideas

 

I have his Expedition book. Love it. He was also the creative force behind the fauna in the film Avatar. (Blue people, not airbenders.)

 

Great topic! You want to involve your reader so the race in question has to have some human qualities or cause some problems for humans. One of my recent novels involve an alien race whose chief characteristics were that they wanted to enslave the planet and they were rude. No description other than that was offered. Another race (different story) were allergic to palladium. No other description. A third were "elves" with really ugly feet. Yet another were spirit beings with a serious gambling problem. All related to humans but not in a physical sense.

 

World build until you have enough to create creatures that can inhabit that world.

Differences in gravity? Heat? Is that world carbon based? Is there a 24 hour sun/moon cycle? Is there a moon? Is there only 1 sun? Where does this creature fall in the pecking order of that world? Etc...

 

Another point - which being me, I notice but I'm not sure how many readers do - is clothing (it is reasonable to expect intelligent beings, no matter how weirdly configured, to feel the cold). If it's a humanoid or vaguely humanoid alien, they tend to wear suspiciously humanoid clothes (or be both totally naked and sexless, like Little Grey Men). I find most aliens who are totally non-humanoid rarely get plausibly non-humanoid coverings (to be fair, what a a royal but multi-limbed arachnoid or something that looked like a Lovecraftian Older God on steroids would wear is harder to imagine. They do wear jewellery. Sometimes).

 

@raine_d A good argument is that a humanoid-shaped body is better to survive! I mean he/she has two hands for create weapons, stand on two feets to run while hunting, etc.

 

I think you should be careful with anything which is radically non-humanoid. There are very specific reasons why humans (and similar animals) are the shapes they are. Limbs, hands, opposable thumbs, brains and sensory organs in particular are crucial to what makes humans able to do most of the things they do. The reason why other animals aren't trying to travel through space is because they lack these appendages and organs. This means most of them can't operate tools, and the ones that can only do so in a crude manner; they can't manufacture complex materials or combine them in ways which are useful for further processing of raw materials or construction of vehicles; they can't comprehend physics and other sciences needed for space travel.

In short, whenever I see radically non-humanoid extraterrestrial species which have allegedly travelled across space, I immediately lose confidence in the plot, because I can't overcome the question of how they were able to accomplish space travel without hands or highly evolved intelligence.

 

The one thing that always makes me roll my eyes is Space Elves. You know, the enlightened, superior race that has overcome such barbaric behaviour as war, prejudice and ice hockey. They're here to tut sadly at the savage ways of humankind and to act as a mouthpiece for the author.

Another important thing is, give your aliens some variation. A lot of the time, it's "one race, one galactic power" for aliens, while humans have different factions and power blocs. Heck, Star Trek broke this one with the Vulcans and Romulans.

To make aliens feel different, think of one thing that's fundamental to you as a human, and then wonder, what if my aliens did that differently? Then extrapolate outwards to how that would affect their society, their relations with each other, and their daily lives. For example, there was one book I read recently that had an alien race that were born ungendered. Individuals would choose their gender at adolescence, and become male or female, developing greatly different bodies and mindsets. There were a handful who chose to remain ungendered, regarded as somewhat deviant by their gendered kin.


Lastly, it's tempting to use humans as the baseline for everything, but by the standards of life-forms on earth, we're physiologically quite unusual in a number of ways. We have exceptional stamina and recuperation abilities for our size, our newborns are helpless for an unusually long amount of time, and we mate at any time of the year rather than having a limited "season".

Eh, I wouldn't say humanlike hands are essential. Tentacles, prehensile feet or even a trunk can plausibly manipulate objects with the same degree of finesse--it might not be as easy to develop technology, but there's nothing that says the aliens needed to advance at the same speed as us. Lower intelligence is harder to overcome, but they could still have reached space with the assistance of another alien race.

 

I'm in the camp of basing aliens off of animals. Typically there's one main feature of the animal that I focus on, and if it's a space-faring species then I make sure to design them in such a way that they'd be able to actually develop a civilization that could make it to space (ie they're social animals on top of y'know, having grabby appendages and tool-using brains).

I do actually have a take on Grays in my sf universe. I don't think it's inherently bad to play into tropes. In-universe it's sort of played off as a joke that they could be responsible for supposed alien sightings - in reality, while they are sort of grayish humanoids with large eyes, they're also an amphibious race with remnants of their evolution in their anatomy and an entire history and culture. They're a developed species, not just Grays thrown in for the sake of having Grays.

Like with most things, thinking it through is the best way to make it good. How did this thing evolve? What did it start out as? What circumstances pushed and enabled it to become what it is? What environment did it become itself in? And why do you want it to be this way, from a writing perspective?

 

Human-like hands, no. But I would argue that in order for a species to be able to achieve the level of evolution required for space travel, they would need something which allows for very dextrous fine motor skills. So, basically, fingers. Or something very similar to them.

The speed of advancement doesn't matter. It's the speed of any given behaviour in a survival situation that matters. If my ape fingers can grasp a rock before your trunk/tentacle/foot does, then there's a higher chance I'll win and you'll die. So yes, the same motor skills could potentially be achieved by a species which uses non-hand appendages, but it's less likely that such a species would evolve to the level of using them for that purpose.

 

This sounds a bit human-centric, in that it's assuming the forerunners of the aliens lived in the same environments, sought the same foods, competed with the same species and natural challenges as humans and had no other natural assets that would help them survive.

The human form only seems like the obvious choice for an intelligent being because, well, it's the one we've got, so we tend to think of ourselves as the standard for what an intelligent being needs to survive and thrive. Something we think of as integral might be a liability on a different world or to a species that faced different challenges, or evolved different answers to them. We don't actually know if our intelligence was due to being the "best adapted" (albeit in a specific place at a specific time), or if it was just good luck.

If you look at the most intelligent non-simian species, you get birds such as ravens, pigeons and parrots, rats, dogs, pigs, whales, elephants, dolphins, and octopi, so there certainly doesn't seem to be a single blueprint to developing "high-animal" intelligence. And it's far from a given that there would be a single path to human-level sapience.

 

Well, I agree somewhat. I think it's sensible to assume that life on other planets is organic and therefore has similar demands placed on it for survival. That would suggest that similar mechanisms would create selection pressures (foraging, reproduction, killing etc). If we also assume that life began in the same way (i.e. from single-cell organisms), then it's not a stretch to imagine that the life-forms on that planet would be similar to those on Earth. But I do accept that there are probably planets with radically different environments which are capable of sustaining life which behaves very differently to that on Earth. Those life-forms, if they accomplished space travel, would perhaps do so in a very different way to humans. But in a work of fiction, I think that would need to be explained in order for it to be believable. An amorphous blob with no limbs whatsoever could possibly assemble a space ship using telekinetic abilities, but if said blob just rolls out of an advanced craft with no explanation of how it was able to build it, I'm not going to be able to suspend disbelief.

I agree that there's no 'single path', but I don't agree that the species you mentioned could accomplish human-level intellect without becoming a completely different animal. Any one of the animals you mentioned would need to change dramatically in order to achieve that and for it to be useful to them.

(I'm not sure whether we're still on topic by the way. Happy to continue in another thread, or if this is helping the OP to formulate thoughts then we can keep it here).

 

I look first at the environment of the planet that the alien is from/on. Is it a planet similar to Earth or is it more similar to Mars? Then I look at lifeforms that are present on Earth that come from locations similar to the alien planet. At that point I draw ideas from those lifeforms because there's a good chance that similar environments will produce similar creatures; they won't be exactly the same so that gives you room to play with the nature of them and whether or not they have a higher level of sentience.

It also lets you choose how different you want to make them from humans. Ender's Game and the series had aliens vastly different than humans yet they were also similar such as having similar levels of sentience and the ability to learn. One was even a mammal. Their food and biological needs were different, though.

My advice is study the biology of Earth and the environment of the planet you're creating. See what's similar and then use that as a jumping point to the creation of your alien race.

 

Why do you guys hate the Welsh so much?

 

Just to stress the point, I'm going to repeat what others have said and actually give them depths. I cannot stand aliens that have one unified planet that all wear the same uniform, it's stale and impossible. Actually give them their equivalent of countries, wars, monarchies, history, etc., without boring the reader too much. Just hint at it, at least. And don't make them relics of the past either, those things never go away and, for the sake of writing, shouldn't. Also make them actually different. When I hear about alien languages or number systems, they're just variations of English stuff, in reality there's more weird stuff on Earth than in sci-fi books (like base-12 numbering systems, or, actual foreign languages). Heck, for a game I'm writing I'm doing all that. It's not even about aliens, but they have a writing system that's a bit of a fusion of Japanese kanji and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics mythology, where everything has a symbol attached to it's name, but they believe if you don't write the symbol in a special way, you can use the writing system to control whatever concept or being you're using the symbol of. That's also why they don't have an actual name for the language itself, they're afraid if it had a name/symbol, and if the language controls all things, people could control all things. It's also simpler and missing a few phonemes English has (A bit like how Japanese doesn't have L or R, just a unified sound that sounds like both, but more like R (る)). World building stuff like that, as long as it's interesting and new, people won't mind tropes so much. Just really think outside the box, basically. Take an idea and simplify or complicate it, and just make it different. As I've mentioned before about Earth itself having some really weird and foreign ideas, it's a good idea to go explore the world and it's many cultures, past and present, through the internet, to get more diverse ideas. Especially the past, as there's a lot of ideas that have become obsolete and forgotten now. Like how the number 0 was a relatively recent addition to serious math, Romans didn't even have a 0, they just used an empty space where they needed it. You need 10 of something? That's just "1 " (note the empty space after 1). Japan didn't always have a 24-hour clock, their time used to be in phases, depending on where the sun was. So that meant work days were shorter in the winter. And this was semi-recent, they even made mechanical clocks for this time system before western hours finally started getting used.

Unlike what other people said, human-like aliens is probably an inevitability. Harboring life requires extremely, literally astronomically specific circumstances. We know of several earth-like planets with no actual life on them because they just aren't fit for anything more advanced than plants. The size and positioning of the planet itself and it's sun and neighboring planets is extremely specific and I can't overstate that. Given all those variables, it's really likely life will evolve the same way too. I mean, it's fiction, you can go ahead and make squid people if you think that's what readers expect. But just saying what's reasonably realistic according to modern expectations of life-harboring planets. It's not like our design was sporadically chosen by something, we're the result of billions of years of evolution over an infinitely large area of space that concluded with the only logical outcome.
In fact, making human-like aliens would definitely be going against the stereotype, everyone imagines them as squid people or grays. I sure wouldn't mind seeing humans from a different planet. The only difference you could believably employ is the aliens taking their evolution into their own hands with technology, which could only be bound by their culture.

 

I personally prefer rubber forehead aliens to starfish aliens, in general, but I still like some good old starfish aliens.