I don't want to give away too much of the synopsis away because I’m pretty serious about publishing this book. However given the difficulty of the theme and setting I consider myself a far inferior author lacking both the rhetoric and world experience to carry out the task of precisely conveying the story to the audience. All I am willing to say about the book is that I was searching for something truly science fiction. In my work of special education dealing specifically with social skill analysis I study human behavior. Following in that vein I wanted to create a universe devoid of all human and humanoid appearance. The only thing that connects all these vastly different and complex truly alien aliens in a united galaxy is their ability to express the basic emotions. It’s 2011 now and I’ve been designing each of these truly different alien races with bizarrely different cultures, beliefs, appearances, and methods of communications since 2002. When you look at the Genres and compare them you might also see what I’m getting at. You take simple Fiction and all you are telling the reader is that you are making up a story… Catcher in the Rye is fiction. Than you take something like Science Fiction and you are saying to the reader, okay here’s a story that were’re going to make up based off of plausible science fact and theory. Than you take Fantasy and you’re telling the reader I’m creating my very own world with rules of it’s own and here’s a story within it. In all honesty, so much good science fiction blend into the realm of fantasy because we authors create absurdly unrealistic things that are not based off of scientific theory of fact… and when I say theory I do include such theories of aliens out in the universe, or maybe intelligent energy based life forms, who knows…. The fact is science fiction often blends with fantasy if only minutely. The simple conclusion is that authors do it because it is the easier route. BOTTOM LINE: Would any of you want to read about alien cultures that’s only resemblance to humans are through emotions? If a book had no humans in it would it be too hard to connect with any of the characters?
There are plenty of books where the characters are aliens, not human. Generally, the emotional aspects of the aliens are what allow us, as human readers, to relate to them nonetheless. So in answer to your question, yes this can work just fine, and in fact has in other books.
That would be fine, once there is not loads of jargon from a made up language. Some is ok, but If you every have to add a dictionary on the back of it or god forbid describe your made up words using made up words you know that you flew past the line of realism and enjoyable fiction. Read any popular military historical book, these have to use terms and discuss matters their average reader wont understand and or relate with, but the good ones do it in a way that does not remove us from the battle or what ever too much. As far the aliens, once the exposition is seamless instead of five pages discussing their hands and you're not writing avatar you should be ok. Another thing there is a problem with arts that require cognition to appreciate. The more intelligent your book the smaller your audience, unless it becomes amazing and famous. Imagine the Watchmen if it was not a genius book. The content varies from sociology, psychology, history and sexuality to quantum mechanics and discussions of time as a dimension of the physical world. If this was not described as "you must read this" then a-lot of people would of passed, but now its a movie and its famous and those people will pick it up. I'm not saying don't publish or write smart books, but instead don't be afraid to explain 1 bit of science every once in awhile to avoid people reading wikipedia instead of your book.
