Has anyone noticed a certain trend when it comes to nonhuman races in fantasy books? Namely that they can be summed up with "They're humans, but..."? Elves are humans, but they have long ears. Dwarves are humans, but they're short. Orcs are humans, but they have green skin. Vampires, werewolves, aliens that look strangely exactly like earthlings, and more. I have a feeling it's because writers are worried that their audience won't be able to identify with a character that's too different to them. And then in the rare instance that they do create something really interesting, they're always a side character while the hero is a normal person. I've always found that really disappointing. For me, it seems like the easiest way to make a cool new race is to make them as inhuman as possible. Fur, tails, scales, wings, etc, anything that would make living as one of them a wholly different experience than living as a human. The problem there is that people will take one look at the story, say something like "I'm not into that furry s---", and never open the book. So I guess there's sort of a balancing act between making your races unique and making it seem like you're fetishizing the nonhuman parts...does that make sense? Am I making a lick of sense here? Anyway, what do you guys think of all this?
There is a way to make inhuman characters feel relatable and "human". I keep thinking a lot to the books I read in middle school.... Guardians of Ga'hoole for example, had owl characters. Silverwing series had bats as main characters. There was another book about song birds versus raptors (I dont think it was for kids because one of the birds got raped and another bird got brutally ripped apart by a crow....). Another book, I havent read it yet, is called Fishbowl, and is from the point of view of a goldfish as he learns about life by watching his owners and, as he falls out of the apartment, the lives of the people in the window. My point is, non-human characters can be written and do have audiences. If you look at the use of non-human humanoids in history, they are almost always metaphors for what is going on in society at the time. Its even present in Star Trek. That is why I think the use of non-human humanoids are so popular because issues today regarding race and othering is still present. Honestly, the inspiration for my humanoid alien characters is, actually, race, othering, and xenophobia. If you make them TOO alien, it justifies the fears and hate the other characters have because it makes it more apparent that they are NOT human. The closer to human they look, but with minor differences ("They're humans, but..."), makes the other human question whether it is right or wrong to hate them, thus creating a moral conflict. just my reasonings!
Humans are the readers, and it's those humans that need to connect with the characters. I think you can get as creative as you want, but readers are still going to want that connection. I've been playing around with fantasy lately, but I tend to make my world fantasy and my characters human or on the human side. I'm one of those readers who's not going to pick up a book with elves or fur creatures (in most cases) so that's not what I'm doing with fantasy. But that doesn't mean there's not an audience for both. However, both audiences are going to be looking for that connection, and I just don't think you can do it without humanizing your characters, at least your MC.
Have you tried writing totally inhuman characters? I think it would be extremely difficult to do relatably or well. I'm talking about totally inhuman, no arms or legs, nothing resembling a human face, they don't talk or think or act like we do. Something like the septapods from Arrival maybe. Or a bunch of blobs, or undersea creatures that communicate by vibrating the water. We're used to communicating with other people, and we understand human language, body language, and a whole lot more with a depth and intimacy that makes it easy to express even very subtle things. You can do that with nearly-human creatures pretty easily too, as long as they have certain traits that make them pretty recognizable. My mom used to complain about "all these shows where they have funny foreheads"—talking mostly about Star Trek and Buffy. Of course it's easy for her to say that without thinking about how difficult or expensive and time-consuming it would be to make creatures that are completely inhuman. And it isn't going to happen on a weekly TV show!! And of course, what I said above applies just as much to creatures in a movie or show too—they need to be able to act and get across subtleties, which we know how to read if it's close enough to human. When they put on too much foam rubber or silicone you can no longer see subtle facial expressions, and actors say they lose the ability to express or emote. What are you going to write—'Qrxnzgtl twitched his fringulator 77 times against prkvnwa0opjnw-'s pohiank'? If they don't communicate or think or express like we do it's going to be really hard to write about them, and you won't be able to do it naturally, you'd have to labor long and hard over every action and movement. I'm sure it can be done. There were some stories written by Keith Laumer involving things called Bolos, basically massive futuristic tanks with an advanced onboard computer so they run themselves, and he was able to write their thought processes quite well even though they had nothing remotely human about them. I guess what they did have that's recognizable to us is motivations, goals and obstacles. They communicated with each other by super high speed radio blips, compacted information in a fraction of a second, but the content of the messages made sense because he wrote what it said and what the response was. Here's a little sample. Not actually written by Laumer but William H Keith, apparently they've opened the series up to others: Two by two, we are released from our docking grapples. Brief bursts from contra-grav projectors nudge us free of Heritas and into the void. First Battalion—Invictus and Horrendus—are first to clear the ship's bay. I follow, along with Ferox, and the Third Battalion drops after us. Our pods handle the separation and drop-vector insertion maneuvers. Though not possessed of true AI, the processing power of their computer brains are more than ample to handle these tasks. My inertial sensors record our passage through Heritas's idling drive fields and pick up the jolt as my pod's drive switches on and the acceleration swiftly builds. I think you could adapt something similar to this but about organic living creatures that don't have recognizably humanoid bodies. I don't think adding any of these things really makes them inhuman. They're just add-ons; accessories. Like you said about races that are human except for one thing. You're putting together a bunch of things, but it seems like it's still on a human body.
This is far from universally true. Usually, the differences are considerably more significant than details of appearance, but it's true that these 'wild' species are closely related to mundane humans, just as giants, wizards and witches, fairies, centaurs, mermaids and leprechauns are. Orcs are not human; they're related to ogres. Vampires and werewolves, as well as mummies and zombies are literally humans that have been altered. That's more typical of cinematic aliens than literary ones; the reason being that only human actors are available to play them. Not all writers are equally skilled at creating imaginary characters. However, in most cases, I believe the reason is more likely that the plot depends on the human characters having to interact and communicate with the aliens. The plot where communication is impossible has very limited scope. There have been quite a few stories about creatures other than human. Mostly animals, sometimes fantasy creatures. People do read them - cherish some of them, even. See The Velveteen Rabbit.
All the mythical and legendary monsters were created by human story-tellers, pretty much out of spare parts: eagle wings and scorpion tail on a lion. It's not impossible to conceive of a different appearance, but it's very difficult, if not impossible for us to imagine an entity that lives, feels and thinks very differently from the narrator and the reader. Star Trek did manage it a few times, but only for adversaries/ encounters of a single episode, never to be seen again - - simply, the novelty of their differentness was used up. PS Come to think of it, one of my favourite non-human species of all time is the Ents. I might even call TLoTR the gold standard of other-than-human invention.
Even Ents were human-shaped to a large extEnt. Arms, very human faces, and they spoke English (or Hobbitish). But I'm not sure Adam is looking for completely inhuman. I went that way partly because he did say totally inhuman, and partly because I've learned to try to define a problem by finding the outer parameters first. In this case one end of the spectrum is completely human, the other completely inhuman. I suspect he's looking for something in between. But it is fun to conjecture like this and I think it can also help us to think our way toward a better answer. Sort of freewriting I suppose.
I don't do fantasy, but my current series is all about non-humans. Humans barely even make an appearance and certainly not as main characters. They are not like humans either, except in the very broadest of strokes. You just need to find a way to make human readers relate to non-human characters. They don't have to be human, but they certainly have to have understandable motivations and consistent existence. They have to make sense. If they don't, people are going to get bored with them and put the book down.
Anything can be a main character if it has dramatic goals and motivations etc. The movie Dark Star featured a beach ball that bounced around, and it was a character if I remember right (it's been a LOOONG time since I saw it). You could push an iron around using stopmotion and make it a character, as long as it does things a character needs to do. On a different front, animals are inhuman. So a dog or fish or bird that can talk and is intelligent would qualify. I think this is more what Adam was talking about, through probably not actual birds and fish. Maybe something like the Star Wars cantina scene. Some of them were pretty inhuman, some just people with simple masks on.
Yes, but Nemo and Piglet are human, regardless that they look like a clown-fish and a stuffed toy. And, of course, every species that originates on the same planet share needs, physical features and motivations. That's why interspecies communication is possible: all intelligence on Earth has common evolutionary roots (unintelligent life, as well, but we can't negotiate with a fungus or a virus.) So, if you want different life-forms, invent a planet, wait a few billion years and see what grows.
Nemo and Piglet are cartoons, designed to appeal to kids. How about something (slightly) more realistic and less appealing, like say Chewbacca. A little threatening at times, and maybe somewhat less human because he doesn't speak any human language. Or to go a little farther, Andre Norton's telepathic animals. You seem familiar with many of the authors I am. Eet, the telepathic pseudo-cat from The Zero Stone for instance. Not fully cat, actually a hybrid between a cat mother and whatever alien race Eet originally was. But mostly a sort of strange cat with almost human hands. Highly intelligent, arrogant (that's a cat characteristic) but he was actually the smarter partner in the story, with the human co-star being more like the dumb servant who obeys orders and tries in vain to argue. Or some of her other telepathic animals, which often 'speak' in slow halting ways that resemble the speech of primitives using an unfamiliar language. I think they were actually based on native Americans. Many of her stories were essentially Westerns set on frontier planets. They weren't at all like sweet little cartoons, they were often stand-offish and threatening, though shared a common goal of survival with the human MC so cooperated. But in a sense what you said still applies, they're all human just in animal bodies.
Now I'm imagining an intelligent octopus. A real one. As intelligent as us at least, but not only doesn't use our language and we can't understand theirs, but there's no way of bridging the gap of understanding. They don't use sounds, maybe they squirt colored ink and supplement with body-color and skin texture variations. I know, it's dark down there. I'm just saying they don't communicate in any way we can even understand. This is just a thought experiment. Trying to see where this line of reasoning can lead. Was it you (Oxy) who said something above about inability to communicate? That would certainly lend a sense of alienness, but as you (or whoever it was) said, would create serious writing problems. And I also doubt this is what Adam is looking for. I'm just enjoying the exercise.
We can, too, communicate with an octopus! Actually, a well-intentioned and creative human can probably bridge the language-gap between itself and any other earth-based intelligence - precisely because of our shared roots, the same data-processing equipment and method of learning, we can identify the same emotions and responses in other species, even when their faces are different. That's how we domesticated dogs and horses, how we can make pets, mascots, servants or entertainers out of most any other animal. And the relationships we form with other species make interesting stories - from either point of view. When we, storytellers, invent "other" kinds of life-form, we do it for the purpose of relating some some human-oriented interaction with that life-form. Some very different and intriguing ones have been invented. I liked LeGuin's dragons, Asimov's robots, Heinlein's puppet masters, Tepper's Hippae and lots and lots of other un-human beings. I even admired the Crystalline Entity in STNG. But there's no point in writing a story from a pov the reader can't understand. Which is probably why War and Peace reads better in English translation than Cyrillic.
Interesting nobody brought up the Uncanny Valley yet, which is the main reason for the current variety of nonhuman races. This is a theory used as guidance to develop animated / drawn characters. It is used as explanation behind multiple box office crashes / failures. In short, humans display empathy towards creature that are very unlike them with a few human-like features, and display empathy towards creatures with very human-like features (passing human). However, there is an instinctive revulsion / dread / disgust towards the inbetween. There's theory behind this that the reaction is evolutionary. That's to say, a creature with very limited human features (EG, Wall-E) or one that does not try hard to look human or humanoid will draw far more empathy and will be much more welcomed than a non-passing human (any of the failed animations trying to be photorealistic). It also explains how Star Wars & Morrowind characters aged well, whereas Oblivion characters are ... eeh. Creepy and off. So in the end, you are absolutely right in this observation, and my answer to that is: "Look at box office earnings for various movies with passing and non-passing humans; you'll see Hollywood, Pixar & Disney learned this lesson the hard way!"
I recommend watching Babylon 5, reading the S & S Perry Alien and Predator series, and also there's a trilogy by Piers Anthony (I can only recall one title, Omnivore). I have attempted a non-corporeal AI entity that could be multi-corporeal but chooses not to. It, of course, has to communicate with humans by other means and represent itself to humans. It has vulnerabilities and superiorities, and reason to fear revealing its existence. Ah, the possibilities... It can be done!
I have a variety of demon characters in my story, both main and minor. They are so far all antrophomorphic bipeds, though. But making quadrapeds or aquatic demons isn’t a bad idea for making them more diverse.
I've had an idea for a story for a long time where the only inhabitable land is on the backs of stone giants, populated by two races of anthropomorphic goats and a feline race with stone claws, but I've never started it because of how people always seem to react to animal-people characters.
As far as I understand it, the Uncanny Valley applies to visual representations created artificially by humans, such as robots and as you mentioned CGI characters that are supposed to look realistically human. I don't think it would apply to literary creations. Unless of course we're talking about authors trying to write realistic human characters who for whatever reason can't do it convincingly. The other 2 were Ox and Orn. I still remember the parts form Orn about the prehistoric bird migrating trying to find a place it can live as the climate changed all around it. My own tentative conclusions (from my own thinking plus spurred by comments in here) is that for the most part, when we create alien characters or species (as has already been said) it's often people clothed in non-human bodies. People in the sense of their motivations, goals and other dramatic elements. But that sometimes an author can create something far more alien, usually to explore some mystery or to represent the difficulties of knowing The Other if that other is sufficiently different from us.
I don't think everybody reacts like that though. I think you're referring back to your earlier "I'm not into that furry s---" comment. I think the vast majority of alien characters have been written as anthropomorphic animal types and they either all speak the same language or there's some kind of translator device or telepathy so it can be written as if they all speak one language. Yeah, there'll always be comments like that all over the internet, but that's mostly people trying to be edgy. As long as they're written well enough, those stories sell well and are loved. Don't take writing advice from Tumblr. I came in here determined to figure out how to write something really alien and what I'm discovering is that the great majority of aliens have been people in furry bodies (or scaly or tentacled or what have you). It's never bothered me a bit, as long as it isn't done cartoonishly, but then if someone is looking for cartoonish then that wouldn't bother them either. Hell, when I do watch cartoons like that, if they're well done, I end up liking them too. I think if you try to do something significantly different from that convention you're going to have to work really hard to pull it off and you'll end up with creatures that are better to illustrate differentness rather than to serve as characters in a story. I mean, it's been working since the earliest mythology, right? Why argue with a success record like that?
Yes, I think the makeup artists did a pretty fair job of disguising some human actors to appear quite different, but I was unimpressed by some others. Most of the alien characters with speaking parts (younger races) were humanoid - enough so that, on that basis, I would buy into the panspermian theory of generation. (Except, I will never accept that on all advanced planets, without exception, humanoid females wear skirts.) OTH, the enemy were very alien, which made them that much more scary. By the way, one of my favourite cinematic alien stories is Batteries Not Included. The humans were meh; the wee robots were adorable. The movies of the same title would put me right off those! But I get the idea of the very different entity. Again, it can only be an adversary - or there is no story. Omnivore made an impression on me, as well. Important philosophical observation. It came into my life shortly after The Martian Chronicles and the first Retief book - Keith Laumer had some pretty good aliens - and Simak's City. Those were the foundation of my relationship with SF, and through SF, the Universe. Sounds fascinating!
https://www.tellwut.com/surveys/lifestyle/living/132420-hunters-unlucky.html The above may be of interest. Enjoy! Scott
My personal take, having read none of the prior responses. I think it depends on how you engage the character races. For me, their visual aspects are a trivial, ancillary concept. I don't care what they look like. I care what they represent in the story. Elves don't just have pointy ears. They serve to speak about certain aspects of the human condition. Tolkien forever branded them as stand-ins for the concepts of elitism and used them to speak about peerage and the fading nobility of his era. Dwarves are the most resistant to the Ring's corruption, and they (quite literally) represent the concept of children of a lesser god and everything that trope speaks about, having been formed without permission by one of the secondary dieties in Tolkien's pantheon. The xenomorph of the ALIEN franchise speaks about our worst selves, our most hedonistic lusts, which are made of as much blood-lust as below-the-belt lust, which the creature embodies perfectly because there is a deeply disturbing sexual aspect to it. It is the monster under the bed. It is the thing in the shadow at the end of the hall. Most importantly, it represents the aspects of our human nature that we go to great lengths to deny exist. We are not always horrible, but when we are, we are. That is the xenomorph. Just playing Mr. Potato Head with races doesn't feel like a productive road to tell a story, not for me anyway. I don't care about their tails or ears or fur or scales or teeth. I care about what they are doing in the story, what they are saying to the reader, their narrative purpose.
I think when it comes down to creating non-humans, we think in terms of humanoid, or at least have the ability to advance technologically in some fashion possibly by being helped or uplifted by another species. Cause it would seem that it would quite difficult to have industry without the ability to utilize metallurgy or the like, so aquatic based life (not amphibious) would have a hell of a time creating technologigical progress on their own, but with a helpful species that can get them at least a foot hold on industries that are more complex will help out a lot. I make up all sorts of aliens that may share humanoid features, but have their own characteristics, bio, and cultural norms that vary from what is considered normal to a human. Granted I don't think in terms of them being a 'furry', 'scaley', 'avian', or what have you. Just as some intelligent creature that has it's own personality and what not. As for the language part, it is easier to just have universal language. Sure would be taxing to have whole dialogues in strange made up languages that will not be all that understandable. Though use of some in speech will denote those alien linguistics. Even in my own story their might be some type of squid creature that uses a type of breathing apparatus, and has it's own form of communication by tapping on the person they want to communicate with. IDK.
Alien races kind of fall into the same category as alien or fantasy languages. Are all the aliens speaking American English? No, but that's how we are reading it except for a few words/concepts for which the writer creates new terms for. It comes down to writer skill. We had a thread on this forum about whether or not an aquatic race could evolve advanced technology given that things like fire and electricity would be near impossible to harness for them. Would I still read a book about an advanced aquatic race? Yes, but the writer would have needed to write it in such a way that I am not immediately questioning everything. -edited to correct auto spelling issues-
