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Aliens

 
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AaronLee
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:53 am    Post subject: Aliens Reply with quote

So in this latest installment of the action packed adventures of the quixotic quartet, a major topic was aliens. One big hurtle, as I saw it anyway, was creating truly alien cultures, and even defining what "truly alien" means.

So what about everyone here? For all those space opera fanatics and beyond; how do you create your aliums?

I know Niven portreyed humans in Ringworld as rather special/innovative. As for myself, I purposefully shied away from that idea because it seemed rather self-aggrandizing.

Since I had to consider the fact that all the races in Sunrise were part of a rather integrated galactic 'club' I also had to consider how their involvement affected the general function of the galactic village.

I actually used this as an advantage so I could give an excuse for the massive public work projects that appear regularly (30km diameter Stanford Toruses, a giant, domed orbital interface that goes from ground to stratosphere and covers half a dozen states etc.)

As per biologics, it's surprisingly fun to come up with evolutionary niches my sentients climbed through to get where they are. Imagine spiders the size of one's head filling the same niche as a big cat. Deeevious!

Then there's the Homeworld route, don't show faces Razz. Also I can agree with everyone that Jim did a good job with Outsider. The Loroi are a great fusion of self referencing jokes yet some seriously good design.

Also, how do your craziest aliens interact with eachother (or humans?) is it generally caustic or do your aliens see eye to eye, and in what ways?

It's ninjas, Jim, but not as we know it Razz (random show joke, go listen to Ep. 23 if you haven't already.)

Also, since this is an Ep. 23 geared post; my comment on the episode was meant as self-defacing humor (me being dorky and white). I later realized that the magic anonymity of the internet sort of killed the joke dead. So now I've clarified it! Hoorah!

Also; WEEEE! Swamp Gas Weather Balloon
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ttallan
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't have a lot of aliens in my universe, but I do have a couple. They have yet to appear in the webcomic version, though one race, the Miesti, showed up in the printed version.

I have a second race, the Myradi, who have been mentioned a few times but have yet to appear. I admit that I'm not entirely sure what they look like! My first vision of them was very much a cat-like race, I suppose something like the Kzinti (sp?) from those stories by Niven, but I think it's safe to say that cat-like aliens have been done to death and I don't want to go that route anymore.

I have some parameters of what these aliens need to be like to suit the plot, but other than that it's a blank canvas. It'll be a few years (at the pace I'm going!) before the story gets to the point where we meet them and I have to make my final decisions. I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on aliens, and now I have some more ideas!
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Arioch
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think making aliens "alien" is very hard... all you have to do is choose the opposite of every human characteristic and you got a pretty strange alien. However, making aliens that are unique and compelling and that make sense and are consistent within their own frame of reference, I think takes some thought.

One of the things I neglected to mention in the program was the unique opportunity a webcomic artist has in terms of visual design to make an alien race unique and distinctive. Take for example a prose-based alien race such as Larry Niven's Kzinti. They are traditionally though of as cat-aliens, and though I think he does describe them this way in some respect, Niven also includes a lot of details about how they are different from cats -- the batwing ears, the massive bulk -- but it the popular memory I think they are still thought of as cats, perhaps partially because most of the cover artists depict them as very recognizable felines, sometimes in direct conflict with Niven's written descriptions. Luckily, we as comic artists don't have this problem, as we can control the visual design ourselves... I think if Niven had been a webcomic artist, it's possible that the word "cat" might never have been associated with the Kzinti.

I think that stereotypes as a basic concept (cat-aliens, bug-aliens) can be a great starting point... as long as you go far enough beyond the basic cliches, adding details that make them both interesting and a bit different from everything else you've seen. I use the same techniques for adding detail to an alien race that I use for individual character... try to think of a background story that explains the basic attributes of your character or race, and working out the details of this background (even if it's never mentioned in the course of the story) can suggest some really interesting motives, characteristics, and even potential plot points. If you have, for example, a character that you have decided is cold and stoic, figuring out the reason for those attributes can really offer you some interesting character interaction options, or perhaps even significant ideas for subplots or even plot twists. Similarly, understanding the details of your alien race's evolution (or lack of evolution, as the case may be) can produce some interesting behaviors and cultural ideas that can make a race unique and compelling.

Another thing about race creation that I would have liked to have talked about in the program is the idea of advantages and disadvantages. Star Trek's Vulcans are a good example of an interesting alien race, but it's certainly one where the writers ran amuck in terms of advantages... the Vulcans are super-intelligent, super-strong, very long-lived, extremely hardy, telepathic, and essentially superior in every way to humans (and most other races of the milieu). I recall some alien asking Spock something to the effect of "why haven't the Vulcans conquered Federation space?", and I find myself asking the same question. The same situation can occur with individual characters... Spock, for example, knows more about medicine than McCoy, more about engineering than Scotty, and more about command (except as regards poker and interpersonal human foibles) than Kirk. He's rich and famous on his own planet. Yet he's only a second in command. His loyalty to Kirk seems absolute... and though the personal chemistry between Kirk and Spock is excellent and part of what makes the show really work... we never get much of an idea about how such intense loyalty came to exist in the first place.

The reason I bring up characters is that (I believe) aliens are just characters on a broad scale... groups of individuals who share characteristics. The same rules and techniques that apply to creating characters also apply to creating races and aliens. Specifying advantages and disadvantages for an alien race can be very useful, even if the aliens are just bug-eyed monsters meant as cannon-fodder for the heroes... interesting advantages and disadvantages can offer motivations and strategies for the enemy, and potential weaknesses for the heroes to exploit.

For characters who have some physical combat abilities to employ in a story, I sometimes create RPG characters to try to illustrate what kind of abilities such a characterm might have (and not have), to avoid the kind of "Spock-can-do-everything-better-than-everyone" scenario. My RPG of choice for this is GURPS -- it's both generic and relatively realistic -- but it also builds characters on a point system, in which advantages cost points, and disadvantages refund points, and you have a total "sum" in point cost of how "wonderful" your character is. Having to adhere to a "wonderfulness" points "budget" not only encourages to keep a hero's powers to some sort of limit, but also encourages the addition of disadvantages and character foibles to offset a mighty hero's deadly abilities. And again, in the GURPS system, an alien race is assigned a set of predetermined racial advantages and disadvantages (for which the point cost must still be paid), on top of which an indivdual alien character may add his or her own advantages and disadvantages.

It's something I have fun with, and it has suggested a lot of story possibilities to me.


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AaronLee
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Ttallan: Glad I inspire! Very Happy

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see more webcomic aliens! I've already been following Mr. Power Hour's work.

@Arioch, true, alien aliens are decently easy. There was a lot in that second sentence as well, but I'd guess you were talking about making them inventive yet unique and limited (like any human or human character.)

In that department, it is an interesting dance. I've had my own challenges as I've actually developed some races in an RPG framework (word on that project is very mum for now as it's somewhat back burner.) The biggest issue has been Bizzare Biology (say it with me in a spooooky science-macabre voice!)

One of my proposed races actually evolved from sessile cloud floaters in a gas giant. They had metabolisms based on a tiny nuclear reaction (thank Wierd Worlds for that one, very fun game) and just nommed fissile materials they stumbled upon. I designed another species as if they'd evolved in an ocean bathed in radiation, where organs sensitive to EM (light, gamma rays etc) were a handicap rather than an advantage, so they don't actually have any biological equivalent to "eyes" as we know them.

Of course, I've barely scratched the surface with that sort of thing, but anything beyond risks making my aliens far too incomprehensible (entities that didn't evolve sentience or even technically evolve, all sorts of wildcards there, as Arioch alluded to.) Luckily I've got the macguf-err technological genius of computer-mediated translation integrated into the brains of my characters, which means even characters that use photophoric color changing to communicate (a la squids) or even electromagnetic radiation can learn to communicate in semantic-speak through a computer network.

Anyway, loving how this topic is progressing! Thanks for replying, guys.
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Arioch
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I guess that's another point worth mentioning, although we have talked about it in a previous program -- that for storytelling purposes, there may be a limit as to just how alien you really want to make your aliens. If your aliens exist in a very hostile environment, or are have incomprehensible methods of communication, it may be a real challenge for them to interact with your non-alien characters... which, depending on the story, may or may not be a good thing. Similarly, especially in a visual medium such as comics, the more visually bizarre an alien is, the more difficult it may be to make that alien visually compelling as a character to a human audience. Which, again, may or may not be a problem, depending on the role of the alien in your story.

Quote:
Luckily I've got the macguf-err technological genius of computer-mediated translation integrated into the brains of my characters, which means even characters that use photophoric color changing to communicate (a la squids) or even electromagnetic radiation can learn to communicate in semantic-speak through a computer network.

While I realize that a certain amount of hand-waving is unavoidable in SF, the Babelfish really is one of my least favorite SF cliches. For one thing, setting up a situation where the characters' perceptions are altered from reality (or the readers' perceptions) can really open a can of potential worms that you don't necessarily want to get into... as a reader you generally don't want to have to wonder: is that what's really happening, or is that just what the character thinks is happening? (Unless of course that's the whole idea of the story.) For another, the alternatives are really straightforward and often more interesting -- "common" languages, interpreters, and mechanical translators that are not hidden and therefore clear to the reader.
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theleast
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My webcomic is free of aliens, and always will be. I'm not anti-alien (some of my best friends are aliens...), but I think that they've been so overdone in Sci-Fi that there needs to be a really compelling reason for putting them there. If they're just funny-looking humans with a quirky society, then the question becomes: "Why not just use humans?". The more I learn about human cultures, the more bland and mundane the aliens of Star Trek look. Often aliens in Sci-Fi are really little more than Space-Elves (Vulcans), Space-Dwarves (Klingons), Space-Goblins (Ferengi), or Space-Orcs (Borg).

Firefly, was completely alien-free, but still managed to give us some incredibly scary monsters in the Reavers - humans driven solely by lust and malice. Who needs aliens when humans can be this scary? Battlestar Galactia is also alien-free: Who needs aliens when we can build our own nemesis?

This, I think, is why the Daleks are so compelling: They are utterly inhuman, in appearance and behaviour. Even their organic component is completely alien. Like HG Wells' Martians, they are hideous to us, but they regard us with the same contempt we would hold for a stink bug, and they therefore make us feel small as a species. Daleks and Martians strike like a hurricane, a humbling reminder that humans are not really as clever as they like to think they are. This, I think, is a justifiable use of aliens in a story.

(PS: I guess the Romulans would have to be Dark Elves in Space)
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AaronLee
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Holy inevitability, batman! It's the last member of the SF webcomic pantheon!

Wow, I feel incredibly honored and simultaneously humbled that this subject got the attention of a big inspiration of mine. Cheers to you, theleast!

Anyway, you raise a good point. To be honest, after I delved into a lot of modern and classic space opera novels, I felt Star-Trek was lacking in inventiveness. They sort of took some rather pure archetypes and stuck 'em on humanoids.

The Daleks, though, are a decent example of this sort of conceptual-alien-ness, IMO. We have a bunch of inhuman main battle tanks that can not only talk, but have a will of their own (a rather sadistic one, at that.) It's enough to make one go hide behind the couch to escape them.

But aliens, indeed, have become a bit of a setpiece. A lot of modern space operas (novels, too) have made a lot of assumptions about how aliens would be and how we'd interact with them. I honestly like breaking these assumptions down and making them say uncle before building up new ones from the pieces, proverbially.

@Arioch: You do raise a good point. In webcomics, it would be a lot harder to make nonphysical translators visible, and from what I've heard of the babelfish it is a pretty flakey McGuffin. So much so it's used as a comedic device in the course of the story once or twice.

But from my writing, computer-mediated translation is a logical step. Most of the races in Sunrise are already fairly computer reliant and already use it for networked communication. that would have virtually the same sort of flakey-factor as translation, so it's not so big of a step as it seems. But yes, there is a decent amount of faith they have stocked in those translators, as it is sometimes the only thing holding privatized starship crews together.

(btw none of this means I hate star-trek, I grew up on it!)
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zortic
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The "why aliens" question is pretty good, but it can easily be expanded to include all of science fiction. Why set a story on a space ship and not a naval destroyer? Why use blasters and light sabers instead of revolvers and rapiers? Almost any science fiction element could be replaced with more mundane elements, but let's face it, we're all here because we love science fiction and all of the visual and conceptual pieces of the genre.

Even though it's hard to completely flesh out an alien race without making them a major focus of your story, I do think that aliens can add a lot to a science fiction story. Even if they're just there to add visual color and variety, that's part of the convention and language of science fiction. Deciding how "exotic" your science fiction universe is going to be is one of the first decisions you need to make, and if you do go more "exotic", aliens are going to be an important tool that you're not going to want to disregard.

But when used correctly, aliens can bring an unpredictable and "not offensive to anyone" race of antagonists. They can also be useful for attempting to look at human sociology from an objective point of view, something that can't really be done by any of us from within the species.

We really need to get you on the show sometime to talk about this more.
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