Sci Fi & Alien Intelligence

[Beady]

Here's a post I made in the Science forum:



"Originally Posted by HidariMak http://www.randi.org/forumlive/images/misc/backlink.gif (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1827435#post1826446):
Since we're assuming that the alien would be brighter than the rest of us..."


Wrong. We would be assuming that the alien knows more than the rest of us; the alien could well be less intelligent than the rest of us. Greater knowledge and accomplishments do not inherently imply greater intelligence; they may result solely from greater experience and opportunity. Call this the "Forrest Gump Postulation."


Have any Sci Fi authors ever explored this idea? What would happen if an interstellar race with a slower learing curve than ours, whose education and accomplishments were due solely to greater experience with trial-and-error, were to arrive on present-day Earth?

ETA: This assumes that this is First Encounter for both of us.

[Dredred]

What would happen if an interstellar race with a slower learing curve than ours, whose education and accomplishments were due solely to greater experience with trial-and-error, were to arrive on present-day Earth?

The dumb aliens might be really annoying to talk to, but they might do excellent jobs as erotic dancers or baby sitters.

[asmodean]

Here's a post I made in the Science forum:



Have any Sci Fi authors ever explored this idea? What would happen if an interstellar race with a slower learing curve than ours, whose education and accomplishments were due solely to greater experience with trial-and-error, were to arrive on present-day Earth?

ETA: This assumes that this is First Encounter for both of us.

Sort-of. I recall a book ("Pandora's Planet" I think the title was, wirrten by Christopher Anvil in any case) where a bunch of rather stupid aliens tries to conquer Earth and runs into a lot of problems. Seems the reason is that humanity spent mosgt of their energy fighting each other and havent reached the stars despite high intelligence, and the aliens having been semi-peaceful at least have developed intrestellar travel despite being dumb as bricks.

Or something like that, been a whike since I read the book. But I think it fits the OPs bill?

[Hutch]

Good choice, Asmodean, it has also been awhile since I read that novel.

The idea has been explored in a lot of 1940's-1950's Sci-Fi, of the galaxy having races that developed over long times but in ways much slower than the vibrant, restless human race. A lot of this was due to the influence of John W. Campbell, who tended to be a "Human uber alles" in his preferences of aliens vs. humans.

Today it seems that has swung around and we humans are the dupes and stupid/conquered one who someone scrabble through against vastly superior intellligence.

I would also suggest "Footfall", by Larry Niven (Pournelle/Barret?) as a nicely done invasion of earth by technologically superior but perhaps not quite as intelligent lifeforms.

[Bikewer]

Thumbs up to both choices. I read Pandora's Planet many years ago, as I recall it was quite funny in places.

Footfall was interesting too. The invading aliens are actually the reciepients of advanced technology from a more-advanced race.

[Meffy]

Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" series involves reptilian invaders...

... who scouted Earth out as suitable for subjugation and enslavement -- back when human warfare consisted of tossing pointy sticks at each other -- arriving in the middle of World War II. They're used to nice easy conquests, not obstreperous, disorganized people like us. They're also ultra-conservative socially and technologically (I'm not talking about political conservatism here), and cannot understand how Earth people managed to advance so far in so little time.

We primitives manage to teach them a thing or two. :-} And vice versa.

[Cuddles]

I can't think of any sci-fi where the aliens are specifically described as being more intelligent than humans. They are usually more scientifically advanced, but whether this is because they are more intelligent or have just been around longer is not normally mentioned, or relevant for that matter. In fact, I'd say they are usually implied to be a lot stupider than humans since they almost always lose, despite far superior technology.

[Ryokan]

How about War of the Worlds?

Those aliens sure were stupid, not checking out Earth's bacteria.

[Jimbo07]

Star Trek and Babylon 5 seem to deal with humans coming late to the FTL party, but always being somehow more capable, intelligent, empathic, adaptable, whatever than all of their alien allies and foes...

[TobiasTheViking]

Star Trek and Babylon 5 seem to deal with humans coming late to the FTL party, but always being somehow more capable, intelligent, empathic, adaptable, whatever than all of their alien allies and foes...
False.
The only thing that makes humans superior in Babylon 5 is that they form communities. The minbari are more emphatic and intelligent. And both the Vorlons and the Shadows are far superior in all regards except that they don't form communities.

[Jimbo07]

False.
The only thing that makes humans superior in Babylon 5 is that they form communities. The minbari are more emphatic and intelligent.

You mean empathic, and I was going more for emotional empathy (probably part of building communities), than some sort of psionic power. By the end of the series, they're all warm and cuddly and humans have successfully integrated with Minbari technology (Whitestars, Crusade, etc.), despite the vast age difference in civilization.

The dramatic point (in terms of tech, anyway) is that humans are good at stuff, despite being late to the party.


And both the Vorlons and the Shadows are far superior in all regards except that they don't form communities.

or care what happens to their lessers, etc. They're pretty emphatic as the show goes along that the Vorlons are all full of faults...

[TobiasTheViking]

You mean empathic, and I was going more for emotional empathy (probably part of building communities), than some sort of psionic power. By the end of the series, they're all warm and cuddly and humans have successfully integrated with Minbari technology (Whitestars, Crusade, etc.), despite the vast age difference in civilization.

The dramatic point (in terms of tech, anyway) is that humans are good at stuff, despite being late to the party.
Hah, hell no, that is just the minbari giving us a few treats... by no means successfully integrated.

Yes humans are good at stuff.. As are the Narns, they were only out there slightly longer than the humans.

All the other major aliens, and many of the minor, are superior in arms(humans seems to be the only race that use rotation for artificial gravity).

The minbari are more empathic than the humans in the series. They are more intelligent, they are wiser.

Humans, on the other hand, is the most flexible of all the races. And bonds all the other races together, in that way making a bigger unity that is stronger than the seperate parts. But besides for that i don't see any way where humans are superior.. in the least.


or care what happens to their lessers, etc. They're pretty emphatic as the show goes along that the Vorlons are all full of faults...
What do you mean? Who are empathic that the vorlorns are full of faults?

The fact that they have made many errors.. and have faults.. doesn't mean they aren't superior to humans.

[Jimbo07]

The fact that they have made many errors.. and have faults.. doesn't mean they aren't superior to humans.

Round about the end of Season 4 (last eppy?), 1 million years in the future, humans become like the Vorlons... :cool:

You're right. Flexibility (same as Trek) is a human trait. All the other Trek races are charicatures of single human characteristics. B5 is definitely better that way...

[TobiasTheViking]

Round about the end of Season 4 (last eppy?), 1 million years in the future, humans become like the Vorlons... :cool:

You're right. Flexibility (same as Trek) is a human trait. All the other Trek races are charicatures of single human characteristics. B5 is definitely better that way...
Ah, yes. In that episode. Quite correct, but you have to realize that the minbari is stagnent and a dying species.

If, however, none of the other races have gone as far as us a million years down the road, then i would agree with you(as it is, we don't know).

But, a million years is a LOOONG time to catch up with a stagnent civilization.

[Genesius]

Have any Sci Fi authors ever explored this idea? What would happen if an interstellar race with a slower learing curve than ours, whose education and accomplishments were due solely to greater experience with trial-and-error, were to arrive on present-day Earth?

ETA: This assumes that this is First Encounter for both of us.

AArgh. . . I remember reading a story about a first encounter where the giant alien mothership lands on Earth, and the aliens are totally in awe of transistors. Turns out the reason alien motherships are so freaking huge is they're still using vacuum tubes.

For the life of me I can't remember the title of the story or who wrote it.

[Anti_Hypeman]

The Pakled from Star Trek.

[Seismosaurus]

The Pakled from Star Trek.

I was just going to say that. Basically pirates, who pretend their ship is broken, kidnap people who come to help and force them to upgrade the tech before heading off to do it to someone else.

And less intelligent than Humans. Much less; the average Pakled isn't nearly as bright as Forest Gump.

I always find it amusing that almost all sci-fi alien species are more physically capable than humans and/or have other special abilities. Using Trek as an example, look at Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Founders - you name it, they're bigger and stronger.

The only exception is an that springs to mind is a series of books by (I think) Alan Dean Foster; aliens in the middle of a war arrive on Earth and find that compared to their toughest warriors the average middle aged Human housewife is significantly stronger and faster, has more endurance, more damage resistance, better hearing and eyesight, and is far more capable of withstanding combat stress. Quite an interesting concept, I thought.

[Dave1001]

The only exception is an that springs to mind is a series of books by (I think) Alan Dean Foster; aliens in the middle of a war arrive on Earth and find that compared to their toughest warriors the average middle aged Human housewife is significantly stronger and faster, has more endurance, more damage resistance, better hearing and eyesight, and is far more capable of withstanding combat stress. Quite an interesting concept, I thought.

What I think is interesting is that aliens, if occupying physical material bodies, always seem to move at a speed in the same range of humans, or at least that humans can see. If they moved much faster than us, they'd be invisible to us (like a single frame in a movie film). If they moved much slower than us, than they'd seem to be immobile, like a glacier. But that stuff never seems to happen.

[thaiboxerken]

Have any Sci Fi authors ever explored this idea?

Men in Black depicts several "dumb" species of ET life.

The aliens in "Signs" weren't very bright either.

[Ryokan]

I always find it amusing that almost all sci-fi alien species are more physically capable than humans and/or have other special abilities. Using Trek as an example, look at Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Jem'Hadar, Founders - you name it, they're bigger and stronger.

Ferengi? :p

[Beady]

The aliens in "Signs" weren't very bright either.

Neither was the story's author.

[Seismosaurus]

Ferengi? :p

Although not widely known, Ferengi are actually stronger than Humans. Or at least they were originally, the idea more or less got dropped when they went from "the new Klingons" to comic relief.

[Seismosaurus]

What I think is interesting is that aliens, if occupying physical material bodies, always seem to move at a speed in the same range of humans, or at least that humans can see. If they moved much faster than us, they'd be invisible to us (like a single frame in a movie film). If they moved much slower than us, than they'd seem to be immobile, like a glacier. But that stuff never seems to happen.

There are limits to what a biological being can do in the way of speed. I don't think you could have a creature that moved more than two or three times faster than a Human, realistically.

Very slow aliens have appeared in books, but not movies. It would be pretty hard to depict it in a movie, I would think.

[Beady]

Very slow aliens have appeared in books, but not movies. It would be pretty hard to depict it in a movie, I would think.

Techically, no, but dramatically there wouldn't be much going for the story.

Anyway, plenty of earth animals move faster than humans, so there's no reason an alien couldn't. Also, there was one ST:TOS ep where the aliens *did* move very fast, and only manifested as the sound of a mosquito.

[Cuddles]

What I think is interesting is that aliens, if occupying physical material bodies, always seem to move at a speed in the same range of humans, or at least that humans can see. If they moved much faster than us, they'd be invisible to us (like a single frame in a movie film). If they moved much slower than us, than they'd seem to be immobile, like a glacier. But that stuff never seems to happen.

There's a great book about life evolving on a neutron star. Humans are orbiting it and notice primitive life. A few hours later they are communicating by radio and within a few days they've left on a faster-than-light ship, leaving some clues about advanced technology in thanks for the help humans gave their distant ancestors. Can anyone remember this book? I'd actually quite like to find it again.

[Jimbo07]

Anyway, plenty of earth animals move faster than humans, so there's no reason an alien couldn't.

A Cheetah can top out at a little less than 100 km/h, which is the highway speed of a car. You can see cars moving.

It's probably more likely that aliens will move within animalian speed constraints. I could be wrong.

[Seismosaurus]

Techically, no, but dramatically there wouldn't be much going for the story.

Anyway, plenty of earth animals move faster than humans, so there's no reason an alien couldn't. Also, there was one ST:TOS ep where the aliens *did* move very fast, and only manifested as the sound of a mosquito.

Faster, yeah, but there's a limit. In terms of birds flapping their wings when only part of the animal is moving they can go too fast to see, as cuddles described, but a whole creature? No. The fastest animal on Earth is what, ten times faster than the fastest a Human can move? And that's birds who get lots of height up and dive down. In terms of just walking around, few animals are more than two or three times faster than we are.

Yes, it was in TOS. I actually wrote an entire article about how very implausible it is. Why they didn't all cause constant sonic booms as they walked around the ship, for instance, or burst into flames from the friction. And when you try to turn whilst walking at hypersonic speed... well I don't care how good a grip your shoes have got, you are going to be a smear on the wall!

[Beady]

In terms of just walking around, few animals are more than two or three times faster than we are.

That's fast enough. Even a shotgun would have trouble bringing down a bat, say, even a shotgun with computerized tracking.

[Dave1001]

There's a great book about life evolving on a neutron star. Humans are orbiting it and notice primitive life. A few hours later they are communicating by radio and within a few days they've left on a faster-than-light ship, leaving some clues about advanced technology in thanks for the help humans gave their distant ancestors. Can anyone remember this book? I'd actually quite like to find it again.

yeah that was a great book. I think it was called White Dwarf or some such thing?

[Beady]

There was a short story about modern Confederate (!) scientists watching a certain form of microbe (Called "Federals") evolve intelligence and civilization. Can't recall any more than that.

[Forty-Two]

Yes humans are good at stuff.. As are the Narns, they were only out there slightly longer than the humans.
I always got the impression that the Narns weren't very developed technologically, which is why they were so easily conquered by the Centauri.

The Centauri didn't develop jumpgate technology, either. There's a scene in the first season where Londo and Garibaldi are giving blatant exposition; Garibaldi states that the Centauri made first contact with the Humans and, due to their physical resemblence, claimed them as a lost colony of the Empire and shared with them the marvelous gift of jumpgate technology (in exchange for their loyalty, of course). Once humans started exploring, however, they found that the Centauri had been giving them a lot of propoganda about the glorious empire. They were in no way biologically related, the Empire wasn't as big or as influential as they'd said, and most of the technology was developed by the ancient races.

I'd always thought of the Centauri as the decline of the Roman Empire, Narns as Medieval Europe, and Minbari as some variation of India (with a stratified caste system).

[TobiasTheViking]

There are limits to what a biological being can do in the way of speed. I don't think you could have a creature that moved more than two or three times faster than a Human, realistically.
funny, what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah

Very slow aliens have appeared in books, but not movies. It would be pretty hard to depict it in a movie, I would think.
i believe that the Drakh and the Pak'ma'ra in Babylon 5 were both very slow.(not extremely so, but can't remember seeing anyone from either of those races do anythign other than walk very slowly).
There was also an insect species in the first season that looked like it was very slow(but it was never seen).

[Dave1001]

I always got the impression that the Narns weren't very developed technologically, which is why they were so easily conquered by the Centauri.

The Centauri didn't develop jumpgate technology, either. There's a scene in the first season where Londo and Garibaldi are giving blatant exposition; Garibaldi states that the Centauri made first contact with the Humans and, due to their physical resemblence, claimed them as a lost colony of the Empire and shared with them the marvelous gift of jumpgate technology (in exchange for their loyalty, of course). Once humans started exploring, however, they found that the Centauri had been giving them a lot of propoganda about the glorious empire. They were in no way biologically related, the Empire wasn't as big or as influential as they'd said, and most of the technology was developed by the ancient races.

I'd always thought of the Centauri as the decline of the Roman Empire, Narns as Medieval Europe, and Minbari as some variation of India (with a stratified caste system).

It's depressing how few truly original ideas it seems we can come up with in science fiction imagining aliens and alien civilizations. They almost always seem to be analogs of some other Earth species or some human civilization of a different era, or a hodgepodge of the aforementioned.

[TobiasTheViking]

It's depressing how few truly original ideas it seems we can come up with in science fiction imagining aliens and alien civilizations. They almost always seem to be analogs of some other Earth species or some human civilization of a different era, or a hodgepodge of the aforementioned.
And how many stories from the last 200 years aren't analogs to some older story?

[TobiasTheViking]

I always got the impression that the Narns weren't very developed technologically, which is why they were so easily conquered by the Centauri.
Well, they had just been almost wiped out by the shadows not 1000 years ago. We don't know how much, if any, technology they were left with after the shadows left. Nor do we know how many resources they had available. It wouldn't be unlikely for them to have started from stonage(ok, not stonage, but surely pre nuclear age) and had some 1100 years between the shadows and the centauri occupation.

[Dave1001]

And how many stories from the last 200 years aren't analogs to some older story?

It's worth study. I imagine very few. How many truly original thoughts do any of us post on here? If we can communicate so much, it's because we're exchanging the backwash of giants.:rolleyes:

[Meffy]

There was a short story about modern Confederate (!) scientists watching a certain form of microbe (Called "Federals") evolve intelligence and civilization. Can't recall any more than that.
Stanislaw Lem wrote a story about the science of Eruntics, whicn involves training -- well, breeding -- bacteria to grow in Morse code patterns. They ended up telling the future... but there was a catch. ;-)

Actually, what Lem wrote was the introduction to a book on Eruntics. It's part of "Imaginary Magnitude," which consists entirely of introductory matter for nonexistent books of the future. Makes a nice pair with "A Perfect Vacuum," which is composed of reviews of nonexistent books.

Ah, Stanislaw, we hardly knew ye...

[edit] The intelligent computers whose development and evolution is described in the books implied by the intros in "Imaginary Magnitude" are so far ahead of Earth life in smarts that they can't even communicate with us properly. They have to use a simplified version of baby talk... beginner's version.

[AWPrime]

The only exception is an that springs to mind is a series of books by (I think) Alan Dean Foster; aliens in the middle of a war arrive on Earth and find that compared to their toughest warriors the average middle aged Human housewife is significantly stronger and faster, has more endurance, more damage resistance, better hearing and eyesight, and is far more capable of withstanding combat stress. Quite an interesting concept, I thought.
Title?

Techically, no, but dramatically there wouldn't be much going for the story.

Anyway, plenty of earth animals move faster than humans, so there's no reason an alien couldn't. Also, there was one ST:TOS ep where the aliens *did* move very fast, and only manifested as the sound of a mosquito.
Biological materials have a scaling problem.



Also a good scifi book would be Sundiver (by David Brin), which has some less intelligent alien races.

[Seismosaurus]

Title?


Biological materials have a scaling problem.



Also a good scifi book would be Sundiver (by David Brin), which has some less intelligent alien races.

Doh, I new somebody was going to ask that. Hmmm...

<google>

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345375742/103-9868735-3420635?v=glance&n=283155

Sundiver is good, yeah.

[Seismosaurus]

funny, what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah


i believe that the Drakh and the Pak'ma'ra in Babylon 5 were both very slow.(not extremely so, but can't remember seeing anyone from either of those races do anythign other than walk very slowly).
There was also an insect species in the first season that looked like it was very slow(but it was never seen).

Cheetahs run at 70 miles an hour according to that article.

A man can run 100 metres in about 10 seconds; 10 m/s = 22 mph

So cheetahs are about 3.18 times the speed of a man. Now most men would run that 100 metres in a little less than 10 seconds; so 4x is about right.

(In fact, not to be clever or anything but I actually used the Cheetah to calculate that "three to four" figure before posting it. What, did you think I just made that up? :) )

Very slow species tend to look very silly. Try watching the original Star Trek episode "Arena" some time. The Gorn is vastly stronger than Kirk and vastly more damage resistant, but vastly slower. Nice in theory, having an alien with advantages and disadvantages compared to a Human. But it looks really stupid.

[TobiasTheViking]

It's worth study. I imagine very few. How many truly original thoughts do any of us post on here? If we can communicate so much, it's because we're exchanging the backwash of giants.:rolleyes:
agreed, even my prior post was analogs to the southpark episode "Simpsons did it".

But then why single out scifi as the one venue where nothing original is being created.. when it is actually all literature that is mostly unoriginal?

Though Farscape, for instance, had plenty of aliens that weren't modeled on any human civilization(atleast that i know off).

[TobiasTheViking]

Cheetahs run at 70 miles an hour according to that article.

A man can run 100 metres in about 10 seconds; 10 m/s = 22 mph

So cheetahs are about 3.18 times the speed of a man. Now most men would run that 100 metres in a little less than 10 seconds; so 4x is about right.

(In fact, not to be clever or anything but I actually used the Cheetah to calculate that "three to four" figure before posting it. What, did you think I just made that up? :) )

Very slow species tend to look very silly. Try watching the original Star Trek episode "Arena" some time. The Gorn is vastly stronger than Kirk and vastly more damage resistant, but vastly slower. Nice in theory, having an alien with advantages and disadvantages compared to a Human. But it looks really stupid.
Ah, i didn't know humans could run that fast at all.. I thought it was half of that.. or less.. Shows what i know.

As for slow aliens, they can work perfectly fine on the screen, depending on what they are supposed to do. But yes, the episode you refer to was not one of the good implementations of a slow alien.

[Dave1001]

agreed, even my prior post was analogs to the southpark episode "Simpsons did it".

But then why single out scifi as the one venue where nothing original is being created.. when it is actually all literature that is mostly unoriginal?

Though Farscape, for instance, had plenty of aliens that weren't modeled on any human civilization(atleast that i know off).

I'm singling out scifi about alien civilizations, because unlike fictional human interactions, which can be expected to be analogs of human interactions of the past, one might expect alien species to be vastly different in morphology than earth life, and for alien species to be vastly different in social interaction patterns than the known variations of human interaction and civilization. But frankly, there seems to be an almost laziness in most science fiction writing, or a deliberate use of aliens to just project some earth concepts on to them. The work of fiction (like the aforementioned story about a civilization that emerged from a neutron star) that actually tries to imagine what an alien species and civilization might be like is the rare and delightful exception to the rule. Too often what we encounter in sci fi is analogs of nazis with the morphology of insects, or analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids.

[TobiasTheViking]

I'm singling out scifi about alien civilizations, because unlike fictional human interactions, which can be expected to be analogs of human interactions of the past, one might expect alien species to be vastly different in morphology than earth life, and for alien species to be vastly different in social interaction patterns than the known variations of human interaction and civilization. But frankly, there seems to be an almost laziness in most science fiction writing, or a deliberate use of aliens to just project some earth concepts on to them. The work of fiction (like the aforementioned story about a civilization that emerged from a neutron star) that actually tries to imagine what an alien species and civilization might be like is the rare and delightful exception to the rule. Too often what we encounter in sci fi is analogs of nazis with the morphology of insects, or analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids.
Well. Ehm.
Babylon 5 had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.(nor did they match what you call "analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids.")
Farscape had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
Lexx had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
Space Above And Beyond had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
The aliens in Roughnecks(starship troopers) didn't match any earth civilizations.
Hm, the alien from Alien.

I know i've left out star trek, star wars and stargate. Because i can't think of instances in those shows where it wasn't just an analog to some earth civilization.


Btw, for your "analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids." i think of elves in Lord of the Rings... hmm..

Oh, also, teh aliens in dune don't fit either :P

[Dave1001]

Well. Ehm.
Babylon 5 had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.(nor did they match what you call "analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids.")
Farscape had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
Lexx had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
Space Above And Beyond had aliens that didn't match any earth civilizations.
The aliens in Roughnecks(starship troopers) didn't match any earth civilizations.
Hm, the alien from Alien.

I know i've left out star trek, star wars and stargate. Because i can't think of instances in those shows where it wasn't just an analog to some earth civilization.


Btw, for your "analogs of angels with the morphology of idealized homonids." i think of elves in Lord of the Rings... hmm..

Oh, also, teh aliens in dune don't fit either :P

I'm not the sci fi expert that you are, but some of these I know enough about to question:

1. The alien from Alien: They're basically giant bugs. They have faces, mandibles, etc. They don't seem to have a civilization. My impression is that their spaceship was built by something else.
2. I only saw starship troopers the movie. But the aliens quite literally were giant bugs. And they were analogs of the "savages", aboriginal people that Europeans encountered around the world.
3. Dune, were the humanoids aliens? Other than that I only remember giant slugs, which would be not-to-scale analogs of earth slugs.

The other examples I'm not familiar with. But since they're movies/tv shows I'm even more skeptical that they're not analogs filled with hominid like alien life that interact the way human civilizations exotic to our own have. To the extent something radically different appears, it's usually in books, which have more freedom for that type of thing.

[TobiasTheViking]

I'm not the sci fi expert that you are, but some of these I know enough about to question:

1. The alien from Alien: They're basically giant bugs. They have faces, mandibles, etc. They don't seem to have a civilization. My impression is that their spaceship was built by something else.
My only argument with that is that the alien isn't an analog of a human civilization.


2. I only saw starship troopers the movie. But the aliens quite literally were giant bugs. And they were analogs of the "savages", aboriginal people that Europeans encountered around the world.
Analog of savages?? ok, if you are gonna drag it out that far then anything and everything would permanently be an analog of something else. It is too much of a stretch for me to agree.

3. Dune, were the humanoids aliens? Other than that I only remember giant slugs, which would be not-to-scale analogs of earth slugs.
No humanoid aliens, i thought the whole idea here was to have aliens that wasn't an analog of some human culture, and Shaitan in Dune certainly isn't.
Saying they are not-to-scale analogs of earth slugs might be accurate(i'm not certain i agree because earth slugs don't, afaik, have territories, nor do they have a Maker stage).
Even if it was an analog of earth slugs, well, then i don't think any alien, at all, can be created, that isn't an analog.

The other examples I'm not familiar with. But since they're movies/tv shows I'm even more skeptical that they're not analogs filled with hominid like alien life that interact the way human civilizations exotic to our own have.
Be skeptical if you want. Both Lexx and Farscape have huge leviathans that have emotions and intelligence, and aren't hominid(hell, they don't even have legs or wings). But since these leviathans carry humans in them(they are space ships) it would be an analog to the whale thingy(can't remember the name of that story).

But then we have a problem.. Carying sentient beings around in a space ship is an analog to cars.
Doing something quite different(like having a life spaceship, where it hurts if you shoot the walls, and it gets pregnant and stuff like that) then it is an analog of the story of the whale.

Then you could have instantanious travel, as exists in some scifi(stargate for instance), but i'm sure we can find an analog of that somewhere else as well.
To the extent something radically different appears, it's usually in books, which have more freedom for that type of thing.
I will agree that you see it more often in books. But you shouldn't think that it is only in books.


My basic problem here is that this/these arguments are always used against science fiction(mostly by people who hate it, that is not to say i think you are one of them), but the problem is no worse in scifi than it is in every other genre.

It is just as bad in fantasy(your own argument with angels hold with the elves).
It is just as bad in romance(come on, how many versions of romeo and juliet do we need?).
Hell, i would say it is worse in romance, but that is an opinion that isn't based on facts so i may very well be wrong.
It is just as bad in history books(but that might be due to the fact that human history often repeats itself in analogs of one another).

Maybe one could claim that fantasy and scifi should have more potential for breaking out of this than other genres, i'm not sure if i would agree with a statement like that, i haven't thought it through.

But when i look at the movies and television series that come out nowadays, i see far more originality in the scifi genre than in any other genre. Maybe everything is a rehash of everything else, but, for me atleast, it is harder to spot in scifi. Maybe there is more potential than is being used in scifi, maybe especially on the (big)screen. But even if that is the case i don't think it is fair that scifi should be put to a higher standard than other genres. Atleast not untill it is as common and allowed as much leeway as the other genres.


Sorry if this seems a bit aggresive.. not the intent. :)

Sincerely
Tobias.

[Genesius]

There's a great book about life evolving on a neutron star. Humans are orbiting it and notice primitive life. A few hours later they are communicating by radio and within a few days they've left on a faster-than-light ship, leaving some clues about advanced technology in thanks for the help humans gave their distant ancestors. Can anyone remember this book? I'd actually quite like to find it again.

"Dragon's Egg", by Robert L. Forward.