Question of the Week
Credit for picture
I've been thinking lately (a dangerous pastime, I know) about science fiction. It's one genre I haven't written much in other than a half-finished short story. Anyhow, I was thinking about different alien races.
Why do all alien races have the same five senses as humans? Why aren't some blind or deaf and have a different sense instead? Maybe I haven't read enough in the genre.
So today's question - if you could create a new sense, what would it be?
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
[deleted user]
(new)
Oct 12, 2011 03:47PM
The genre has plenty of alternate sense examples. Madeleine L'Engle had aliens that were blind but could sense the world around them in a different manner. I don't remember the details just now. You could have something sense the gravitational pull between objects, air displacement, heat, thoughts (ESP), feelings (empathy), elemental composition, radio waves, etc. Glance at a list of the powers of superheroes for even more ideas. There are also many other psychic senses than the two most common listed above. Lots of people claim to sense, or write stories about people who can sense things the rest of us don't even know exist, like auras, chalkras, and so on. Some of this falls under sci/fi, and some is used more in fantasy writing, but with stuff like this the two blend completely. Chalker had characters who could mentally communicate with computers.
reply
|
flag
You're very welcome. We all love to talk about books!
