WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 8: Aliens Only Have To Be Different In ONE Way To Make Them Alien!

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/01/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 2: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 3: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 4: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/04/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 5: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 6: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/02/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 7: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/04/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

When I create aliens, I have to make sure that they ACT differently.

STAR TREK is guilty of ignoring this to extreme degrees. For example, the ALIEN Sarek, father of Spock, talks to his son about his emotions and gives fatherly advice, even though his dad is fully alien Vulcan and bleeds green blood

The Nova Corp of the Marvel Universe “Guardians of the Galaxy” shows a Nova Prime where rainbow-colored alien bipedal parents walking around on two legs, holding the hands of their children, exactly like Humans in funny suits.

STAR TREK, in a rare display of originality shows a silicon mother whose entire civilization has died out and she is the last one alive. When the zillions of eggs she has been guarding hatch, she becomes the mother of a new civilization…My question has always been when she passes on the wisdom of the old civilization, can she change it? Can Mother Horta alter the way things have been done?

In Marc Steigler’s award-winning short story, “Petals of Rose”, a Human works with the incredibly short-lived Rosans, whose entire life is lived in hours; and the Lazarines, whose lifetimes span millennia. Rosans, Lazarine, and Humans are working together to create a way of communicating faster than the laws of physics would allow; creating a sort of LeGuin’s “ansible”. He accidentally becomes the founder of a new religion – based on an idea he had about how memories are passed from Rosan generation to Rosan generation.

While aliens need to behave differently, the fathers of Humans behave in vastly different ways, varying from brutal to indifferent, to entirely absent. Animal “father” behaviors vary just as much. Some males help keep the nest warm while the female hunts. Some males and females mate for life. Some animals perform gang rape…

How different would an alien have to behave in order to be truly alien?

Turns out, not that much. It turns out that I’ve traveled a lot. I figured it out once that I’ve actually travelled half way around the Earth – not just stopping in airports, but spending more than three weeks at the two end points – from Fambé, Central African Republic to Incheon, South Korea.

I have experienced strange behavior in both places; behaviors that seem inexplicable, yet from Humans.

Two examples. In West Africa, we shared a meal with a group of doctors and nurses. They prepared a regular lunch for us of pounded yam fufu in soup. Fufu has the consistency of uncooked Bisquick (pancake and baking mix). The soup was the thickness of chicken gravy. It was standard fare, but it was eaten one-handed. We had learned to pinch a small ball of fufu from the larger one it’s served as, roll it into a small ball, swipe it through the soup, then pop it in your mouth, SWALLOWING IT WHOLE. As I said, strange, but we’d learned how to do it.

Our hosts had set the table with Western-style silverware and when we sat down together and said our prayers, they also started to eat – cutting small pieces, dipping it in the soup – and CHEWING the fufu.

It took only a moment for use to realize that both groups has set out to make the other comfortable by adhering to the customs of the other group – in this case, the SUPPOSED customs of the other group…

In South Korea, it was customary that when adults meet for a meal and the children were not at table, that Soju would be the traditional drink. Soju is a distilled spirit from Korea that’s traditionally made from rice, though it can also be made from sweet potato, barley, tapioca, wheat or any combination of those ingredients. Sometimes called Korean vodka because of its neutral flavor, Soju and Japanese sake are similar, though Sake is fermented and brewed like beer and soju is distilled like vodka.

I’ve been a teetotaler since before most of my peers started drinking, mostly because of familial pressure – they did, I refused. But it was customary and when I was with my son and his best Korean friend, I shocked my son by drinking Soju.

Creating truly alien behavior is impossible – because we’re Humans and we can’t imagine doing things another way. But authors like CJ Cherryh have given us a clue about how that might be done. In her world of the Atevi and Humans, she has altered one behavior: her Atevi had no concept of love. Love in Atevi is expressed by association. Even in an Atevi family unit, there are associations. Love between a couple is an alien concept to the Atevi. They have STUDIED love, of course, because of a large refugee Human population living on their world, but they don’t understand it. It’s this foundational change that has given rise to Cherryh’s exploration of Human-Atevi interaction for the past 27 years…

One change and figuring out how a civilization would develop based on that SINGLE CHANGE…

Now, that’s some accomplishment and one I’ve been working on developing for years. OTOH, I didn’t realize until recently that to create a truly alien alien, all you need to do is change one thing about Humans. That seems to make the weirdest aliens of all. (I just realized that in the WALKING DEAD series, the only difference between Humans and zombies is that the zombies are dead…)

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