CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 31: "A Human, a dolphin, an elephant, an octopus, and a crow walk into a…hmmm…zoo? The octopus says…”

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction.

After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...

So…what do boring ‘facts’ have to do with ‘Creating Aliens’? There either ARE aliens or there ARE NOT aliens. Easy question, right? If there ARE aliens, we have move science FICTION from the realm of weirdo magazines (ANALOG, ASIMOV’S or NATIONAL ENQUIRER) to serious magazines (online or otherwise – like NATURE or NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, or SCIENCE DIGEST).
It doesn’t seem surprising though, given that Artificial Intelligence was science fiction until just a decade or so ago – and now, all I have to do is turn my computer on and I have instant access ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) “…a large language model–based chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022, which enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language used”.

So, why not aliens?

OK – let’s go there. I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time. Let’s start with our favorites: STAR WARS and STAR TREK.

You can choose: Chewbacca!

I’m gonna choose: Gul dukat.

Chewie (sounds like the name of a dog toy…) and Gul dukat – “Gul” isn’t his name like mine is Guy (Coincidence? I think NOT!), “it’s a Cardassian military rank and title. Often those officers who served as the commander of a vessel, from warships, a space station, or a labor camp.”

Chewbacca didn’t come from anywhere until the guy who used to own STAR WARS but sold out for a $4.05 billion (aka George Lucas. He CREATED SW; Steven Spielberg DIRECTED several of the films).

Later writers gave Chewie his past, but initially, he was “window dressing” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca); one critic commented, “How can you be a space pilot and not be able to communicate in any meaningful way?”

How about Gul ducat and the Cardassian Empire? Again, his people were invented for convenience-sake as a foil for both Captains Picard and Sisko; only given their appearance gradually. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardassian#:~:text=%22The%20Wounded%22%3A%201991,-The%20emblem%20of&text=The%20Cardassians%20were%20invented%20by,with%20teleplay%20by%20Jeri%20Taylor.)

Television and movie aliens are invented for story effects and little, if any, thought is given to how they might behave differently from Humans. In fact, Chewbacca behaves like a giant hairy Human (instead of an alien who evolved on a wholly different world, which was devoid of Humans) and Gul dukat behaves like a bad (though somewhat complex and practically believable) Human (instead of an alien who evolved on a wholly different world, which was devoid of Humans) – but both of them are horrible aliens.
Why?

Because we can understand them. We “get” their motivations. They have feelings that are pretty much Human feelings. Chewie pets Han Solo when he finds out he’s not dead. Gul dukat and Captain Sisko, while they don’t exactly “like” each other, they respect each other…a rather Human reaction for a creature that has more to DIS-like about mammals than like about them. Though, I imagine on Cardassia Prime, the “dominating” life forms will be reptilian. You’d think Cardassian and Klingons would be better pals (as Klingons are also evolved from reptiles)…

All of this to say that when we meet real intelligent aliens (if they even exist, and as I say in my own Alien Worlds class, “There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that life exists on any planet up Earth!” (BECAUSE its existence has been covered up by US (and world) Government Agencies!!!!!) or if you say, “Well, there just MUST be!”

Carl Sagan, late astronomer and author, has been gifted with the brilliant rejoinder echoed (supposedly) by the character from his novel CONTACT and made into a movie of the same name and played by Jodi Foster: Ellie Arroway : [to a group of children] “I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?”

But the FACT is that, despite numerous forays into trying to find and contact aliens (see link here: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/9-times-us-probed-question-aliens-ufos/), the US government has nothing to actually show for it – just adding more fodder to the conspiracy theorist’s bonfires.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been teaching the Alien Worlds class for close to three decades – I’m teaching one now. I’d LOVE for us to find real evidence of real aliens. However, the biggest problem won’t be protecting them from either the Government or the UFOlogists – but in UNDERSTANDING them. While language will absolutely be a challenge for the two sides to overcome, the real challenge will be in understanding how we process the world around us.

We have trouble communicating across CULTURAL divides on Earth – as a middle class American, raised in this country for 66 years, I have a certain way of viewing the world. Were I to be introduced to a room with other 66-year-old men in it: from China, Qatar, India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Nigeria, and say…Brazil – I wouldn’t be able to speak with all of them; perhaps the Nigerian and Indian. What would we say to each other? Perhaps we could talk about our grandchildren? Probably…maybe how we spend our days…

But we’re also all Human. What would I speak to a dolphin about? An octopus? An elephant? A crow? It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke: “A Human, a dolphin, an elephant, an octopus, and a crow walk into a…hmmm…zoo? The octopus says…”

Can you make up a conversation between them all? I’m not sure, but because my most recent writing adventure is to write humorous science fiction, I think I’ll give this a try!

But I guarantee it will be easier than writing the same scene with realistic aliens in it…

Sources: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-house-oversight-committee-probes-ufos-and-wider-implications; https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190390376/ufo-hearing-non-human-biologics-uaps
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg