Why design aliens? How?

 

I’ve tried to do different things with my writing: Satire, Police procedural, Adventure, Political Intrigue, Romance…and it got me wondering. Maybe I’ve spent enough time away from my first love, speculative biology.

So this post is the first in a series on creature creation and speculative biology, a look at the world-building work behind my new project Junction. It should also work as a guide to help you guys create your own living worlds.

So how do we create organisms? Where do we get our crazy ideas?

One way to get ideas is to look at other organisms of Earth’s present or past. What if rather than evolving from something like a fish, as we did, large terrestrial animals evolved from something like a crab, or sea-slug, or a jellyfish, or a stromatolite? What evolutionary changes would you need to get annelid worms to swing through the trees or sweep majestically across the plains? (and don’t say it’s impossible. Nobody in the Cambrian could have looked at Pikaia and predicted gibbons or wildebeests).

Another way is to work from the ground up. Figure out a whole evolutionary history or anatomy and derive all your critters from there. I don’t recommend this route unless you really like drawing lots of critters.

The third was is to go the artist’s route. Say “I want the animal to look like that” (or scribble a random shape on a piece of paper without looking) and then figure out how something that looked like that might have evolved. Me, I have a story in mind with certain narrative necessities. I can design animals and plants that fit those necessities.

Next week we’ll start with a look at the first route, trying to take a body plan from a familiar animal and forcing it into the ecological niche of another familiar animal, with some very alien results.