Limitations of Metaphor in Sci-Fi Worlds

[Garth]

I've recently published my first novel Atmosphere: We Don't Orbit but Fall the Same. After many years I grew frustrated with drawing metaphors and descriptions, especially of the environment, that didn't seem awkwardly Earth based. If you wanted to compare an animal to an animal from Earth for example it seemed to pull the reader out of the story. Does anyone have similar frustrations or reactions? Comments? Thanks.

[John]

Not really. I've published three novels (in a series) to date. My protagonists may travel the stars, but they are still humans from Earth (or at least descendants of people who grew up on Earth) and they tend to think in those terms.

In the second novel, they meet creatures that are about as far from any Earth life-form as you can get: intelligent, mobile beings whose biological make up is closer to a plant than an animal. Once they discover that fact, the humans wind up calling the aliens "turnips" -- an Earth-based metaphor if ever there was one.

It's just human nature to look for something familiar in whatever we discover. I think wherever we go -- even out to the stars -- we will still be comparing whatever we find with the familiar things we know.

[Trike]

Comparisons lead to imperfect understanding, which can bite you on the ass. I particularly like stories where someone compares a new creature to an existing one and they turn out to be completely wrong. Shift your paradigm or die, in other words.

I find stories where the author has just taken an earth animal and "turned it to 11" to be boring. The Legacy of Heorot is one such book. The animals in that one are just a particular species of Earth frog made extra lethal. Telling that story in a sci-fi context is pointless, because it's basically just a retelling of The Naked Jungle, the Charlton Heston movie where he tries to protect his South American plantation from migrating army ants. (Based on the short story Leiningen Versus the Ants.) It becomes a direct metaphor, something I find tedious, although YMMV.

However, *discussions* about parallels to existing animals between characters can allow the reader to wrap their head around a new thing. In the movie Aliens the soldiers talk about the xenomorphs being like insects. Hudson says, "Maybe they're like ants, with a queen." Vasquez interjects, "Bees. Bees have queens." "Whatever. But she's big, man. She's badass." So they operate with that assumption, right up until the lights go out. "They cut the power!" Ripely says. And this completely unnerves Hudson. "How could they cut the power? They're animals, man!" His paradigm doesn't allow for these giant bugs to be intelligent.

So you can use the metaphor to your advantage by using that gambit.

I remember when The Sparrow came out and one of the complaints someone had was that the two groups of creatures were unlike anything we'd seen on Earth. (The predators evolved to resemble the prey, in order to blend in.) I thought that was the dumbest argument I'd seen in a while, because the entire *point* of reading Science Fiction is to see something new. In that instance the lack of direct similarity broke that kid's willing suspension of disbelief, but it enhanced mine.

[John]

I completely agree with Trike -- analogies can come back to bite you -- but people (and characters in SF novels) will make them anyway.

Hey, to use a common Earth metaphor, people often have problems training their pets (dogs, cats, whatever) because they think of the animals as furry little humans with human emotions and motivations.

So if Commander Jones, the Scourge of the Spaceways, says "Gee! That alien looks just like a cute little kitten..." the readers should not be surprised if the critter turns out to have a stinger in its tail that kills him with a deadly neurotoxin. But it can still look like a cute little kitten... :-)

[Hank]

If you are creating metaphors and/or similes, the whole point is to great a better understanding of something the reader doesn't know by using something they do.

Unfortunately I, like most readers, have never been anywhere else but Earth so if you are describing another planet's environment/fauna/flora you are pretty much stuck with the source you have.

[Micah]

I haven't liked many aliens in books because authors tend to just take an Earth creature, grant it intelligence, often sticking it into bipedal form (cat people, etc.), and then assuming that intelligence is all you need for a spacefaring race.

Alien fish flying spaceships, for example. How did they build their spaceship? How did they learn to control fire, smelt metals, craft electronics, break free of their planets ... How do they control spaceships when they don't have hands?

Handwavium, mumble, mumbled...these are not the droids...look, a three-headed monkey!...ipso facto, blar, blar, blar...etc.

I'd much rather see authors invent new creatures that can only be described by loose comparisons to known Earth creatures (or parts of known Earth creatures) than to ignore the hypothesis that tookmaking is a requirement to achieve spacefaring.

[Micah]

And for goodness sake, invent some new forms of consciousness and social order rather than going ... um ... HIVE MIND!

[John]

Amen to all that Micah has said. Alien lifeforms, no matter how intelligent the writer wants to make them, are not going to get off their own planet unless they have the means to manipulate their physical environment (hands - preferably with opposing thumbs, or at least prehensile tentacles of some sort) and sea-dwelling critters will most likely need to crawl up on the land to develop space technology. To use one of those much-abused "Earth metaphors" we've been talking about, biologists say that dolphins are nearly as intelligent as humans, but I don't expect to see them building a spaceship and going to Mars anytime soon.

Of course, you could give your aliens some amazing psychokinetic powers, but that's just another form of handwavium. When I see something like that in a story, I tend to think the writer is getting away from SF and into Fantasy. Hey... you can do anything with magic.

[John]

In short, no problem with using Earthly metaphors to describe alien lifeforms, planets, etc. Just make sure you're not giving us Earth lifeforms in an alien suit. And yeah... while you are at it, think about what their social order might be like -- preferably something other than the "hive mind" or the various period-in-Earth's-history human societies the original Star Trek series kept running into.

[Mary]

Metaphor and similes are all part of the world-building. And not, as you note, an easy one. Even on top of the issue that you never want to use a metaphor that will be read literally, and SF (and fantasy) do that a lot easier than mundane fiction.

And it will crack the reader's suspension of disbelief if done wrong. In which "wrong" means "not in point of view." What would this character use as a metaphor -- which is not easier than any other aspect of characterization.

Occasionally you can use a metaphor to slip in some world-building, but that's only a chance.

[Garth]

Great. Thanks for your suggestions regarding this topic! For me this topic is also very much related to the naming of aliens, planets and extraterrestrial things. I've created some of my best images of creatures when I've worked out the most subtle of names. Names that might evoke a sense of an animal, sound new but strangely familiar. I'm not saying I did it right everytime....

[Simon]

There is another alternative. Do not use specifics at all, use generalities. There is a story by H.P. Lovecraft called The Colour Out of Space. In it he does not name, or liken, the entity-protagonist to anything but a nameless and unidentifiable colour. Even the descriptions of the witnesses are vague, talking of feelings and states of mind rather than physical natures. It is very effective.

[Trike]

Garth wrote: "Great. Thanks for your suggestions regarding this topic! For me this topic is also very much related to the naming of aliens, planets and extraterrestrial things. I've created some of my best image..."

Naming aliens is a whole separate can of worms.

I think Larry Niven does it best. At first glance some of them look impossible, but if you give it a try you can sound them out.

A recent book where I thought for the first time in a long time someone managed to rival Niven is Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Beyond the names of species, her character names are brilliant. Specifically relating to your OP, "Kizzy" is meant to remind you of "dizzy", which causes you to underestimate the character, even though there's plenty of evidence that you should not. "Dr. Chef" is so named because it's impossible for humans to reproduce his name without an orchestra. Chambers is effortlessly working on a whole different level from most authors.

I do find it ridiculous when people seize on one particular trope and claim it's bad. What they're really complaining about is a trope done badly. Using apostrophes in alien names, for instance. Just because someone has bungled it doesn't automatically invalidate the practice. Humans use commas in names all the time, and you can find thousands of examples without even trying.

Irish actors like Annette O'Toole, Maureen O'Hara, Donald O'Connor. Spanish comic book artist Gabriel Dell'otto. Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o. Italian TV presenter Ilaria D'Amico. Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. French-American author John L'Heureux.

[M.L.]

The aliens in The Mote in God's Eye were well described.

[Mary]

On the gripping hand. . . .

[Micah]

John wrote: "Alien lifeforms, no matter how intelligent the writer wants to make them, are not going to get off their own planet unless they have the means to manipulate their physical environment..."

With the caveat that an author CAN invoke special circumstances to explain it. For example, an intelligent species with no ability to make or utilize tools COULD become spacefaring if another alien race came along and gifted them spacefaring technology and the means to control/repair it. Like brain implants to allow mind-machine interfaces and then drones with the appropriate appendages.

But ... the author has to explain it or else it's unbelievable. Stephen Baxter broke that rule in Vacuum Diagrams which discredited with me an otherwise interesting set of stories. Well, I had a few other niggles with those stories, but that's for another thread!

[Trike]

On today's Nerdist Writer's Panel podcast, Joe Hill references Bernard Malamud's essay "Why Fantasy" as something that gave him permission to actually write the stories he wanted to, because Malamud asserts that the metaphor of the fallen angel or talking animal is just as valid as any other fictional metaphor, regardless of realism.

It happens at the 32 minute mark.

http://nerdist.com/the-writers-panel-...

I can't find the Malamud essay online, but it is collected in the book Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Work.

Joe Hill is the son of Stephen and Tabitha King. Bernard Malamud is probably most famous nowadays for writing The Natural, which was turned into a Robert Redford movie.

[Lea]

Simon wrote: "There is another alternative. Do not use specifics at all, use generalities. There is a story by H.P. Lovecraft called The Colour Out of Space. In it he does not name, ..."

That is a great approach. Though it feels like one for a short story, not a novel.

[Lea]

John wrote: "Not really. I've published three novels (in a series) to date. My protagonists may travel the stars, but they are still humans from Earth (or at least descendants of people who grew up on Earth) an..."
And also "It's just human nature to look for something familiar in whatever we discover."

I think that is key. And I don't think it's possible to write something completely divorced from human experience and still have readers identify with it.

[M.L.]

Anthropomorphic, and then some, the Moties! :-)

In the Balance by Harry Turtledove, aliens easily named, the Lizards by the west, or Scaly Devils by the Chinese, with lots of anthropological type background given for these 'boots on the ground' (our ground, Earth) and why they have advantages as well as disadvantages.

[Simon]

Then there is the H.G. Wells approach. In The War of the Worlds we see everything through the eyes of one man. There are no names given, no communication is successful, and no attempts at describing what cannot be known. The aliens remain "alien", unknowable except for their works and what they leave behind. You really get the sense of what it must be like to be crushed by a superior and largely incomprehensible force.

Lea wrote: "That is a great approach. Though it feels like one for a short story, not a novel."

Which "The Colour Out of Space" is, though that does not rule out extending the idea into a novel.