I think two things here. One, an enormous amount of the SF in which aliens play an important role is allegorical in nature. You mention this in connection with Le Guin, but that's also true of Starship Troopers, which Heinlein made no bones about being an allegory of the Korean War.
Another example would be Mike Resnick's Galactic Comedy trilogy, which he makes clear is about Africa: specifically Kenya, Rhodesia and Uganda.
So it seems to me a bit unfair to criticize authors who make aliens that think and act like humans when that's the explicit, up-front intent.
Another issue is that--while it's true that aliens will be the product of their own development in their own environment--a civilization that is the dominant species on their world--as we are here on Earth--will necessarily share certain characteristics that are the hallmarks of such species: specifically, they will be aggressive and territorial.
An alien race of cows or sheep is never going to become the civilization that dominates their world, let alone have the impetus to become a spacefaring species.
The connection between allegory and SF is interesting, but I would argue that it most cases, it does not work as intended. The fictional world of SF has to feel complete on its own, while in classic allegory, the world often does not make sense unless you decode what it stands for (Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen is a classic example; or even Animal Farm). References to contemporary history and politics are inescapable in SF, but you can read and enjoy Starship Troopers even if you have never heard of the Korean War.
And of course, aliens must have something in common with us if any sort of contact is to take place. But it is a matter of degree. Mary Russell’s Sparrow is a superb novel of alien encounters, even though the aliens are psychologically anthropomorphic. But there is a cultural and psychological twist which generates defamiliarization.
Well…I’m inclined to think otherwise based on a lifetime of reading SF. But I certainly understand your point.
I’d suggest that you take a squint at the Resnick trilogy. I think you’ll find it works both as metaphor and yet the aliens stand on their own as well. Which I’ve generally found to be the norm.
Will do. I actually read a novella by Resnick that deals with the ritual killing of twins on a space station (apparently a Yoruba tradition) and I thought it was very good. I am blanking on the title, but it may be related to the trilogy.
Nowadays aliens in SF are problematic for me for 2 reasons, (1) because I can't suspend enough disbelief to accept actual aliens having enough congruence with human mental process/perspective to communicate productively with us, and (2) authors overdose on high-concept BS to make the aliens seem mysterious, magical, whatever. I'd much rather read something like Vance's Planet of Adventure series, where the aliens are embodiments of a single human tendency taken to the extreme: The Wankh are bureaucrats, the Dirdir ultra-prideful hunters, the Chasch nomadic foraging warriors, and the Pnume obsessive cultists. That was great genre writing that didn't pretend to be more than it was.
Agree on 1 completely; 2 depends on how it’s done. Certainly, Lem, the Strugatsky Brothers, and Peter Watts manage to keep the balance between familiar and utterly strange. Glad you mentioned Vance who is a criminally underestimated writer.
I never read Contact. In the film, at the end, they revealed that Ellie really did travel somewhere, because the recording equipment recorded hours of blank tape, or something like that. Was that the ending in the book? I thought it would've been better to leave it up to the viewer to have faith that she'd really traveled somewhere, or at least obfuscate the evidence to make the confirmation less explicit. The story is talking about the importance and validity of faith, so asking the audience to have a little faith seems like it'd be . . . I don't know, more poetic, apropos, or something.
The book is much more SF than the movie as I remember. I thought it was better than the movie because until the very end, it read like a conventional alien contact scenario. And I don’t think there was any ambiguity - she did travel.
I didn't think of Stephen Baxter as someone who would write cute alien babies!
I think Theodore Sturgeon said that most alien races in SF are just versions of pre-modern Japan. I think in popular science fiction (TV, cinema) it's more that most are allegorical Nazis (the Daleks started like this, but then they became generic; Star Trek's Romulans and Cardassians are perhaps more Soviet than Nazi). I've written a fair bit about Doctor Who monsters (which is what most of its aliens are) over the years, but the best ones tend to be allegories for something human or some unknowable, ancient Lovecraftian horror. Only a few are both genuinely alien and successful/credible.
💯 Most aliens in SF are in fact allegorical representations of your political enemies or embodiments of your utopian aspirations. This is why the few novels and even fewer movies that really try to represent something alone and strange are so unique.
These are valid criticisms and I appreciate them - I’ll need to keep them in mind as I’m writing future stories to make sure I’m not just thoughtlessly recycling common tropes. I have to say, I don’t quite agree about Contact’s depiction of the aliens as taking in the appearances as dear loved ones being, well, unimaginative or trite or whatever. Been a long time since I read the book or watched the movie, but I recall being quite satisfied by the idea that the aliens would choose to represent themselves in such a way so to make themselves intelligible (and communicate their non-violent, benevolent intentions) to the much less-advanced humans they were dealing with. Rather like God in the Bible, yes.
But on the whole, your point is well taken. And I think this is why we agree about the brilliance of Lem’s Solaris—it rigorously engages with the idea that aliens will be well and truly alien to ourselves, which, I think, science would suggest they will be.
Thank you! As a writer myself, I find that even listing those tropes helps me avoiding them in my own writing. Until now, I mostly wrote dark fantasy but my latest novel (coming out next year) is SF, and I struggled with how to represent unknown and unknowable aliens. Readers will be the judge of whether I succeeded😊
I think that Sagan’s novel is better than the movie. I still think he took an easy way out of his dilemma, but I agree that he tried to convey the sense of the sublime. His mistake was that he did not do what Lem did in Solaris: creating just enough friction between the heroine’s memory of her father and the alien wearing his disguise to make it uncanny.
Ah, yes! That’s a very good point, I agree with that completely. I hadn’t necessarily thought it as such when (as best I remember) in the movie Jodie Foster encounters her ‘father’ and is moved to tears in wonder. Thinking about it now, yes—shouldn’t she have been at least somewhat perturbed that this unknowable thing was wearing her father’s skin? That’s a crude description of it—I think she would be happy to see him again in any form—but a sense of the internal friction would have added valuable nuance.
The title reminds me of the tatsuki fujimoto story where aliens invade, eat all the humans and the last survivors dress up like chickens because the aliens dont eat chicken.
I think two things here. One, an enormous amount of the SF in which aliens play an important role is allegorical in nature. You mention this in connection with Le Guin, but that's also true of Starship Troopers, which Heinlein made no bones about being an allegory of the Korean War.
Another example would be Mike Resnick's Galactic Comedy trilogy, which he makes clear is about Africa: specifically Kenya, Rhodesia and Uganda.
So it seems to me a bit unfair to criticize authors who make aliens that think and act like humans when that's the explicit, up-front intent.
Another issue is that--while it's true that aliens will be the product of their own development in their own environment--a civilization that is the dominant species on their world--as we are here on Earth--will necessarily share certain characteristics that are the hallmarks of such species: specifically, they will be aggressive and territorial.
An alien race of cows or sheep is never going to become the civilization that dominates their world, let alone have the impetus to become a spacefaring species.
The connection between allegory and SF is interesting, but I would argue that it most cases, it does not work as intended. The fictional world of SF has to feel complete on its own, while in classic allegory, the world often does not make sense unless you decode what it stands for (Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen is a classic example; or even Animal Farm). References to contemporary history and politics are inescapable in SF, but you can read and enjoy Starship Troopers even if you have never heard of the Korean War.
And of course, aliens must have something in common with us if any sort of contact is to take place. But it is a matter of degree. Mary Russell’s Sparrow is a superb novel of alien encounters, even though the aliens are psychologically anthropomorphic. But there is a cultural and psychological twist which generates defamiliarization.
Well…I’m inclined to think otherwise based on a lifetime of reading SF. But I certainly understand your point.
I’d suggest that you take a squint at the Resnick trilogy. I think you’ll find it works both as metaphor and yet the aliens stand on their own as well. Which I’ve generally found to be the norm.
Will do. I actually read a novella by Resnick that deals with the ritual killing of twins on a space station (apparently a Yoruba tradition) and I thought it was very good. I am blanking on the title, but it may be related to the trilogy.
Quite possibly. Though Resnick has written a lot of African-themed SF, including his Kirinyaga series:
https://www.amazon.com/Kirinyaga-Fable-Utopia-Mike-Resnick-ebook/dp/B0027MJTUG/ref=sr_1_1
Nowadays aliens in SF are problematic for me for 2 reasons, (1) because I can't suspend enough disbelief to accept actual aliens having enough congruence with human mental process/perspective to communicate productively with us, and (2) authors overdose on high-concept BS to make the aliens seem mysterious, magical, whatever. I'd much rather read something like Vance's Planet of Adventure series, where the aliens are embodiments of a single human tendency taken to the extreme: The Wankh are bureaucrats, the Dirdir ultra-prideful hunters, the Chasch nomadic foraging warriors, and the Pnume obsessive cultists. That was great genre writing that didn't pretend to be more than it was.
Agree on 1 completely; 2 depends on how it’s done. Certainly, Lem, the Strugatsky Brothers, and Peter Watts manage to keep the balance between familiar and utterly strange. Glad you mentioned Vance who is a criminally underestimated writer.
I never read Contact. In the film, at the end, they revealed that Ellie really did travel somewhere, because the recording equipment recorded hours of blank tape, or something like that. Was that the ending in the book? I thought it would've been better to leave it up to the viewer to have faith that she'd really traveled somewhere, or at least obfuscate the evidence to make the confirmation less explicit. The story is talking about the importance and validity of faith, so asking the audience to have a little faith seems like it'd be . . . I don't know, more poetic, apropos, or something.
The book is much more SF than the movie as I remember. I thought it was better than the movie because until the very end, it read like a conventional alien contact scenario. And I don’t think there was any ambiguity - she did travel.
The title made me think of this https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ergon?file=Ergon_1.jpg (from twentieth century Doctor Who, inevitably).
I didn't think of Stephen Baxter as someone who would write cute alien babies!
I think Theodore Sturgeon said that most alien races in SF are just versions of pre-modern Japan. I think in popular science fiction (TV, cinema) it's more that most are allegorical Nazis (the Daleks started like this, but then they became generic; Star Trek's Romulans and Cardassians are perhaps more Soviet than Nazi). I've written a fair bit about Doctor Who monsters (which is what most of its aliens are) over the years, but the best ones tend to be allegories for something human or some unknowable, ancient Lovecraftian horror. Only a few are both genuinely alien and successful/credible.
💯 Most aliens in SF are in fact allegorical representations of your political enemies or embodiments of your utopian aspirations. This is why the few novels and even fewer movies that really try to represent something alone and strange are so unique.
And no, I did not expect it from Baxter either.
These are valid criticisms and I appreciate them - I’ll need to keep them in mind as I’m writing future stories to make sure I’m not just thoughtlessly recycling common tropes. I have to say, I don’t quite agree about Contact’s depiction of the aliens as taking in the appearances as dear loved ones being, well, unimaginative or trite or whatever. Been a long time since I read the book or watched the movie, but I recall being quite satisfied by the idea that the aliens would choose to represent themselves in such a way so to make themselves intelligible (and communicate their non-violent, benevolent intentions) to the much less-advanced humans they were dealing with. Rather like God in the Bible, yes.
But on the whole, your point is well taken. And I think this is why we agree about the brilliance of Lem’s Solaris—it rigorously engages with the idea that aliens will be well and truly alien to ourselves, which, I think, science would suggest they will be.
Thank you! As a writer myself, I find that even listing those tropes helps me avoiding them in my own writing. Until now, I mostly wrote dark fantasy but my latest novel (coming out next year) is SF, and I struggled with how to represent unknown and unknowable aliens. Readers will be the judge of whether I succeeded😊
I think that Sagan’s novel is better than the movie. I still think he took an easy way out of his dilemma, but I agree that he tried to convey the sense of the sublime. His mistake was that he did not do what Lem did in Solaris: creating just enough friction between the heroine’s memory of her father and the alien wearing his disguise to make it uncanny.
Ah, yes! That’s a very good point, I agree with that completely. I hadn’t necessarily thought it as such when (as best I remember) in the movie Jodie Foster encounters her ‘father’ and is moved to tears in wonder. Thinking about it now, yes—shouldn’t she have been at least somewhat perturbed that this unknowable thing was wearing her father’s skin? That’s a crude description of it—I think she would be happy to see him again in any form—but a sense of the internal friction would have added valuable nuance.
The title reminds me of the tatsuki fujimoto story where aliens invade, eat all the humans and the last survivors dress up like chickens because the aliens dont eat chicken.
Lol! I didn't know this story. Thanks for the reference.
I think the adaptation is on prime. He is better known for chainsaw man but his early stuff is crazy.