Ever notice how peoples' renditions of aliens look like insects? (1 Viewer)

[BrianW]

Oh, fine! Line up with the rest of them! Anybody with pointy ears want to take a shot at me?

Look, if it makes you feel any better, then I’m sorry
(that you're an engineer).

Feel better now?



(Please dont' hurt me.)

 

[Jack Briggs]

Just because Whitley Streiber is a well-known hack author of pseudoSF potboilers (though War Day was okay) doesn't mean the silly ramblings in Communion are anything less than delusional.

A Harvard professor was duped by the abduction myth while trying to lend credibility to this form of mass hysteria by shamelessly exploting his affiliation with the Ivy League school. He was later fooled by a crafty student who faked her hypnosis (she even tied "alien abduction" to the JFK assassination, and Professor Mack fell for it!).

People believe what they want to believe, facts be damned.

 

[Julie K]

Please dont' hurt me.

I'll just feed you to Cthulhu. Now there's a cool alien. We need more aliens with tentacles.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Jeez louise, people, doesn't anybody here (besides Julie, RobertR, Brian, Ike, et al) remember the phrase "bug-eyed monster"? Those of us who've been reading SF for decades call 'em "BEMs."

 

[Ike]

Who came up with the names for the species of aliens? In my searches on the "believers" websites, they have names for the different types. Where the hell did they come from? Jinns is thrown around a lot. Did these come from science fiction, too?

(I liked BEM better, too.)

 

[andrew markworthy]

make me a great engineer or editor, not college professor.

There. That shouldn’t offend anybody here.

Um, Brian, I've edited a book, I'm on the editorial board of a journal, and my Dad until he retired was a diagnostic engineer.

Once again, Brit sarcasm strikes.

Also note that I didn't say *how* often we have to be interesting ...

Julie - I was about to ask what else you like in your monsters until I realised I'd misread the last line of your post. :b

 

[Julie K]

Oh, I was afraid that line would get me into trouble....

Another oldy-but-goody is LGM. If I had to guess about 'jinn', though, I'd say it's derived from the mythological Djinn, although the 'logic' of such derivation escapes me.

There's all sorts of speculation in SF about aliens. SF speculations concerning the sorts of life and intelligences that we are capable of imagining are far better than those of the silly alien abductee folks.

 

[BrianW]

In the face of mediocre writing, I will often judge a SF book by how creatively, interestingly, and differently it depicts aliens. The Moties (not that The Mote in God’s Eye is mediocre) have always been a favorite of mine. Their logical extension of what we know about life is compelling. Major departures include: a caste system in which the lowest caste, though intelligent, is no more highly regarded by the upper-caste members than cattle are regarded by us; extensive time spent in zero-G led to bilaterally asymmetrical development; and all animal life on their planet consisted of all the castes of Moties – all other species had been essentially wiped out.

Thanks for bringing up SF literature. I understand that having humans portray aliens is a practicality that Hollywood must often take advantage of, but I feel like they’re not even trying anymore. I’m tired of essentially human aliens being depicted as SO culturally different from humans that they get their driver’s licenses when they’re only twelve and sign bank checks with their last names first. My gosh, how can we possibly relate?

If I were Captain Archer, Here’s what I’d be saying on a weekly basis:

My god, you look JUST like we do! How many fingers do you have? FIVE? That’s AMAZING! Do you eat with the same hole you talk through? ME TOO! Do your knees stick forward or backward? FORWARD? MINE TOO! Metric system? We use it too! Jeepers, you could be my cousin from Arkansas! What’s that? You’re from the state of ARKANSAS on YOUR PLANET? THAT’S INCREDIBLE! Do you have any Scientologists where you're from? The last guys did.

Finally, I’d like to sincerely apologize for offending so many with my remarks about people in various professions always being “uninteresting but correct.” It was never my intention to claim that all college professors, engineers, editors, or even people with pointy ears are always correct. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Brian, I just loved your post, especially your faux quote of what Archer (and Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, et al) should have said in every single script where they encounter yet again another "alien" species that looks (and speaks) identical to humans (or the variants with the funny foreheads).

Only our collective love of Star Trek lo these many years has prevented us from howling at the sheer impossibility of much of what it portrays.

(My all-time favorite Trek episode, TNG's "The Inner Light," also is based on the concept of an identical-to-humans-to-the-last-detail species on the planet Kataan. Brilliant story, but impossible.)

I have said repeatedly on these boards that I wish Hollywood were held to the same standards of scientific plausibility to which science-fiction authors must adhere in order to be published.

 

[BrianW]

Oh, I don't know about the impossibility of it all. I mean, the odds of an alien being from the state of Arkansas on his planet are what, one in fifty? It could happen.

Captain Archer: Say, are you considered to be fat on your planet? Because you look a little chubby to me.

 

[Jack Briggs]

 

[RobertR]

Doesn't this whole discussion demonstrate the wisdom of the makers of Forbidden Planet and 2001 in choosing not to show the aliens?

I'd still like to meet a Niven Puppeteer, though.

 

[Jack Briggs]

You know, Robert, I absolutely agree. The brilliance of Mr. Kubrick evoked a genuine sense of alien-ness with his masterful filmmaking. And while we never saw the Krell of Altair 4, we did get a glimpse into Dr. Morbius's idea of a monster from the id.

One of the worst Star Trek failings, from first-season TOS: "Miri." Kirk and crew not only encounter a planet that is identical to Earth down to the shape of the continents, as well as identical-to-human "children," the script never even revisited the issue of why the hell the distant planet is a mirror image of Earth.

But we all love the episode anyway. Go figger.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jack Briggs wrote (post #33):

Not me. "Nyah, nyah, nyuh, nyah, nyah! Nyah, nyah, nyuh, nyah, nyah! Nyah, nyah, nyuh, NYAH, NYAH! NYAH, NYAH, nyuh, NYAH, NYAH! . . . . "

 

[Rex Bachmann]

BrianW wrote (post #17):

"The Damned Thing", by Ambrose Bierce (1898)

 

[Adam Barratt]

Whatever happened to the good-old antennae look? This no longer seems to be part of the alien 'image'. As an anthropologist by education, I have to wonder whether we have witnessed (long distance) an alien sociocultural shift. Is there now a booming trade in cosmetic surgery to remove these unfashionable appendages?

Perhaps they also wear baseball caps backwards and baggy pants between anal probes. Contact with our planet may have had a greater impact on their own culture than they could have anticipated!

Adam