jjabrams55
Science fiction fantasy
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 93
I took an opportunity to 'talk' with a scifi writer who has published scifi books, and through her I learned a more efficient way of creating alien races that STILL seem alien. The author told me to base aliens off their needs. Then it occurred to to think about what human needs are, since the aliens will at least partially be based on what I know (all fiction is based on reality after all to some degree).
What follows are a basic set of needs that humans around Earth have been shown to have:
1. Physical needs: Food, shelter, clothing, sex to procreate, and rest.
2. Emotional needs: Socializing and play.
3. Justice needs: A need for justice to themselves and others. Compassion toward self/others is directly linked with justice.
4. Intellectual needs: Pondering the future, thinking beyond 'concrete I can see this right now' like animals do. Developing work skills/technology and the arts (music etc).
5. Divine needs: A need for a higher power to fix what humans can't fix. Some put all their trust in science as their god, while others believe in a higher being/beings. Still others treat other humans as gods, idol worship if you will, like celebrities/famous people for example.
6. Moderation needs: A need for balancing all previous needs, so that none go to extremes at the expense of other needs.
After all that, I at first thought to make alien races seem alien by subtracting from human needs. The result was aliens who were either more boring or less moral than humans. Not very appealing. The few human needs I always had to include for aliens were the physical and the intellectual needs, since they needed to eat and also needed to have the intellectual capacity to learn how to build starships in the first place. Thus I did a 180 and decided to make aliens more than human. In other words, the aliens will have ALL of the human needs I just mentioned, but with extra abilities that will have an effect on their behavior. Basically... a human personality who also has special powers.
What alien powers will change the behavior of aliens who act human otherwise?
Alien race idea 1: Empath ability: The ability to sense the emotions on a small level of others around you, just enough to recognize what the emotion is. The emotions you are able to detect are joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. At a ten foot radius. No matter the species/race. The resulting effect is a race that is VERY sympathetic of others. At the same time, the said alien race has wings and can fly, and often do so as to get privacy from all those emotions of others which they can't turn off from detecting/slightly feeling. Only get away from it. This ability also makes lying difficult, and drugs that alter emotions are VERY popular.
Alien race idea 2: You know how scifi skirts the fact that everyone uses a plot device to speak to aliens who don't speak english? What if there were an alien race who were exactly that? They telepathically connect with other races and can speak/understand any language. The result would be that they would be VERY powerful among alien races, and would be used as messengers and would have to deal with a lot of multiculturalism and diverse alien political correctness on the regular.
Alien race idea three 3: Basically a half humanoid/dolphin hybrid. They also have some magnetic abilities, enough to let them glide/hover over the ground on their planet, which is full of iron rust and is orange/red like mars. Plants grow there as well. They would be able to swim underwater and glide/hover over land whenever they wanted. BTW I choose dolphins because like humans they are mammals. Choosing a fish hybrid would not work because fish are not mammals, nor or they warm blooded. Nor do fish have breasts to feed their children milk, but humans do. And dolphins may not have anything that looks like breasts, but they do feed their children milk just like all mammals do. Mammary means you have breasts to feed milk to babies.
There is not much that changes their behavior from normal human behavior, but their architecture would be sleek and curvy, since they would have no need of stairs, just smooth ferromagnetic metal surfaces to glide/hover across.
BTW if you can actually make an alien race using my suggestions then by all means post it, I encourage it and would be delighted to see it! If you try to limit human needs or even alter them with your alien race, what you get will either be boring, or less caring than humans already are. If you try to add extra abilities onto human needs, you won't have that problem. I have done both... believe me I know. So what are your thoughts? Do you think that an alien race that is has less than human needs is still interesting enough? Or do you think that an alien race that has human needs PLUS special abilities is more interesting?
I think that taking away the very needs that make humans compelling/appealing/attractive also makes them less interesting to the reader or even the author. That is why I propose adding some special ability. I even thought about adding extra psychological needs, but I couldn't add any without pigeon holing the entire race into a narrow mindset like say... the klingons.
What follows are a basic set of needs that humans around Earth have been shown to have:
1. Physical needs: Food, shelter, clothing, sex to procreate, and rest.
2. Emotional needs: Socializing and play.
3. Justice needs: A need for justice to themselves and others. Compassion toward self/others is directly linked with justice.
4. Intellectual needs: Pondering the future, thinking beyond 'concrete I can see this right now' like animals do. Developing work skills/technology and the arts (music etc).
5. Divine needs: A need for a higher power to fix what humans can't fix. Some put all their trust in science as their god, while others believe in a higher being/beings. Still others treat other humans as gods, idol worship if you will, like celebrities/famous people for example.
6. Moderation needs: A need for balancing all previous needs, so that none go to extremes at the expense of other needs.
After all that, I at first thought to make alien races seem alien by subtracting from human needs. The result was aliens who were either more boring or less moral than humans. Not very appealing. The few human needs I always had to include for aliens were the physical and the intellectual needs, since they needed to eat and also needed to have the intellectual capacity to learn how to build starships in the first place. Thus I did a 180 and decided to make aliens more than human. In other words, the aliens will have ALL of the human needs I just mentioned, but with extra abilities that will have an effect on their behavior. Basically... a human personality who also has special powers.
What alien powers will change the behavior of aliens who act human otherwise?
Alien race idea 1: Empath ability: The ability to sense the emotions on a small level of others around you, just enough to recognize what the emotion is. The emotions you are able to detect are joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. At a ten foot radius. No matter the species/race. The resulting effect is a race that is VERY sympathetic of others. At the same time, the said alien race has wings and can fly, and often do so as to get privacy from all those emotions of others which they can't turn off from detecting/slightly feeling. Only get away from it. This ability also makes lying difficult, and drugs that alter emotions are VERY popular.
Alien race idea 2: You know how scifi skirts the fact that everyone uses a plot device to speak to aliens who don't speak english? What if there were an alien race who were exactly that? They telepathically connect with other races and can speak/understand any language. The result would be that they would be VERY powerful among alien races, and would be used as messengers and would have to deal with a lot of multiculturalism and diverse alien political correctness on the regular.
Alien race idea three 3: Basically a half humanoid/dolphin hybrid. They also have some magnetic abilities, enough to let them glide/hover over the ground on their planet, which is full of iron rust and is orange/red like mars. Plants grow there as well. They would be able to swim underwater and glide/hover over land whenever they wanted. BTW I choose dolphins because like humans they are mammals. Choosing a fish hybrid would not work because fish are not mammals, nor or they warm blooded. Nor do fish have breasts to feed their children milk, but humans do. And dolphins may not have anything that looks like breasts, but they do feed their children milk just like all mammals do. Mammary means you have breasts to feed milk to babies.
There is not much that changes their behavior from normal human behavior, but their architecture would be sleek and curvy, since they would have no need of stairs, just smooth ferromagnetic metal surfaces to glide/hover across.
BTW if you can actually make an alien race using my suggestions then by all means post it, I encourage it and would be delighted to see it! If you try to limit human needs or even alter them with your alien race, what you get will either be boring, or less caring than humans already are. If you try to add extra abilities onto human needs, you won't have that problem. I have done both... believe me I know. So what are your thoughts? Do you think that an alien race that is has less than human needs is still interesting enough? Or do you think that an alien race that has human needs PLUS special abilities is more interesting?
I think that taking away the very needs that make humans compelling/appealing/attractive also makes them less interesting to the reader or even the author. That is why I propose adding some special ability. I even thought about adding extra psychological needs, but I couldn't add any without pigeon holing the entire race into a narrow mindset like say... the klingons.