Aliens...

[TranshumanistG]

How about Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion? The anime makes a point of them being "god-like beings antithetical to human life"?
Also there's Scab Coral from Eureka 7, a sentient coral, that a kind of living planet/Gaea expy.

In Dead Space series there's necromorphs and in Beyond Good & Evil -- DomZ, hive minds that may take humanoid features only because they prey on humanoid life forms.

And of course, I could just throw Lovecratian mythos out there with its "the old alien gods are way over our puny humans' heads to even begin to understand them".

Someone mentioned mentioned Star Trek, which reminded me of Crystalline Entity, basically a giant space snowflake that devours life on entire planets.

 

[Zontar]

Snip

That still begs a massive question for intelligent ocean dwelling alien life: how do they develop electricity? Without something like that, getting their civilization even to an industrial level is flat out impossible, let alone the space age, but by the very nature of being aquatic how would they harness electricity and develop it in the first place, assuming they become aware it even exists?

 

[Slenn]

Snip

That still begs a massive question for intelligent ocean dwelling alien life: how do they develop electricity? Without something like that, getting their civilization even to an industrial level is flat out impossible, let alone the space age, but by the very nature of being aquatic how would they harness electricity and develop it in the first place, assuming they become aware it even exists?

Our industrial revolution didn't even need the invention of electricity to drive it. At the time, electricity's applications were still being discovered and developed.

They could have initially created their cities out of stone. And then perhaps out of a far lighter material like obsidian. The surface stations could be first created through the use of a nautilus-like bathysphere that uses steam as a source of buoyancy. Being underwater, they could discover geothermal fissures and lava flows, whereby they might be able to forge metals. Or maybe they plant their surface stations near volcanic islands. They would observe lightning and postulate what might it be. Perhaps they have something akin to electric eels on our own planet for comparison.

Mind you I do admit this takes a lot of imagination.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I think SCP-163 (http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-163) stands as one of the best depictions of an alien lifeform I've seen in a while. Its biology is so far removed from anything we would encounter here on earth and its communication method makes it almost impossible for us to communicate effectively with it, with the only method so far being rudimentary gestures that we may use to communicate with a chimp. And despite this, it still displays a great deal of relatable emotion behaviour. It displays empathy, creativity and intelligence. During one of the tests, it creates a painting of its homeworld, only to become overcome with what can only be described as home sickness, being a creature millions of years and god knows how many lightyears displaced from any other members of its species. It's absolutely heart breaking.

 

[Slenn]

OT: I think for me the primary needs for a space faring civilization are curiosity, an intelligence that questions and is able to speculate, the ability to interact with the world around it, and most importantly: time.

Every single day is a gamble for every creature on this planet. The Earth does not care if life is wiped out the next day, whether or not it's on purpose, by accident, or through a natural disaster. A species needs to have enough time to get to the point of space faring. Heck there has to be some point in the evolutionary tree where a species arises with intelligence that surpasses that of the other species. I do think that it takes a large amount of time for there to be enough generations of creatures to develop a capacity to think with a high intellect. And there's every reason to postulate that there might be self inflicted reasons for the destruction of an intelligent species.

 

[Pyrian]

I would be cautious about extrapolating too much from our own story. One data point does not make a trend. And we don't even have that; most of what we think about the process of how humans evolved is speculation.

In the case of aquatic intelligent animals, it's very, very unlikely they'd ever develop tools to begin with given their environment. As it stands there's nothing beyond a rock used for hitting things we've observed in nature, and that begs the question how would such a species develop electricity and get to space in the first place.

Not sure I follow. Octopi use tools and communicate. No fundamental reason they couldn't develop a lot further than they have. They'd need to be more social and perhaps more omnivorous. Once they'd developed a culture, some form of agriculture (aquaculture and/or domestication) and a rudimentary civilization, it's difficult to see a hard limit to what they can accomplish. They'd be late to the fire and metal crafting parties, for sure. But just late.

As for a hive minded race, any hive mind would need to find a way to bring an entire society into space right from the beginning of their travel due to the nature of how hive minding beings operate.

I think hive mind societies are uniquely suited to the rigors of early space travel, precisely because they can regard their workers as expendable. Communication might be even more important, but by the space age they should have that. They are also generally well suited to "staffing up" - able to start whole colonies with the arrival of a single progenitor.

That still begs a massive question for intelligent ocean dwelling alien life: how do they develop electricity?

Domestication. If anything, they have huge advantages over us in that regard. We developed electricity very late, all things considered; we hardly knew it existed.

Keep in mind that our civilization could not have developed without water. An octociv would need air - but big deal. It's easier to find than water.

I should write a story about an Octopus civilization expressing incredulity that a land bound culture could exist.

 

[Slenn]

I would be cautious about extrapolating too much from our own story. One data point does not make a trend. And we don't even have that; most of what we think about the process of how humans evolved is speculation.

[...]

They'd be late to the fire and metal crafting parties, for sure. But just late.

[Electricity quote...]

Domestication. If anything, they have huge advantages over us in that regard. We developed electricity very late, all things considered; we hardly knew it existed.

I'd have to agree with what you've been saying. An aquatic civilization could, for all we know, develop electrochemistry as well. I mean they would be in an aqueous environment, so no doubt they might dabble in chemistry for some time. They might also be using their electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water to be used in their sea to surface bathyspheres.

It is quite hard to extrapolate what an alien might be like when we only know of one biology. When first contact happens, it will be one of the most revolutionary events (if not THE most), for better or for worse.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

But I don't see why predatory or violent behaviour is particularly necessary to avoid stagnation. It might well be that hunting tends to lead to greater brain size and cognition, but evolution is blind. It isn't sensible or logical, and doesn't have an end goal. Most whale species are highly intelligent, but they probably don't strictly need massive brains to fulfil their wandering oceanic role. It's probably not made them that much better at filling their niche (with certain exceptions), but neither has it harmed their survival. So the massive brains and relatively high intelligence remains.

The simplest tools our ancestors might have used is simply wielding a rock or a stick to bash things with. Most of our early tools uses could have been weapons primarily which naturally lends itself to predatory behaviour. Plus catching prey using tactics, cooperation and tracking(without a good sense of smell for it) requires a bit of imagination. It doesn't take a genius to run away when you see something scary.

 

[Slenn]

But I don't see why predatory or violent behavior is particularly necessary to avoid stagnation. It might well be that hunting tends to lead to greater brain size and cognition, but evolution is blind. It isn't sensible or logical, and doesn't have an end goal. Most whale species are highly intelligent, but they probably don't strictly need massive brains to fulfil their wandering oceanic role. It's probably not made them that much better at filling their niche (with certain exceptions), but neither has it harmed their survival. So the massive brains and relatively high intelligence remains.

The simplest tools our ancestors might have used is simply wielding a rock or a stick to bash things with. Most of our early tools uses could have been weapons primarily which naturally lends itself to predatory behavior. Plus catching prey using tactics, cooperation and tracking(without a good sense of smell for it) requires a bit of imagination. It doesn't take a genius to run away when you see something scary.

I would say that the need for violence would depend on the needs of the species. We inherited our violent tendencies from our reptilian brains.

A rock and a stick could be used by a race of herbivores to mash food and plant matter. Shaping a rock to become a knife would first be used to slice plants. It's up to speculation as to whether or not the species would have similar emotions as a human. Figuring out when and where plants grow requires the ability to have a mental map. That there will give the species a sense of tactics and planning. But I would agree they would most likely have a flight or fight response to danger. Perhaps their first mode of weaponry would most likely be used for defense against dangers. That or skin other creatures for their skins for protection. When they attack each other entirely depends on how territorial they biologically are.

I would say that responding to danger rather than violence would be a more universal candidate for preventing stagnation. But growth and development can come from many other sources like the creation of buildings and agriculture.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

This has always bothered me quite a bit. But in the end, I guess it's hard to create any media without having 'relatable' aliens. They all have to speak English and walk on two feet and have similar emotions, at the very least. It's boring and unimaginative, but it sells. The aliens that aren't relatable tend to be the "bad guys", like the Reapers in Mass Effect.

Fact of the matter is, it's pretty damn improbable that if there is life out there, that it would resemble anything our feeble boring minds conjure up. Well for the media anyways.

There's this fantastic video here:

Spoiler

basically makes you think. To summarize briefly: there is only 1% difference between humans and our closest relatives on the planet. And that 1% difference accounts for EVERYTHING that humans can do, and monkeys can't. Nuclear physics, space travel, mass transport, you know stuff like that. And that's our CLOSEST living being, on the SAME planet. We can't even talk to monkeys properly. So what's the likelihood that if we encounter another species from another galaxy that we'll be even be able to have a conversation with it? Or will they just consider us ants and monkeys? They would have to be at least more intelligent in order to travel in space, right? Let's also not forget that humans are just one species out of billions right here, on our little spec of universe.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

But I don't see why predatory or violent behavior is particularly necessary to avoid stagnation. It might well be that hunting tends to lead to greater brain size and cognition, but evolution is blind. It isn't sensible or logical, and doesn't have an end goal. Most whale species are highly intelligent, but they probably don't strictly need massive brains to fulfil their wandering oceanic role. It's probably not made them that much better at filling their niche (with certain exceptions), but neither has it harmed their survival. So the massive brains and relatively high intelligence remains.

The simplest tools our ancestors might have used is simply wielding a rock or a stick to bash things with. Most of our early tools uses could have been weapons primarily which naturally lends itself to predatory behavior. Plus catching prey using tactics, cooperation and tracking(without a good sense of smell for it) requires a bit of imagination. It doesn't take a genius to run away when you see something scary.

I would say that the need for violence would depend on the needs of the species. We inherited our violent tendencies from our reptilian brains.

A rock and a stick could be used by a race of herbivores to mash food and plant matter. Shaping a rock to become a knife would first be used to slice plants. It's up to speculation as to whether or not the species would have similar emotions as a human. Figuring out when and where plants grow requires the ability to have a mental map. That there will give the species a sense of tactics and planning. But I would agree they would most likely have a flight or fight response to danger. Perhaps their first mode of weaponry would most likely be used for defense against dangers. That or skin other creatures for their skins for protection. When they attack each other entirely depends on how territorial they biologically are.

I would say that responding to danger rather than violence would be a more universal candidate for preventing stagnation. But growth and development can come from many other sources like the creation of buildings and agriculture.

Sure a rock could be used to mash plants, but a herbivore is likely to have evolved the teeth to do it long before something as advanced as tool use so is there a pressure for it? It's interesting that our ancestors were once primarily plant eaters but chimps eat meat and they are far less clever than us. You look at the skulls of our ancestors and our teeth shrunk as our brains grew, more soft food like meat to less hard fibres perhaps? Although we did start cooking our food too which would have made softening plants easier...

The advantage of weapons is huge, more reach and you don't have to damage your own body as much in a fight, so there's probably a lot of pressure there, like how I can break my hand punching someone, a more adapted predator may also have to worry about damaging its own teeth and claws during a fight. Breaking a tooth or tearing out a claw isn't good, or muscle strain and risk of injuries. I think there's a lot more pressure and even a pure herbivore might end up transitioning to being an omnivore once it figures out how to reliably create spears, when you can regularly kill the predator that was just trying to kill you why waste it's corpse? Once they start hunting there's also a strong pressure to get better at making tools, figuring out how to create specialised weapons for particular prey, bows and arrows, lots of pressure to be a better tool user. Meanwhile the herbivore has a big gap between agriculture and bashing plants with a rock where there's no motivation to make better tools now in the moment.

 

[Slenn]

Sure a rock could be used to mash plants, but a herbivore is likely to have evolved the teeth to do it long before something as advanced as tool use so is there a pressure for it? It's interesting that our ancestors were once primarily plant eaters but chimps eat meat and they are far less clever than us. You look at the skulls of our ancestors and our teeth shrunk as our brains grew, more soft food like meat to less hard fibres perhaps? Although we did start cooking our food too which would have made softening plants easier...

Well, we have a variety of teeth for various utilities: cutting, mashing, tearing, etc. But we use tools to do those utilities outside of our mouths. What you can do with one mouth can be done with a stone grinder.

The advantage of weapons is huge, more reach and you don't have to damage your own body as much in a fight, so there's probably a lot of pressure there, like how I can break my hand punching someone, a more adapted predator may also have to worry about damaging its own teeth and claws during a fight. Breaking a tooth or tearing out a claw isn't good, or muscle strain and risk of injuries. I think there's a lot more pressure and even a pure herbivore might end up transitioning to being an omnivore once it figures out how to reliably create spears, when you can regularly kill the predator that was just trying to kill you why waste its corpse?

To be clear, I never claimed weapons were out of the picture. I was implying that the pressure is not going to be the same as it was for us.

The herbivore would have to waste the corpse if it's not compatible with its digestive system. Breaking down proteins is different than breaking down cellulose. An honest to goodness herbivore would have to abandon meat because they would figure out that it's making it sick. It works fine for us, because we have the digestive system and teeth compatible for both protein and cellulose. We need protein because our bodies don't produce all the amino acids necessary to construct our bodies. We have to get the rest of the amino acids from animals.

Once they start hunting there's also a strong pressure to get better at making tools, figuring out how to create specialized weapons for particular prey, bows and arrows, lots of pressure to be a better tool user. Meanwhile the herbivore has a big gap between agriculture and bashing plants with a rock where there's no motivation to make better tools now in the moment.

Even if their objective wasn't to hunt, they still have plenty of reason to develop weapons for defense against predators. And that would include blades. An herbivore race would have to survive as the hunted. That's plenty of room for them to develop blades, then hoes, then tilled lands ready for planting seeds.

 

[Slenn]

We can't even talk to monkeys properly. So what's the likelihood that if we encounter another species from another galaxy that we'll be even be able to have a conversation with it? Or will they just consider us ants and monkeys? They would have to be at least more intelligent in order to travel in space, right? Let's also not forget that humans are just one species out of billions right here, on our little spec of universe.

This is a hard mission to solve. But a probable solution some people come up with is figuring out common number systems and how our mathematics work. We might get off lucky and that the aliens have a universal translator on handy. I've mentioned before that the time it takes for an intelligent civilization to develop space travel across thousands of light years is more than enough to abolish the need for violence. Their technological capabilities would be equally as advanced. If a species were to visit us right now, the technology comparison would be no contest. But that also means that they would be far more probable for talking in peace.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'd suggest picking up the novel Solaris. Like anything written in the 60s, it's rather dated now and the science is hilariously bad, but it's very much an attempt to grapple with the inherent limitations of communication with an alien lifeform and the possibility that such a lifeform might turn out to be so utterly different from us that meaningful communication may in fact be impossible or even deeply traumatic.

It was also adapted into two movies of the same name, both of which are despised by the author (Stanisław Lem) for missing the basic point and focusing too much on the human drama, but are also kind of worth a watch in their own way.

I guess another point to be made here though is that science fiction is fiction. Outside of the most ridiculously "hard" sci fi, the point is to meet some kind of need in the audience and to convey some kind of meaning or message for them. I would say one of the joys of science fiction is that despite being set in exotic locations it is still about us. It's about the social and political conflicts of our world, and unlike fantasy for example (which in my opinion is still too caught up in this idea of pure escapism or simply serving as a philological exercise) it isn't ashamed of that. Aliens are just a blank receptacle for our present day hopes and fears, and they should be sometimes because that's enabling. At the same time, there's room for science fiction which makes its mission to explore the unknowability of the universe, but if nothing else that's a much harder thing to do and requires serious conceptual and philosophical chops.

 

[Fox12]

I remember hearing somewhere that one of the reasons man is the superior species is because we are built "right", the correct weight to size ratio, correct brain function, correct number of hands etc.

So if there are aliens that are in our level they'll most likely be smiliar in a lot of ways to humans, for example they'll have to use tools (otherwise have no need to improve), have to be violent (otherwise remain stagnant) and walking upright, otherwise can't really built anything.

Pretty much this.

For an alien to develop to the level of space faring, there are things it needs, such as digits which have great dexterity, a predatory nature, the ability for complex non-verbal communication (critical in the development of language) and many other things.

There are also things an alien must NOT have to develop to a space faring civilization, such as not begin aquatic and not being hive minded.

I'm not sure, though. Just because that's the only way we know how to evolve, doesn't mean it's the only option. For instance, most scientists argue that life needs water in order to exist. However, many leading scientists have made the point that planets could exist that are so alien to ours, that the life there wasn't dependent on water at all. Their whole existance would have a different foundation. It's just difficult to imagine, because even the fundamentals of their nature would be inherently different from ours.

 

[jklinders]

Part of the problem here is that not as many "science fiction" writers these days come form a scientific background as it was when the genre was in it's infancy. There are no Asimovs right now that I have noticed. A good chunk of the very best speculative fiction posed interesting questions and proceeded to try to answer them. Even Heinlen, who was not a scientist at least tried to do this ((Stranger in a Strange Land did petty good in conceptualizing an alien race that is truly alien to the point of cultural communication problems with us). The very basis of science is asking questions. What has overwhelmingly happened since the advent of Star trek is not bothering with questions and skipping straight to social commentary or world building. You can't easily do social commentary without a foil in your "alien" races that wears the "hat" of whatever you are commenting on. So this is in part where the whole Roman Turians, and Greek Asari came from. Making the races relateable makes it easier to do your commentary while making the critters relate able.

The critters in Alien are more like it. Life that evolved in a completely different manner. Different chemistry, using a parasitic form of reproduction with a just enough sexual imagery thrown in for good measure to make you profoundly uncomfortable even if you don't realize why right away. it was at least effort to make something alien and different. it's left unknown really whether the race is advanced and cannot be related to other than as predator/prey or if they are simply following primal instincts. They do seem to exhibit advanced intelligence at times.

We have here on Earth, evolved life that does not use oxygen or CO2. It exists on a very simple level in the very most extreme environments Earth has to offer. There is a tiny critter that has survived every extiction event the Earth has had. Can go for years without food or water and can suffer being frozen solid and come back after years of dormancy. This ugly little bastard will out survive our race by billions of years.

Science has not figured out how diverse life can get. A writer with a liberal arts degree has little chance of conceiving this kind of diversity so they cop out a bit. It's not some much speculative fiction or even Science fiction, since Star trek and Star Wars it's now more science fantasy. that's fair, it's still entertaining, but I would like the OP like to see more effort put into this.

 

[Silvanus]

Isn't that just called Urban Fantasy?

Perhaps sometimes, but I'd say 'magical realism' is a more descriptive phrase. It's not necessarily connected to urban locales, after all; could be out in the country.

 

[OneCatch]

There are also things an alien must NOT have to develop to a space faring civilization, such as not begin aquatic and not being hive minded.

Why? Hive organised animals have easily the most complex engineering and some of the most complex social organisation of any animal aside from humans.
And being aquatic is certainly going to make getting into orbit more difficult because of sheer mass, but not necessarily impossible. Getting bubbles of relatively uncompressed air to the bottom of oceanic trenches isn't exactly easy either, and we basically did that for the lols [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste].

In the case of aquatic intelligent animals, it's very, very unlikely they'd ever develop tools to begin with given their environment. As it stands there's nothing beyond a rock used for hitting things we've observed in nature, and that begs the question how would such a species develop electricity and get to space in the first place.

Primitive tool use has already been observed in a few aquatic species:

Dolphins: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19909635

Octopus:
Orca already hunt in basically the same way as wolf packs (probably in much the same way our ancestors hunted), and demonstrate some hunting skills which are otherwise unique to primates. Baiting:

Electricity I agree is a bit of a challenge, but then we've only had a decent understanding of it for a very small period of our civilisational history. If a species could get to a level of civilisation equal to even the ancient or medieval world, I'd regard further technological development as basically inevitable sooner or later, regardless of environment.

An ocean environment is in some ways more challenging, but it also has it's benefits - I'd suggest that the reason that cetaceans are so unnecessarily intelligent (as per previous post) is probably because the average energy density in the ocean is so much higher in the ocean than on land.

As for a hive minded race, any hive mind would need to find a way to bring an entire society into space right from the beginning of their travel due to the nature of how hive minding beings operate. I highly doubt they could have a drone be isolated long enough to do a mission and return, assuming their drones could develop to that level, and a queen being used is assured to be off the table because, well it's a queen they've role in the hive mind is critical at all times.

I hive minded or aquatic race may become the dominant form of life on a particular planet, but without the use of outside help it's not very likely in my mind that either would reach the capability of attaining space travel, let alone achieve it.

Not necessarily; off the top of my head, a lot of our terrestrial hive species used chemical and hormonal markers to instruct others. A mechanism which would selectively release said chemicals upon a radio signal would probably be only a little more mechanically complicated than a radio - and almost certainly less complicated than video communications.

Long term; getting a healthy human breeding population into space is probably just as much of a challenge as getting a queen or whatever and associated ancillaries.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Isn't that just called Urban Fantasy?

Yeah, but then we need a new word to differentiate normal Urban Fantasy from stories that aren't about angry women in leather fighting/fornicating with werewolves and vampires.

 

[SweetShark]

I want one day someone to create a Alien Race which don't follow our way of thinking.
No, I am not talking about about their believes or the way they act. I mean something COMPLETE Alien.
I mean like the words I write now isn't something it belong to their Race, or any kind of form of it. Or even the communication, race, body,eyes, idea, the whole concept of religion, life, death, EVERYTHING WE KNOW!

H.P LoveCraft captured this feeling so well: Something so Alien which can make you lose your sanity and logic for yourself.
Something you see, but in reality the concept of "seeing/feeling/killed/loved/touched/examined" an Alien, doesn't exist.

Or even this post I write now, isn't something that exist for them.

Also I remember this quote from a specific movie, Mothman:

John Klein: I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don't they just come right out and tell us what's on their minds?
Alexander Leek: You're more advanced than a cockroach, have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?

Now think above this, but 1000000000000 times more Alien. Like maybe the Aliens are God like. Like Gods they are everywhere they like whatever time and space want. Or even Time and Space aren't in their own concept. Maybe they use something entirely different.

And so my point is, may God help us is we ever meet something INDEED Alien.