I’m at a point in my life as a reader where I’m starting to question the role of zoomorphism in science fiction, and by extension, science fiction romance. Despite the fact that I’m a fan of fare such as V and even THUNDERCATS once upon a time, I’m wondering if I’ve outgrown stories wherein alien characters possess an animal form.
To clarify, I don’t mean an alien animal form—I mean humanoid aliens that resemble Earth animals like reptiles, wolves, or pigs. To paraphrase Kevin Smith from his CLERKS screenplay, "JEDI was a bunch of Muppets." Talking pigs from the planet Pigsty in the Hoggerian Galaxy would be fine in a book if I were 10. But I'm not. I need some degree of verisimilitude to engage me.
I think my concern is when the alien is described solely in terms of his/her animalistic tendencies (e.g., an alien with tentacles that
Science fiction has used a fair number of Earth species for aliens. Lizards are right up there with insect-based aliens/bug-eyed monsters. Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series features a prominent secondary character, Vel, whose appearance is reminiscent of your average Praying Mantis. S.L. Viehl’s BLADE DANCER includes characters that run the gamut of animalistic accessories: fangs, claws, fur, you name it. And when you delve into realms such as furry fandom, one discovers there are legions of consumers who enjoy zoomorphic characters.Ultimately, it’s the story and/or writing that play a definitive role. Execution can make the difference between a pulpy, campy story and one much more sophisticated in tone. In other words, believability. When zoomorphism is in the house, it takes a high level of authorial skill for me to suspend my disbelief. Done well, the characters feel organic to the worldbuilding and/or they’re compelling enough that their boar-like appearance isn’t a deterrent. But even in the hands of a competent author, I find myself distracted by characters whose hooves, horns, and tails resemble the cast of Old McDonald’s farm.
In Adapting Earth Animals into Alien Lifeforms, S.L. Viehl suggests that authors “Give your reader that point of reference, and then use your artistic skills to build up to something they’ve never seen before – but won’t get lost trying to imagine.” Okay, can’t argue with the idea of constructing accessible aliens. But is it possible to create exotic aliens that don’t alienate readers? Perhaps without using Earth animals as reference?
Writing on the subject, How Alien Should Science Fiction Aliens Be? blogger Peggy notes, in paraphrasing author Daryl Gregory, “that when (or if) we meet another intelligent life form, it is unlikely to be bipedal, let alone humanoid. The problem is incorporating such an alien alien (for want of a better term) into an entertaining story.”
In response to Mr. Gregory’s post, author Kelly McCullough states, “…doesn’t this kind of ignore that the main point of aliens in an awful lot of science fiction isn’t to portray aliens at all, but rather to isolate and examine some specific parts of the human condition?”
Unfortunately, we don’t have the 411 on what true aliens look like. For all we know, some of them will look like lizards. Or prawns. Ultimately, what I question is the view that a hog based alien is as “Other” as it gets, especially without the worldbuilding details to back it up. (Of course, that doesn’t even touch the issue of aliens who share human DNA—sometimes as much as 100%! But that’s a post for another day…).
So now, given further reflection and perusal of various articles, I’ve completely reversed my position that I’ve outgrown zoomorphism. Maybe I haven’t. I do know that my standards have risen considerably for this particular trope. But as long as authors execute stories with considerable thought, I’m certainly game for romances involving any type of alien creatures—even if they are adapted from Earth animals.
What do you think about zoomorphism in science fiction/science fiction romance? What elements make such characters believable? Are there any zoomorphic traits you don’t want to read about anymore? Also, does it make a difference for you whether it appears in books or films?
Joyfully yours,
Heather
23 comments:
I hate insectile aliens. Won't read books that have them if I know beforehand. But that's just a personal quirk and I know people who like it. For some reason, warm blooded animals don't bother me. Loved Ursal LeGiun's Chanur series and they were cats. And I love "smart" animals as secondary characters. Also like animal shapeshifters if they aren't werewolves but more like Nalini Singh's Psy-Changling series. Just don't give me intelligent bugs and expect the book not to hit the wall.
Mainly I think about the environment and how an intelligent species would have evolved in order to exist in that environment. This does give me food for thought though. I agree with what you are saying and perhaps we as writers need to dive into our creative wells to find a different way of describing an alien that doesn't involve Earthly creatures. :) Thanks for the post!
I'm glad you sound a little more open to animal-like aliens. Your post the other day had me a bit worried, tho life didn't give me a decent opportunity to marshall my thought for a well-reasoned reply. {apologetic smile}
I'm afraid the main alternatives are human-like aliens and machine aliens, neither of which I consider the greatest improvement. {lop-sided smile}
Part of the problem is the limits of language. Novels, novellas, and short-stories are all text-based, so you usually can't show a picture of what you mean. A large, jointed appendage is automatically an arm or a leg. A non-jointed appendage is a tentacle or a tail. Trying to re-name them usually turns your prose stilted. So you're stuck with using names that tend to recall familiar creatures. {smile}
The other problem is that human tend to liken the unfamiliar with the familiar. For most people, the most familiar tentacles are octopus, so if you say a creature has tentacles, most readers will assume they're octopus-like. Mention scales, and most will think of reptiles if they're on land or in the air. If they're in liquid, you may get reptile scales or fish scales. And so on. {smile}
Likening the unfamiliar to the familiar is natural to the point of being unavoidable. Trying to avoid it... just doesn't work. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
Oh, this post immediately made me think of Vonda McIntyre's Pitfalls of Writing SFF. Pitfall #7 in particular.
Like you Heather, I enjoyed Earth animal-aliens when I was a kid. But nowadays, I'd like something more evolved. For example, the movie Aliens has some COOL aliens. They're a bit insectoid, but not too much, they have "tentacles" but unlike any I've seen on Earth (they're not octopus-like appendages). Dune has some mammoth worm-things that could never be likened to anything on Earth. Predator has the face of a crab, but that's where the similitude ends.
Actually, of all the aliens, the humanoid ones bother me the less, probably because I'm one, eh. Talk about nombrilism!
I both like and dislike zoomorphism in novels. If the species is described too much like a familiar animal it can annoy me, but on the other hand, like Anne said, people look at things and relate them to what they know to make them easier to picture or identify with.
Seems like it would be awfully hard to create a new alien and make them sympathetic and not relate them to creatures the reader already knows.
I just read a book, not SFR but SF, that does both of these. It has a cat alien who talks in terms of kittens and packleaders and after a while grew on me. But it has some aliens who act and later think both humanoid and totally alien. I found I was only able to draw up sympathy when they started behaving more familiarly. The book was Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan. Excellent book for it's unique ideas, worldbuilding, and eventually for the characters.
Personally, I find it hard to identify with insectoid aliens too. Cats, well, they just seem overdone to me, but I can be drawn in by them after a while.
"Of course, that doesn’t even touch the issue of aliens who share human DNA—sometimes as much as 100%! But that’s a post for another day"
Bring on the post! I was a geneticist in my former life, and the non-husband has learned to duck and cover whenever we're watching something together and the whole 'their DNA has intertwined with our own, creating (pick a hybrid)' comes up. Ugh.
Re zoomorphism, I tend to be fairly tolerant, especially if the author uses the comparison as a jumping-off point and/or turns it around by having (frex) a spider-ish good guy and villains that look like pupplies and kittens. Of course I'm blanking on an example at the moment...
The thing I hate about aliens that are described as animals is that it almost always makes them seem lesser than the human characters. Intelligent ANIMALS not Intelligent BEINGS with as much depth and intellignece and soul as humans. To me that is just a stand in for all the human philosophies that said one people were lesseer than another based on skin color, or ethnic background. Come on, even in Avatar, which has very human looking aliens they are really just an entire species of stereotypical "magic negros".
I have a strong evolutionalry biology background, at a hobby, not professional level, but still pretty serious, and almost all "animal" aliens just don't make sence to me and just seem to prove that the writers have not done their biology homework.
There can be no human size bugs, at least not in an atmosphere were humans can live w/o a some sort of support suit. Exoskeletons just can't work with something that big, and the internal circulatory systems for insects and arthropods are pretty much at their limit with the biggest bugs/crabs/ spiders we have here on earth.
Intelligent animals who's ancestors were something like cats would loose their fur, claws and nictitatig membrains for the same reason that intellignet animals who's ancestors looked like lemers did. The energy needed to grow a big brain does not leave room for things that a brainy animal no longer needs like fur and claws. Assuming an atmosphere that would be human shirtsleave comfortable there is the need to get rid of the extra heat that big brain generates so the fur has to go. Of course, cats are ambush hunters, unlike dogs and humans they don't run down prey over distance so maybe the excess heat thing would not be as big an issue. But I've see it argued than only species that are cursorial (running down prey in a group) hunters could develope the sort of communication skills needed to develope an intelligence so cats and catlike animals would never have the evolutionaly pressure to develope intelligence.
Intellignet lizards, well I like that idea but they would be more like dinosaurs than skinks. Seriously, for most of the history of life on Earth someone looking in from the outside would have put their money on non-avian dinosaurs as being the species that would evolove intelligence. They had forward facing eyes, good binocular vision, and the beginings of forlimbs that could have evolved to me manipulative way way earlier in their evolution that primates did. They did have smaller brains, but they may have used them slightly differently than living animals do today so measuring IQ isn't really possible.
Sorry for the rant, this is just a favorite topic :-)
Exoskeletons just can't work with something that big, and the internal circulatory systems for insects and arthropods are pretty much at their limit with the biggest bugs/crabs/ spiders we have here on earth.
Oh, thank goodness! : )
I have no problems with zoomorphism as long as, for the most part, it makes biological sense. Even taking license with some biology is fine because we don't know everything about every possible environment. I do agree that there are waaay more humanoid aliens out there than would be likely, but it makes them more relatable to the average reader. Again, as long as the author makes an effort to be original and interesting, I'm good. Even if they are giant crabs, spiders or bugs : )
Lovecraft had it right. Whatever we encounter (the entitiy in "The Colour Out of Space", the great race of Yith in "The Shadow out of Time") should/will be very different than anything imagined from memories of Earth and it's creatures.
I don't think its necessarily wrong for writers to look at the evolutionary record here on earth and to project it elsewhere, while not necessarily going out on the homo sapiens branch. But sometimes the results are as ludicrous as Monty Python's E.T. blamanges. "Starship Troopers" was like Dollar Crableg Night at your local seafood hut, writ large. Watching it, I kept thinking our heroes could have used the Alvy Singer method, "Annie, there's a big lobster behind the refrigerator. I can't get it out. This thing's heavy. Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker, it will run out the other side, you know what I mean?'
The aliens have to have some internal consistency and make some sort of wierd sense. I don't see giant crabs, who otherwise scurry about on pointy walky-swimmy legs, suddenly using their chelipeds to fashion faster-than-light spaceships.
I agree with Anne. Language and visual association are huge stumbling blocks when writing anything "unprecedented". If you want to make a body part original, you almost have to write around the impression you have in your mind. The more out there your creation, the tougher it becomes to encapsulate that vision into an effective (& repeatable) visual cue for the reader. Otherwise it's good old limbs, fangs, scales, fur, etc.
I think all aliens, if we're to buy them as characters, have to be zoomorphized or anthropomorphized to some degree. Star Wars did a great job blending Earth animals with the yuck factor. Avatar skimped on the yuck but really socked the characters across.
I always liked the monstrous-but-lovable creatures in ER Burroughs' John Carter of Mars. I still have trouble visualizing Woola, Carter's vicious, loyal pet, but the creature's personality blazed from the page because Burroughs essentially wrote him as a bulldog. It's kinda Disney-esque.
OK. Can't cut & paste. How irritating.
That bit you quote on how aliens would never be bipedal humanoids...why?
I personally love the green-vaporous-lifeform school of aliens, but I wondered: If Electro-Cloud McGee lands on earth would he recognize teetering meat wads as sentient beings? Would we recognize static clouds as Professor and Mrs. Alien? Or would be be like cosmic particles 'sleeting' through one another, passing each other at intergalactic rest stops and never recognizing the other as aware beings?
I'm just saying.
Hey, no one mentioned amphibians as a possible winner in the galactic evolutionary contest. In my current WIP I postulate that the familiar alien "Grays" evolved out of the primordial slime of their planet through an amphibian family tree. Makes for some interesting characteristics. Of course, I already had the alien. I just had to provide the explanation (with apologies to the real scientists in this group!)
I have to agree. Any alien we encounter ain't gonna look like Mr. Spock.
This article is soo true.
Except for the Prawns in D9, which don't resmeble crustaceans THAT much.
I liked the Vorlons and Pakmara of Babylon 5 as the least animalistic of aliens. The Vorlons were just energy stuffed into a giant floating box (with skirt) with a head and the Pakmara don't readily resemble any animal I know of. However, their low budget meant that the rest of the aliens were pretty lame. Guys with poofy hair, bony heads or bug like. The Narns were very well done repitilian aliens, but still animalistic.
I was thinking about this a little more, and realized that another make or break for me is the point of reference of the POV character.
To take it Vor, where survey commander Cordelia looks at a floating alien gas bag with tendrils, notes its radial symmetry and compares it to a jellyfish, imho party boy Ivan would be more likely to compare it to a round banquet table with extra legs and a couple of pillows thrown on top. Or something.
Cat men, lizard men, insect men -- yech! I think they're largely due to a lack of hard work and imagination. I understand why they do it in TV/movies, but _Torchwood's_ "Children of Earth" showed how much writers can do even there. I became a fan of Peter Watts after reading _Blindsight_ with its alien extraterrestrials.
@Katherine I think many filmmakers and authors make insect based aliens for a reason—they tap into some pretty deep-seated fears. Can’t blame you for avoiding them.
@jcaddell Environment, exactly.
@Anne I agree with you about the value of description being based in the familiar. I can certainly understand making comparisons between Earth animals and alien creatures as a point of reference—it’s when there’s an insinuation that the alien shares DNA with Earth animals that makes me go, huh? My experience has been that this descriptive distinction is not clear at times.
Overall, I have mixed feelings on zoomorphism in SF. My experience is exacerbated when it’s not executed well. But like any SF/F fan, I was surrounded by it. Many of my favorite books, films, and shows use/used it. Again, execution is everything. The fascinating part is how much its use can range from profound to just plain silly.
@Nathalie I had to look up nombrilism—lol, it’s French, eh? Shiny! Yeah, as a kid, animal aliens seemed so exotic. Anyone remember the Bee people from Space Cruiser Yamato? Talk about some formative influences! (Katherine, cover your eyes, lol!). Fond memories, indeed, but not sure I could go there again, except in an allegorical tale.
@AnnaM. Cats are overdone for me, too, but if they remake THUNDERCATS into a movie, I’m so there. (Nah, I’m not a walking contradiction!)
Jessica, you’re right—I *should* do a post on the subject. Thanks for the nudge.
Mary, wow, thanks for the information! Now I’m hankering for a course in evolutionary biology—seriously. Your comments point to the importance of not only solid research but the ability to make any type of alien character believable, especially if biological facts are going to be ignored or altered. My hope is that with more digital books on the horizon, there’ll be room for all types of stories with aliens, Earth based or not. And what Cathy in AK said!
@Rudolfo.carrillo Lovecraft is da man.
suddenly using their chelipeds to fashion faster-than-light spaceships.
Esoth, I agree, there are so many logistical factors to consider as well. Often they are never explained or acknowledged. Think of how many different types of restrooms would be required for a multi-species space station. Oy, what a headache. I’m a fan of the film STARSHIP TROOPERS, and while I thought the crabs made for a more exciting confrontation than humans/humanoids would have, I still would have preferred for there to be a human/humanoid intelligence behind the invasion, for exactly the reason you mention.
Robert, to language and visual association I would also add reader expectation and how versed one is in a genre. The more unprecedented something is, the greater the learning curve for readers new to the concept. Definitely something to consider. There are very good reasons zoomorphism is so prevalent, as you, Anne B., and others have pointed out.
Donna, if you can make me believe in amphibian aliens, then you have a winner! That’s my main request--make me believe so I don’t get pulled out of the story.
Nyrath, thanks for the link!
@Josh *giggle* I know. It’s just that I recently watched DISTRICT 9 and wanted to plug it, heh heh. Gawd that movie ROCKED!
Jessica, good point.
Btw, there's a discussion on this topic at io9, which picked up this post. Super title, too:
Do Alien Creatures Based on Earth Animals Get Your Goat?
(Thanks again, Charlie Jane Anders!)
Oh, sorry. I don't hate insectile aliens because I'm afraid of bugs. I'm not. (well, spiders, but they aren't really bugs so don't count.) It's more a case of "its been done to death and I'm sick of it." Its been done so much in movies AND books that doing it now is cliched and boring. The last time insects were done well was in the Enders series by Orson Scott Card, and they weren't the main characters there.
While I, personally, don't believe an alien species would be humaniod, if an author is writing SFR we have to take liberties with the science of evolution. Sure, I could write about a human falling for tentacle-type alien, but no one would buy it. And can you imagine the sex scenes? *shudder*
Katherine, I've been working on something were part of what drives the plot is the tension between two people falling in love who are members of very different species, so different that they don't know how to react when they realize they are attracted to each other.
All to often the aliens in SFR are just standard humans with odd hair, eye, or skin color, or some sort of "furry" anthropormorphic animal and I wanted to see if I could have a romance subplot where the female was not a green chick in a silver bikini.
It's been hard to write without slipping into the *shudder* factor and I'm a "fade to black" sort when it comes to sex scenes.
@Katherine Oh, gotcha! I agree, done to death.
I could write about a human falling for tentacle-type alien, but no one would buy it
*Raises hand* I would! But in order to make a profit, I guess you'd have to charge me a hundred thousand for the book, lol!
Mary, I'm really intrigued by your idea of the attraction dilemma. And I don't think the bedroom door has to be open, either. What would be important to me would be the emotional journey, especially in a story exploring such themes.
Would such a story sell in the hundreds of thousands, or even thousands? Probably not (although never say never, eh?), but with ebooks it's possible to have a handful of such stories in existence so those who are willing to track them down can find them. Thanks to teh Internets, books have a much longer life these days.
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