ALL SCI-FI

[Tom]

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Aliens depicted in science fiction movies is another sore spot for me. This is the main reason the 2001 story doesn't trip my trigger. Yes 2001 was realistic in many ways. Yes it merged with cutting edge science in many ways. BUT, it depicted an alien encounter with humans.

Why do I have a problem with this? I really don't have a problem with aliens in a scifi story. My problem is with symmetries. Aliens make for some great scifi adventures. Truly alien beings would make for even greater adventure tho. Aliens have been dumbed down and familiarized for the public and to keep production costs down. The public must be able to 'relate' to the alien in hollyrocks idea.

Seeing aliens that appear as modified humans is old and busted. Just look at some of the aliens we have living on our planet right now. An octopus doesn't look like a human, a crocodile, a flea or anything marine is totally alien to us and they are from our own ancestry. The factors that allowed life on OUR PLANET are unique to OUR PLANET. An alien from another world would be unique to its planet of origin.

If you speculate (scifi is speculative fiction), you will discover that not only will the life from another planet 'look' different it will also have different motive and values. A quick Drake Equation leaves us with a possible billions of planets harboring life in the universe. Sentient life leaves millions. Advanced sentient life perhaps thousands of planets. Thats thousands of planets with lifeforms as diverse as ours on this planet. Lets say billions of species on each planet.

I don't foresee many human-like entities out there. Not only very different in biology I imagine they are very different in morals and ethics if they have any at all.

What could possibly motivate an advanced civilization to seed an already seeded star system? Why, would they pick our little system to do such a thing? 2001 implies that our civilization was seeded by the same aliens. Did we fail? Are the aliens running out of star systems to seed? Do we need an infantile sub-system as a brother? When the new star forms, any life developing on a planet or moon under its influence will take millions, if not, billions of years to develop. Our species was seeded and we took millions of years to advance enough to discover the artifact on the moon. Why plant the artifact on the moon except to detect the advance of our species? The whole premise makes me think the author was shallow and short-sighted. He obviously didn't think his story thru.

There are few stories in film that explore true alien lifeforms. Babylon 5 attempted to do so. The Vorlons (minus the encounter suits) were kinda alien but their ships and technology as depicted were based on human controls and standards. Why would an energy being need a doorway type hatch for egress to their ship? The shadows biological makeup was alien but with a hint of insect. However why would they need human telepaths to pilot their ships?
Star Trek is fraught with humanoid aliens. They explored a few concepts like the crystaline entity, farpoint station and the horta but even those aliens had motives similar to humans.

I would love to see a movie that depicts an alien species that doesn't resemble humans in any way. They would need to be explorers because the universe is big, really BIG and the chances of a civilization finding us on purpose then purposely coming to us is slimmer the bigger the universe gets. I would also like to know what we have on this little planet that would be so important that an alien would want to come here? What thing or concept is so unique to our planet that it cannot be found in any other part of the universe?
I can think of a few but would an alien lifeform use my conceptions? The more alien its motives for contacting us the more I would enjoy the story.

Another concept I enjoy dealing with aliens is that aliens are not so much alien as they are ancestors of life on our own planet. This is more believable to me than extraterrestrial entities visiting us. Yes, I believe there are advanced alien civilizations out there, quite a few I'm sure. Its more likely that the aliens that would feel the need to visit us will be our own ancestors.

Visitors from the far future, millions of years or more, would 'look' like aliens to us because evolution and biological changes over that amount of time would change their makeup and appearance. They would still have our basic construction, 2 eyes, a nose, a mouth, legs, arms and torso. Their mode of function would be similar to ours. They would use devices that are manipulated by its biological constraints. It would need a doorway to egress and its environment and constructs would be similar in size to ours beacuse the planet that dictated their evolution would be the same as ours.

In the future orbits decay, atmospheres change and life adapts. The alien grey might be a culmination of evolution over millions of years. Large eyes due to cloud cover, hot bodies due to increased heat in their environment due to greenhouse effect, grey bodies due to pigmentation changes over vast generations of environmental adaptations. Telepathy due to advanced understanding of the brain and communications. Small mouths due to the ability to manufacture high nutritional food in smaller readily digestible concoctions.

The point of this reply is to illustrate that movies have a long way to go to even come close to what is possible in science fiction. All the movies in this thread have entertainment value as long as you can suspend your disbelief enough to let the inconsistencies pass. The WOW factor is missing for me. The WOW factor is what brought me to the scifi genre in the first place. The WOW factor is what moves me to the science theory field now. The scifi fan in me sees the possibility of science fiction stories that can produce the WOW factor but hollyrock is unable to make that leap. Its the bucks that prohibit new ideas. Why take a chance with new ideas if the old busted ones are still making money? Result - Sequels. Hollyrock knows the model is old and busted. The new science that would make fiction is too far above the average ticket holder's concepts. Its not a sure moneymaker. Giger's alien, the predator and pandora are the sure fire moneymakers so they will do sequels and spinoffs to make more money. The result, we will be stuck with the same concepts over and over.

[Bud Brewster]

A quick reply to a post that deserves a much longer one, but it's nearly 11:00 pm, and soon I'll need to enter the renewal cycle you humans call sleep.

Uh . . . I mean . . . I've gotta hit the hay, guys. The old sandman is making me ??? oh, skip it. My cover's already blown.

Anyway, Tom, I'll just quote the immortal words of one of mankind's greatest philosophers ??? Lily Tomlin ??? who once told Johnny Carson, "That's why they call it show business . . . not show art."

(sigh *) Oh well.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Tom]

On the subject of Depicting Aliens Hollyrock could get some good pointers from a community called
Speculative Evolution.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/index/

They even have a wiki ???



http://speculativeevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

??? and a wiki on Speculative Biology
http://speculativeevolution.wikia.com/wiki/Speculative_Biology

I am a member of that community but I don't post there ??? They are WAY too smart for me!

Still interesting to read and technically in the Science Fiction Realm but the biology is very strong.
Call it "Hard SciFi" with emphasis on HARD!