The Worst Story

This is how I'm keeping track of my word count. I've got two days when I know I won't be able to write so I'm trying to get ahead as much as I can.

I'm already at the stage of using up a lot of my preplanned plot, and feeling that this has to be the worst story ever.

My aliens look like large blobs of jelly, with many eyes on stalks around the top which are in constant movement. They  have complete rotational symmetry so they have no front or back; they have tentacles round their middles and stumpy legs. They can’t hear and they communicate by flashing coloured patterns over their skin.

I also have another set of aliens that look like Wookies, and the ones that look like crickets but are the size of a large poodle. The latter are companion animals to the Wookies, sort of.

It all seemed so logical at the time.

Aliens

This is what the aliens' faces look like in my Space Escape nanonovel, although their bodies are similar to spider monkeys'.

You can see more potential aliens here.

I'm not writing or editing and I haven't been around much because I've had a CFS flareup. I hope to be back to normal soon.

First Contact

For those of us interested in science fiction, I wrote in a previous post about the problems of talking to aliens. How could we communicate with beings so vastly different from us? Most of us have enough problems understanding someone from France or Russia.

A lot of people seem to think that drawing and maths are key. I recently came across this article which makes some interesting suggestions.

I'm not convinced that even simple drawings would be understood across such a vast cultural gulf. Suppose the aliens "see" by echolocation? But if we're writing stories we have to assume a lot of commonalities or there would be nothing to tell. Or would there?
 

Are your aliens weird enough?

they feel no pain [...]their lips are behind their front teeth, they breathe mostly through their skin, and acid doesn't really burn them

from Popsci

These aren't aliens. They are naked mole rats.

If a terrestrial mammal is so very weird, how much stranger do our aliens need to be?

Talking to aliens

When I was at High School we had assembly every day. The whole school assembled in the hall and sang hymns, listened to a Bible reading and joined in prayers followed by the headmistress reading out school notices. I used to sit cross-legged on the floor in my school uniform wondering what it was like in the French schools during assembly and what their school uniforms looked like. What I didn't know was that French schools don't have anything resembling assembly and the children don't wear uniform.

I can't help thinking that when we write science fiction about aliens we are just as blinkered as I was then. Take for example:

At least one species, the Manti, were found to be intelligent. [...] Within several months of first contact, the scientists were able to develop a common language with the Mandi.

(From Conundrum on Titan by Patricia Stewart on 365 Tomorrows.)

I'm not sure that I can believe that if we find creatures that are less intelligent than we are that we will manage to find a common language. We don't seem to have done very well with chimps or bonobos and we certainly don't treat any Earth animals as intelligent beings on a level with ourselves.

If we meet aliens that are more intelligent than us, I wonder if they will treat us as we do the chimps, yet this is assuming that their culture is in many ways similar to ours. Somehow that feels rather like wondering what hymns the French children sing in assembly.