Alien Others
Dec. 3rd, 2011 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethReading fics set on alien worlds I've started to get a bit annoyed that the go to background for really incomprehensibly alien aliens is something that looks either a bit tribal or a whole lot Japanese. The Japan thing irritates especially when the whole fic is translated from the alien language of the alien world in another galaxy full of aliens that haven't spoken to us in ten thousand years, but when they still have weird untranslatable words, oh look, that looks a bit familiar, other galaxies have a Japan. And it's not just the thing where grabbing a library book from a different shelf would be about a bazillion times more original by now. There's a lot of history to grab from. Interesting things could happen at random. But no, same old same old happens.
So here's a challenge: Write an alien world based solely on your daily experience. Things that you personally see in your ordinary day to day. Preferably things associated with your class and social groups. Write that as alien. It'll be about a billion times richer, if you can manage it.
... yes, this is like why I also like urban fantasy and hidden SF like Torchwood, but sideways of it. That's adding aliens to the familiar world, not quite the same. What I'm suggesting is stripping the veil of familiarity and seeing one's own culture from its building blocks, and how difficult to understand it has been, without this many years of practice.
The simples way is to write it from the point of view of a character who didn't grow up on Earth. The good trick there is to make it so it's the silly people they're observing that end up looking alien and strange, rather than just making a laugh at the point of view character for not understanding.
The very good trick way is to tweak the presentation just enough that it looks thoroughly alien and strange without stepping outside of your daily commute. Life is deeply weird, humans are pretty incomprehensible, and not so much of what we do is based on logics. There's all symbol sets and conventional behaviour and design choices and architecture and transport that shape our behaviour in ways that only go invisible because, well, our brains have better things to do than chew over the same old same old. We're all weird incomprehensible aliens. Make a world out of that.
Besides, put an SG team on my bus ride home and you'll get story out of it, even if it's just them figuring out where to sit and all the assorted students, mothers&babies, pensioners, and people taking the bus back from work at odd hours of the day have to react to the weird dudes with the inconvenient backpacks. You can get a ton of worldbuilding out of the contents of the average bus. Even the existence of the average bus. And I'm only starting with the bus cause that's where I do most of my staring into space.
So, challenge: Write your world as alien. See what happens.
So here's a challenge: Write an alien world based solely on your daily experience. Things that you personally see in your ordinary day to day. Preferably things associated with your class and social groups. Write that as alien. It'll be about a billion times richer, if you can manage it.
... yes, this is like why I also like urban fantasy and hidden SF like Torchwood, but sideways of it. That's adding aliens to the familiar world, not quite the same. What I'm suggesting is stripping the veil of familiarity and seeing one's own culture from its building blocks, and how difficult to understand it has been, without this many years of practice.
The simples way is to write it from the point of view of a character who didn't grow up on Earth. The good trick there is to make it so it's the silly people they're observing that end up looking alien and strange, rather than just making a laugh at the point of view character for not understanding.
The very good trick way is to tweak the presentation just enough that it looks thoroughly alien and strange without stepping outside of your daily commute. Life is deeply weird, humans are pretty incomprehensible, and not so much of what we do is based on logics. There's all symbol sets and conventional behaviour and design choices and architecture and transport that shape our behaviour in ways that only go invisible because, well, our brains have better things to do than chew over the same old same old. We're all weird incomprehensible aliens. Make a world out of that.
Besides, put an SG team on my bus ride home and you'll get story out of it, even if it's just them figuring out where to sit and all the assorted students, mothers&babies, pensioners, and people taking the bus back from work at odd hours of the day have to react to the weird dudes with the inconvenient backpacks. You can get a ton of worldbuilding out of the contents of the average bus. Even the existence of the average bus. And I'm only starting with the bus cause that's where I do most of my staring into space.
So, challenge: Write your world as alien. See what happens.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 04:48 pm (UTC)I have for a while decided to read new authors only if they're women. In the hopes there's more and more interesting women in their books. That hasn't been working out so well lately though.
Are they good?
no subject
Date: 2011-12-03 05:04 pm (UTC)The only problem is that some of the early books are pretty sexist in passing, although White later learned better.