The problem with aliens in media is, they're often barely aliens. Even heptapods at roughly the same space and time scales would be pretty familiar to us. Some get away with this by going for common ancestry (including one forerunner that mucked around shaping new sapients to its scale) - some even cleverly use it a a plot point.
But those who try and play the alien alien card, I can think of precisely one major work of this last decade that did it believably. Unfortunately, saying which one would be sort of a spoiler... (The likes of Alastair Reynold's Inhibitor series get the benefit of the doubt because those aliens mostly sit in the background, while those that do interact with humans are probably chosen/built for their closeness)
Which is not to say this film won't be good. And well, we probably need something at least remotely familiar for this kind of story to work, particularly when we're so accustomed to rubber forehead aliens.
So as long as it doesn't fall into the varied but equally trite clichés of the More Advanced Species, this could work. Thanks for sharing, I'll keep an eye on it.
Its very hard to imagine what an actual alien would be like. Best guess is either of two things: 1) so beyond what we can understand that we might not even recognize it as intelligent...or even as alive. 2) Weirdly familiar, because of some currently unrecognizable laws of convergent evolution that drives species in certain directions (i.e. bipedal, laterally symmetrical beings of a roughly human size with a very similar range of senses).
Who's to say that an alien intelligence will think at the same relative speed as we do? Perhaps their circumstances mean much slower cognition with a considerably more vast intellect. They could be vastly more intellegent than us....but actually think much, much slower.
Scientifically authentic eh ? I guess that's better than accurate. I'm gonna use that one. "Is it really true ?", "Well, it's really my opinion that it's true."
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.
Finally, non-humanoid aliens (still, based on octopodes).
ReplyDeleteThe problem with aliens in media is, they're often barely aliens. Even heptapods at roughly the same space and time scales would be pretty familiar to us.
ReplyDeleteSome get away with this by going for common ancestry (including one forerunner that mucked around shaping new sapients to its scale) - some even cleverly use it a a plot point.
But those who try and play the alien alien card, I can think of precisely one major work of this last decade that did it believably. Unfortunately, saying which one would be sort of a spoiler...
(The likes of Alastair Reynold's Inhibitor series get the benefit of the doubt because those aliens mostly sit in the background, while those that do interact with humans are probably chosen/built for their closeness)
Which is not to say this film won't be good. And well, we probably need something at least remotely familiar for this kind of story to work, particularly when we're so accustomed to rubber forehead aliens.
So as long as it doesn't fall into the varied but equally trite clichés of the More Advanced Species, this could work.
Thanks for sharing, I'll keep an eye on it.
Also, why didn't they land in any European city?
ReplyDeleteOh, too soon early?
Its very hard to imagine what an actual alien would be like. Best guess is either of two things: 1) so beyond what we can understand that we might not even recognize it as intelligent...or even as alive. 2) Weirdly familiar, because of some currently unrecognizable laws of convergent evolution that drives species in certain directions (i.e. bipedal, laterally symmetrical beings of a roughly human size with a very similar range of senses).
ReplyDeleteWho's to say that an alien intelligence will think at the same relative speed as we do? Perhaps their circumstances mean much slower cognition with a considerably more vast intellect. They could be vastly more intellegent than us....but actually think much, much slower.
The aliens are the ones made out of meat.
ReplyDeleteScientifically authentic eh ? I guess that's better than accurate. I'm gonna use that one. "Is it really true ?", "Well, it's really my opinion that it's true."
ReplyDeleteI may have to watch that.
ReplyDeleteSaw Arrival last night (Nov. 14, 2016) and, applause, thought it was pretty good. Better than Interstellar for sure. Time is not linear.
ReplyDelete