A guessing game, Alien, technology and their asthetics, how you would design/imagine a alien species and their technology Options

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Realistically, I think the one thing that'd be the most likely to be universal amongst all high-tech races would be some sort of hand, claw, or tentacle to manipulate tools with, especially with a suitable level of dexterity.

[Graion Dilach]

His most famous series (the Foundation/Robot series, depends on whether or not you buy into his attempt to solder the 2 series together) didn't involve any aliens at all (except maybe that the robots killed all alien species in the galaxy in order to protect humanity or something but since we don't see any of that...) And isn't Gaia still a byproduct of that robot (and an indirect byproduct of humans, it's been a while since I read those novels)

Oh wait, you're talking about that one novel with that parallel universe where there's that alien species that comes in 3 genders and they had a really weird reproduction cycle or something like that.

There was also a chapter during Foundation(?) when they found an alien species and evacuated them to the Magellan clouds (thereafter erased all records maintaining them and enforced the-only-this-galaxy rule) to protect it from themselves.

Not sure when this happened tho because I read them all in a whole run within a single month like a decade ago and I can't remember which book had which storyline. xD

This post has been edited by Graion Dilach: 28 Sep 2014, 10:43

[MARS]

Voted hard sci-fi, cyberpunk, biomech and 21st century for elements that I'd consider interesting.

The thing that makes it difficult to think up plausible alien civilisations is that we are bound by the biological and societal preconceptions in our own human mind. We simply have a hard time imagining 'believable' things outside that horizon until we actually encounter such creatures. However, I do believe that convergence is a possibility. Based on what we know of our own environment, we do have an idea as to what kind of environment may produce life and what evolutionary circumstances might make it evolve into something sentient or intelligent. Now, if a planet is in any way Earth-like, it wouldn't be outright absurd to assume that the creatures that may live there might bear certain similarities to the ones we know. Depending on environmental conditions, there would be bacteria, fungi, plant and animal analogues in the sea, on land and in the air - and some of their traits may very well remind us of terrestrial avians, fish, amphibians, reptiles or mammals in some way because similar environments can be assumed to produce superficially similar creatures. Naturally, this doesn't rule out that we might encounter something utterly bizarre - but we can only base our ideas of what might exist on our own frame of reference, based on our observations of Earth life.

Now, societies would be similar: I imagine that any early civilisation would start out as hunter and gatherers which would eventually discover some kind of agriculture, settle down and craft a cultural narrative around their pack and its ancestral living space. Social behaviour and pack mentality would be required for any being to evolve into one that is truly intelligent. You can never build a society around roaming predators with no social behaviour aside from hunting and reproduction. Over time, settlements would evolve into villages, cities, states, nations and associations of nations, all of which are the result of that tribal pack behaviour that makes civilisation possible to begin with. Now, what their tech, society and culture would be like is entirely up for grabs, but based on this assumption, I would imagine that intelligent aliens, with enough of a history behind them, would also have things like religions, different ideas of governance or economics, nationalities etc.

From a creative standpoint, I've always been annoyed at sci-fi stories that depicted scientifically advanced aliens as mindless animals and savages, because that always seemed contradictory to me. Why are there so many depictions of supposedly intelligent aliens that don't seem to wear any kind of clothing? Why do members of the same species often look completely alike and interchangeable when there's so much visual difference between humans from different places of the Earth? Why is there so rarely a real kind of culture or a pop culture? The 'planet of hats' trope comes to mind, where every alien species can be aptly summarised by a simple trait, i.e. 'this alien species is war-like and violent' or 'this alien-species is enlightened and pacifist'? One thing that annoys me about a lot of sci-fi is this assumption that an alien society, which accounts for an entire planet or more, is super-homogenous and one-note compared to our own observation of humanity itself, i.e. at some point every alien species evolves into some kind of planetary union, abandons nationalities, religions, cultures and everything in favour of becoming one and then you get outrageous plot lines built around some small handful or individual alien that's different from the norm because they're a pacifist Klingon or a hybrid caught between cultures and other non-sense like that.

[Kalga]

Agreed, though the problem has always been on of size and scope. Heck most writers can't even capture the sheer amount of diversity of humanity*, let alone developing similar amount of cultures for another planet of the week. Adding to the problem is the tendency for humans to categorize things by similarities (take me for example, I can't tell you what's the difference between Americans** and Canadians** or the differences between various Latin American cultures, and I realized that's my problem), thus creating large amount of slightly*** different cultures for an alien species might be more trouble than it is worth in most situations****.

Since most***** people here on this forum is more sophisticated than the average rabble we do tend to expect higher quality stuff.

---------
*what, just a few thousand cultures spread out over a single planet?
**besides what I learned from countryballs
***of course those little differences could mean the world to those involved, but we as the audience won't understand that to the same degree, if we understand it at all.
****I believe that DS9 did an ok job of making different cultures for an alien species, but then again that species was there for the entirety of the show.
*****there's always the noobs that ask stupid questions and/or make dumb requests but they usually wise up or leave.

[Die Hindenburg]

Voted hard sci-fi, cyberpunk, biomech and 21st century for elements that I'd consider interesting.

The thing that makes it difficult to think up plausible alien civilisations is that we are bound by the biological and societal preconceptions in our own human mind. We simply have a hard time imagining 'believable' things outside that horizon until we actually encounter such creatures. However, I do believe that convergence is a possibility. Based on what we know of our own environment, we do have an idea as to what kind of environment may produce life and what evolutionary circumstances might make it evolve into something sentient or intelligent. Now, if a planet is in any way Earth-like, it wouldn't be outright absurd to assume that the creatures that may live there might bear certain similarities to the ones we know. Depending on environmental conditions, there would be bacteria, fungi, plant and animal analogues in the sea, on land and in the air - and some of their traits may very well remind us of terrestrial avians, fish, amphibians, reptiles or mammals in some way because similar environments can be assumed to produce superficially similar creatures. Naturally, this doesn't rule out that we might encounter something utterly bizarre - but we can only base our ideas of what might exist on our own frame of reference, based on our observations of Earth life.

Now, societies would be similar: I imagine that any early civilisation would start out as hunter and gatherers which would eventually discover some kind of agriculture, settle down and craft a cultural narrative around their pack and its ancestral living space. Social behaviour and pack mentality would be required for any being to evolve into one that is truly intelligent. You can never build a society around roaming predators with no social behaviour aside from hunting and reproduction. Over time, settlements would evolve into villages, cities, states, nations and associations of nations, all of which are the result of that tribal pack behaviour that makes civilisation possible to begin with. Now, what their tech, society and culture would be like is entirely up for grabs, but based on this assumption, I would imagine that intelligent aliens, with enough of a history behind them, would also have things like religions, different ideas of governance or economics, nationalities etc.

From a creative standpoint, I've always been annoyed at sci-fi stories that depicted scientifically advanced aliens as mindless animals and savages, because that always seemed contradictory to me. Why are there so many depictions of supposedly intelligent aliens that don't seem to wear any kind of clothing? Why do members of the same species often look completely alike and interchangeable when there's so much visual difference between humans from different places of the Earth? Why is there so rarely a real kind of culture or a pop culture? The 'planet of hats' trope comes to mind, where every alien species can be aptly summarised by a simple trait, i.e. 'this alien species is war-like and violent' or 'this alien-species is enlightened and pacifist'? One thing that annoys me about a lot of sci-fi is this assumption that an alien society, which accounts for an entire planet or more, is super-homogenous and one-note compared to our own observation of humanity itself, i.e. at some point every alien species evolves into some kind of planetary union, abandons nationalities, religions, cultures and everything in favour of becoming one and then you get outrageous plot lines built around some small handful or individual alien that's different from the norm because they're a pacifist Klingon or a hybrid caught between cultures and other non-sense like that.

I agree with most of the points here. But many scientists believe that aliens that are intelligent evolved from predators. Its true that most settings dont bother doing elaborate alien species with a diversty, even Mass Effect supposed well writen aliens are almost completly homogenous. Oh and popcutlure? Either used for laughs or aliens abadoned it.


Sadly through most science fiction stories are just that: Fiction with a small little bit of science or lack there of.

Since i am pretty dumb in biology, i either create stories where aliens dont exist at all (all life there descended form earth) or my alien species are abursdly weird (even weirder then the most crazy species in Warhammer, Lovecraft or any of these science-fantasy franchises.)

[X1Destroy]

My idea would be............"God is Alien."

[Kalga]

My idea would be............"God is Alien."

You know someone will make that joke, BTW that's about the only decent scene in that movie.

[Svea Rike]

The 'planet of hats' trope comes to mind, where every alien species can be aptly summarised by a simple trait, i.e. 'this alien species is war-like and violent' or 'this alien-species is enlightened and pacifist'? One thing that annoys me about a lot of sci-fi is this assumption that an alien society, which accounts for an entire planet or more, is super-homogenous and one-note compared to our own observation of humanity itself, i.e. at some point every alien species evolves into some kind of planetary union, abandons nationalities, religions, cultures and everything in favour of becoming one and then you get outrageous plot lines built around some small handful or individual alien that's different from the norm because they're a pacifist Klingon or a hybrid caught between cultures and other non-sense like that.

Oh contrare! In recent times I've seen to like that trope as if the work is set in the future it could actually make sense. For example, if a culture is warlike to the extreme, the logical conclusion is that one culture that was warlike to the extreme simply conquered all the other cultures. If the alien species is benevolent, they might have evolved from many different cultures and just amalgamated into one single culture. I think in the future, Earth would be a place of a similar culture, I mean look today: The only difference between Las Vegas and Hong Kong is the language on the neon signs. Sure, ancient cultures were far and off different but all in all, the modern world is pretty similar wherever you go (even if some parts of the world are behind than others). And about the similarity thing; scientists predict that with a more global and widespread population like we have today, most humans will breed interracially and in the future, there might just be no 'white', 'black' or 'asian' people - There's been enough DNA combination to create one worldwide race!

This post has been edited by Svea Rike: 29 Sep 2014, 16:04

[GDIZOCOM]

Went with Religious, Hard Scifi, Biomechanical and Organic

I decided to leave out 21st century as I've always seen it as a guess as to whether they're on par with us/behind us or more advanced than we are in terms of army. I'd also leave intelligence level here (could also be any of the three)


Placed Hard Scifi and Biomechanical/Organic together as I can see the two mix and complement each other in a few ways (more than military, perhaps whatever they do with logistics/resource gathering and more) That and somewhat like how infantry and drones here can be utilized together in battle (could be a bit of a bad comparison but somewhere along those lines). Basically biomechanical or organic being perhaps being weaker compared to the hard scifi units they have which of course would be stronger and capable of more.

And lastly religion. I never thought of it being too hard for an alien species to have something like a religion where they follow everything their supreme leader says (and if some of their brethren think it through enough they might question some of these actions and rebel) and devote their lives to said leader. It could be anything from one of their own or perhaps something else that what people would call here a supernatural deity that we can't actually comprehend because we haven't seen one yet.



All guesses above made based on what I know at the moment, I'm not really much into digging what alien species would be like, just the probability that there are out there. If any I've had more interest in our own oceans because most of it is still unexplored so there you go.

[MARS]

Oh contrare! In recent times I've seen to like that trope as if the work is set in the future it could actually make sense. For example, if a culture is warlike to the extreme, the logical conclusion is that one culture that was warlike to the extreme simply conquered all the other cultures. If the alien species is benevolent, they might have evolved from many different cultures and just amalgamated into one single culture. I think in the future, Earth would be a place of a similar culture, I mean look today: The only difference between Las Vegas and Hong Kong is the language on the neon signs. Sure, ancient cultures were far and off different but all in all, the modern world is pretty similar wherever you go (even if some parts of the world are behind than others). And about the similarity thing; scientists predict that with a more global and widespread population like we have today, most humans will breed interracially and in the future, there might just be no 'white', 'black' or 'asian' people - There's been enough DNA combination to create one worldwide race!

It seems unlikely to me that humanity would eventually take on a single generic phenotype that'd be shared across the globe, no matter how politically united or culturally globalised the world becomes. At the end of the day, people will always be more statistically likely to date and reproduce within their own population, thus ensuring that there would always be some degree of observable differences in ethnicities. Do note that I'm looking at this from a pure feasibility/probability perspective, with no intent to imply a quality judgement in this. My own personal situation at this point in time actually contradicts this opinion, but I reckon it's still the default way for most humans to stay within the same localised gene pool, so to say.

[ComradeCrimson]

One sci fi setting in a game I feel did aliens somewhat right at least when it came to culture is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and its expansion, Alien crossfire. The Progenitors are an ancient race that has gone so far in its evolutionary path that its presumed their homeworld is long gone after a terrible event- and there is a huge cultural rift between the two factions of this race. One faction, the Usurpers, wishes to utilize the game's planet mind (which the planet ingame is quasi sentient, its lifeforms having a sort of semi conscious mental connection with each other.) to achieve transcendence- essentially, immortality through merging your own mind with said planet's and taking control of it and becoming an ethereal god in a sense. While the other faction of this same alien species wishes to prevent this as they don't want another horrific "flowering" of another botched attempt or something at this and want to keep the planet in its pristine condition, not wanting to repeat atrocities of the past. It was interesting because it showed a huge cultural difference for a species that still shared many traits- both were still very warlike and xenophobic in their own right, both were very holier than thou in their attitudes, but they both have different ideas on what was right. And one could say that while they looked nothing like humans, they did share cultural similarities. They still felt pretty damn alien to me regardless.

Something I find about Star Trek that's interesting is that Vulcans were actually a warlike, very masculine and violent race of feuding barbarians at one point, that has a very well defined warrior culture. The thing is a prophet of sorts actually managed to quell the planet's barbaric chieftains through a sort of zen like philosophy of logic and finding perfection within yourself, which is why Spock and other Vulcan's are so obsessed with perfectionism and logic- and why Spock is somewhat ostracized from his own people for such emotional outbursts. Star Trek of course is very flawed in the sense where it suffers "humans with different skins" syndrome- but it does achieve the feel of different races feeling "alien" because they are so remarkably different then our current one- even though the creators drew from human history and cultures.

For me aliens could be a mixture of both being similar to us... and outright, truly alien. I believe that life can evolve from different conditions we find on Earth, as well as different chemicals and I believe its possible life can form even from different materials. We fully well know that different forms of respiration occur and animals even on Earth breathe different chemicals and gases, and throughout Earth's history the types of gases inhaled by creatures has changed fairly drastically. If humans went back several million years, maybe even like 120 million years we'd have serious problems breathing the air because we'd have issues with the high amounts of oxygen, it'd actually be somewhat toxic for us.

In my eyes aliens are going to be entirely dependent upon the world they live on and in a sense humans, as different as we are, every culture on the planet has some degree of similarities in values, most major world religions have similar aspirations of what they sense is good, and every culture and society of people on Earth has some concept of warfare. Even relatively cooperative, pacifist people's like the Inuit of my own country have some notions of conflict in their history.
Biologically we are so varied by our environments and the genetics associated that for many years we thought our different races were actually different species. (that and ignorance/arrogance helped with that perception.) With aliens I suspect that their environment and how they adapted to it is going to determine their culture. We humans adapted to our planet by being omnivores, who progresses by tactically hunting and sharing meat with our fellow humans- it was trade, interaction and cooperation that helped us outlast the Neanderthals, intelligent but reclusive cousins of ours. And it was tools and sharing of resources in general that made humans the way they are today- a creative, ambitious species that is both violent and cooperative. We value our fellow man and human being but we are also known to ruthlessly kill our fellow human being as well- and this is due to the nature of our evolution and development.

A species that develops as a herbivore in a very rich biodiversive world on the other hand may be very much a more protective, nurturing mentality over aggressive, murdering another of their own kind may very well be something unimaginable- this species may also be very much a reclusive species as well, and you might have very varied, highly specialized races of this alien but they'll all be fairly pacifist due to the nature of their evolution. The only time one of them may fight is if their food supplies run low- and on that note they may just simply respect each others boundaries, their concept of warfare only being in the sense of protecting each other and their food supplies from other creatures.

While on the other hand a total scavenger on a rather barren world is going to be violent and very individualistic, and they may only pair up to mate or to help take down prey, and then squabble over the leftovers due to the scarcity of resources. Such mentalities might mirror our common corporate businessman and emulate the corporate ladder and all its ruthlessness for example, and this species may very well be what we'd considered a bunch of sociopaths.

And that's just mentality wise. Physically their conditions are drastically going to change them and make their evolutionary process unique.

This post has been edited by ComradeCrimson: 30 Sep 2014, 11:39

[Die Hindenburg]

Oh if you only know how crazy and loudacris my two own alien species are...

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Perosonally I think we've overlooked one huge thing that we'll never be able to work with aliens due to.

Numbers.

We humans think in base 10, what if they think in base 6? or 14?

[Kalga]

There are still some mathematical concepts are transcend number base, and any interstellar civilization would know and recognize it...

... and beside, we already use different number base to a certain degree, like the imperial measuring system and how we measure time.

This post has been edited by Kalga: 4 Oct 2014, 4:55