Re: [GZG] Bovine rebuttal

There's has to be a wiki page or something that can act as a  
permanent repository. Maybe Winch has space on Atomic Rocketry...

On Jun 2, 2008, at 2:15 PM, Allan Goodall wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 7:38 PM,  <emu2020@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Well, to be honest, I rarely have time to read fiction, so my  
>> cross section
>> of sci-fi novels read isn't all that wide. I'd love some  
>> suggestions for
>> books presenting multi-cultural aliens.
>
> Rather than relying on my faulty memory, I asked an authority. A close
> friend of mine is Lorna Toolis, a librarian. Actually, she's not only
> a branch head in the Toronto Public Library system, but she's also the
> head of the Merrill Collection of Speculative Fiction (the largest
> publicly held collection of sci-fi, fantasy and horror in the world),
> and she's head of science fiction, fantasy and horror acquisitions for
> the TPL.
>
> Apparently this is not an uncommon question. She wrote back, "That was
> John Campbell jr's favouite question: 'show me a creature as
> intelligent as a man, which is not a man.'"
>
> Here's what she wrote (some of it is quite appropriate for the
> discussion your e-mail generated):
>
> "C.J. Cherryh does the best aliens and alien societies. 40,000 in
> Gehenna is an enduring favourite of mine for this reason, likewise
> Hunter of Worlds, which deals with the consequences when humans must
> deal with a race of intelligent aliens which evolved from a pack
> species. Serpent's Reach is another good one. Her current Defender /
> Foreigner series is also interesting in the context of this question.
>
> "George R.R. Martin's Tuf Voyaging deals with the ecology of
> non-terran species which are not intelligent. Probably not [what you
> were asking], but still a lot of fun. Likewise David Gerrold's The War
> With the Chtorr series is fun - the alien motivations are not
> particularly alien, but the idea of invading earth by introducing an
> alien ecology is very cool. Start with A Matter for Men.
>
> "Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis books: Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago
> deal with convincing alien/human interaction in a depressing way. J.G.
> Carr's Leviathan's Deep is less depressing, but very hard to find.
>
> "Lem's Solaris is famous, as is Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud. Philip
> K. Dick's The Game-Players of Titan and Our Friends From Frolix-8 are
> also well regarded.
>
> "Other titles include:
> James Gunn   The Listeners
> Robert Silverberg The Tower of Glass
> Ben Bova Voyagers
> Orson Scott Card   Ender's Game
> Jeffrey Carver    The Infinity Link
> Philip Mann	The Eye of the Queen
> David Brin	  The Uplift War
> Richard Cowper  The Twilight of Briareus
> Stephen Goldin, Ed. The alien condition
>
> "Other writers who deal successfully with this topic include Poul
> Anderson, Michael Bishop, David Lake
>
> "This is a topic often dealt with more successfully in short fiction.
> I only listed one anthology because most of the titles I would
> recommend are out of print and difficult to obtain.
>
> "A lot of these are going to be difficult to obtain. The Philip K.
> Dick, C.J. Cherryh, Poul Anderson, David Gerrold, Octavia Butler and
> Card books should all be relatively straight forward."
>
> I'll add a few comments myself.
>
> _Ender's Game_ is interesting, but you only get a very brief glimpse
> of the aliens themselves. It's mostly from the point of view of the
> humans. However, the "Piggies" in the sequel, _Speaker For The Dead_,
> are fairly alien. (Very alien biology, for certain, you don't get into
> their psychology an awful lot.) I would put the sequel above _Ender's
> Game_ on this list.
>
> Niven's books had a number of interesting aliens, though I'm not sure
> the Pak could be described, accurately, as "alien". The Puppeteers are
> probably the most famous of his "alien" aliens.
>
> One of the weirdest aliens is the Shrike from Dan Simmons' Hyperion
> Cantos (I only read the first two; need to add to my reading list).
>
> They also serve as a reason why it's hard to make aliens truly alien.
> If they don't have some level of humanity it's very hard to relate to
> them. Without being able to relate to them, you're stuck with them
> being unknowable antagonists (the bugs in _Starship Troopers_, the
> "ants" in _Armor_, the grendels in _The Legacy of Heorot_, etc.).
>
> An example of making them too easy to relate to humans is the alien
> race in Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity_. The world is really cool,
> but the aliens -- supposedly centipede-like creatures -- are
> criticized as being too human.
>
> I agree with Lorna that many of the weird aliens I've read about are
> from anthologies. One in particular that "haunts" me is an alien race
> that requires a sacrificial final victim in order to end their wars.
> So, they present a prisoner for the humans to kill, and expect the
> humans to present one of their own. The idea of one last death to seal
> the peace seems reasonable enough... unless you're that final victim.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> -- 
> Allan Goodall http://www.hyperbear.com
> agoodall@hyperbear.com
> awgoodall@gmail.com
>
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--
Michael Llaneza
maserati@speakeasy.net
415.624.5960

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