Re: [GZG] Gzg-l Digest, Vol 10, Issue 1

Eli said:

> One element that almost never seems to be represented in any sort of 
> fiction
> is diversity in alien species. Just about everything you see, seems to

> have
> all the aliens of a particular species speaking the same language,
having
> the same culture, the same philosophies, etc. This happens I'm sure,
but
> it's way to common in sci-fi to be realistic.

There is three possible reasons for this; 1) Laziness on the part of the

writer or film/television maker; 2) The aliens encountered all come from
one 
subsection of the alien race - eg in both Tuffleyverse and Traveller
2300 
various ethnic groups colonise various regions of space. If an outsider
were 
to turn up and run into the ESU block or the Chinese Arm, what 
extrapolations would they draw for all humanity, based on the sample
they 
had encountered? 3) Before a race can tap enough resources to expand
into 
space, some form of Globalisation of the home world must happen. So, not

only do smaller/weaker languages and cultures become absorbed, but
"racial" 
characteristics become blurred as artificial boundaries such as state 
borders become obsolete and people move and mingle more. Perhaps
variations 
remain within the resulting blended culture, but to an outsider they are
too 
subtle to catch. So, on Earth, we have everyone speaking English,
watching 
American style movies, working in a form of state-regulated capitalism,
and 
looking vaguely like East Asians or Chinese, or statistically, anyway.

David 

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