Re: [GZG] Bovine rebuttal

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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