Re: [GZG] Bovine rebuttal

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All I can say is, "Wow."

That is a million times more of a reply than I could have expected.

Thank you,

Eli
-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Allan Goodall" <agoodall@hyperbear.com> 

> On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 7:38 PM, 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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