October Novel Prep Challenge

Aliens are alien.

We share a planet with several other sentient species - dolphins and octopodes (yeah, that's the proper plural) come to mind. We know they're intelligent because we've observed them doing intelligent stuff - solving problems, communicating, and so on.

And yet we can't manage more than the most rudimentary communication with them. We have better rapport with dogs, and dogs (with the exception of border collies, who can solve partial differential equations while balancing footballs on their noses and refusing to vote Libertarian) aren't all that bright.

What makes us think we'd be able to communicate with something truly alien, or even recognize that it possesses those traits we've come to call "intelligence?"

(I'm just going to forestall the jokes about not finding intelligence among humans right now. They're as trite as Uranus "jokes." Please try to restrain yourself. The fact that you'd be typing it at a computer or into a tablet or phone, for people with computers or tablets or phones to read, pretty much negates your entire joke. Trust me on this one; I'm also a comedy writer.)

Now, as a thinking, sentient and, yes, intelligent member of homo sapiens, I have my doubts about the existence of the flying-saucer type of aliens. But as a writer, aliens have potential as characters.

So I tried to get in the mind of my aliens today, for the antagonist exercise. It's not easy. It's too easy to anthropomorphize, ascribing to them human emotion, motivation, reason. But then, if I don't, they're not very useful antagonists, are they? They have to have something we can relate to. I mean, they don't even have the same kind of survival instincts that we do. They're not even what we would call animals. Or plants.

But hey, what's writing for if we don't try? So I tried. But I get the distinct impression I'd be better off writing urban fantasy or postmodernist drivel. At least the postmodernist drivel doesn't have to make sense.