Alien species in a fantasy world

No, not “extraterrestrial” aliens.

The thing is, it seems to me that there is considerable shortage of truly alien civilizations in fantasy worlds. Every “race” is basically a slightly modified and most importantly simplified version of human beings. Even the unreal fauna is usually modeled after a real animal.

Why is it so? Is it good or bad? Do truly alien creatures belong in fantasy?

Let’s talk basics first. Appearance. What’s the usual fantasy “race” like? Two hands, two legs. Opposable thumbs on palms, two eyes, ears and nostrils, one mouth. Everything in the same position as with humans. Sure there are minor differences: some completely meaningless like pointed ears or less/more fingers, some unique at first glance but made mundane by overuse like horns and wings. Essentially humans after extensive plastic surgery. Nothing truly alien.

Biology? Same as humans. May refrain from eating plants/meat/anything besides souls but basically identical in essence. They eat, they breathe, and they drink. Not always all three but at least they appear to have all the necessary apparatus. If their biology does differ from that of humans it almost never shows in any way in their anatomy.

Society? Absolute disaster. It there is any mention of one at all it’s either virtually indistinguishable from one of human societies sometime and somewhere in history or makes no sense upon closer inspection. But the worst crime is not in creating those cultures in the image of a real one but in making them overly simplistic e.g. defining them exclusively by war or religion or gender equality/reverse gender roles.

Animals? Nothing better here. Often essentially a cross between two (or more) real species or a real species with a unique feature.

Is this a problem? Do people expect fantasy races to be nothing more than repainted humans with plastic surgery and a lobotomy? Are there some good examples of avoiding this?

One example that comes to mind of trying to avoid this is Discworld with dwarvish customs being given a proper explanation and with some ideas derived from established dwarven features (e.g. Knockermen). But it still falls into the trap of establishing pseudo-modern human society as superior and one the dwarves crave to turn into.

This is something I've wondered for a while now, and it's something I've attempted to embrace: not an elf or dwarf or orc to be seen. Way I figure, if you want a 'race' that look very human and just have a distinct culture, just be more flexible with ethnicity and race and such. :/

Let me put it this way: if you went back in time to pre-roman britain and showed them someone who wasn't white, they would quickly make assumptions based on appearance and their own cultural ideas (such as darkness meaning evil) or some such... the sheer variety of human cultures, languages and environments we've survived in goes to show how much variety can be squeezed from one species.

(Note: I'm not saying race is anything more than a social construct, my point is that ignorance and folklore inevitably lead to fanciful tales and such, and that genetics and the environment can produce a great deal of variety - heck, some theorize that the myths about unicorns are misconstrued reports of rhinos, of all things)

On a similar note, there have been cases of humans being affected by the environment in more direct ways: I heard the case of a man, living by a lake with a high content of silver, who caught and ate the fish from the lake. Over time, the high quantity of silver in his diet effectively turned his skin a pale purple. :/

To get back more on topic:

I think your point is along the lines of, 'do Humanoid Aliens and Starfish Aliens' work as fantasy species, and the answer is... yes, basically. o_O;

I've been going along those lines for all of my stories: 'dragons' are the only typical fantasy creatures, and of those, only one of the four sub-species look like typical western dragons. The most 'human' species are a race of three foot tall humanoid weasel people with extreme sexual dimorphism (that universally comes into play with their cultures, due to the different sexes thriving in different environments).

In general, I find it far more interesting to work out a species, alien in its life-cycle, and think about it fits into both the ecology and how its biology goes on to affect its psychology.

So, um, yes. Long ramble. On someone else's thread, dangnabbit. :/

Centaurs are fantasy races, as are dragons, as are demons (and some of them make mere aliens look every-day), so intelligent races in fantasy don't have to be just humanoid.

edited 22nd Sep '12 1:33:06 PM by MattII

This is an idea I've been trying to play with a lot more lately, although I haven't been very successful so far. What I think, though, is that aliens and fantasy races don't have to be humanoid- people just tend to do it that way because it's easier. And since writers write it, audiences have come to expect it. If you take the risk and do the work, though, I think the payoff can be really, really cool.

In the fantasy book I am writing, there are two main species from space: one is roughly humanoid, but made of energy and unbreakable armor, with floating, unattached limbs. They are hive-minded mostly. Same with another, but they use crystal and are more powerful.

Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men

Indeed. Every single aspect of one's setting that's genuinely alien translates into quite a staggering increase in the amount of worldbuilding required per "unit of plot", compared to a less ambitious setting that never goes beyond simply recombining historical and/or genre-typical elements.

For example, part of the plot of chapter one of my fantasy novel is this: The protagonist picks up his little sister from school; they leave the village on some errant and discover a stranger who's near death. If one uses the default fantasy setting (pseudo-Medieval/Tolkienesque), turning that outline into actual prose is quite straightforward, because all necessary major and minor details are either already known or can be obtained with a minimum of research effort. If, for example, I wanted to mention what the sister's teacher is wearing, then I simply make him a monk and, voila, he wears a brown robe belted with a piece of rope. If I need even more detail, to allow the protagonist to touch the robe and describe what its texture is like, I might need to do a few minutes' worth of research to find out what those robes were made of, historically. Nothing to it.

Now, let's try to do the same thing without any prefabricated elements. The protagonist having a "sister" means we have to figure out, from scratch, how their species' reproductive processes and family dynamics work. For there to be a "school", we have to figure out how their society is structured with regards to raising children and organizing labour. The teacher probably isn't a monk, because there probably aren't any monks. Either way, that doesn't tell us anything about their clothing. Is it even made from fabrics? Animal fibres or plant fibres, or does their ecosystem not even conform to that basic distinction in the first place? If it is fabric, is it woven or something else? If, instead, it's something like leather or furs, which animal does it come from? Who hunts those animals, and with what sort of weapons, and do they tan the skins, and with what? What's the teacher's social status, and is it represented in how they are dressed? Do colours have significance, and if so, which? And on and on.

In short, minutes of effort have just turned into months of effort, an increase by a factor of ten thousand. Granted, most of that extra effort will have produced results than can be applied over and over again throughout the plot, but that's also just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is how to convey all of that background to the reader. In the cliched setting, all we need do is refer to the teacher as "Brother Charles" and the reader's mind will conjure up a bunch of monk-related tropes all by itself, probably including the belted brown robe. At that point, the only exposition we need to actually write concerns those aspects in which we want to specify or deviate from any one of those tropes.

However, in the alien setting, we once again have to start from scratch. We might perhaps tell the reader that the teacher wears a "tunic of green wool", but that's probably going to omit a lot of the nuances we've just so painstakingly come up with: It's not actually a tunic, but the cut of the garment is sort of like that of a tunic. It's not actually green, but because of the spectral class of their sun and the way their eyes work, it's sort of on in the green part of their visible range. It's not actually wool, but it's the hair of an animal a bit like a sheep, so we might as well call it wool. And after all that circumlocution, all we've managed to give the reader are the bare, superficial facts about that piece of clothing. To imbue that with anything resembling the "association cloud" of the simple but familiar concept of a "monk's robe" is probably going to take several pages of exposition, which aren't going to advance the plot in any way. Yikes.

So, yes, there are very good reasons why most authors stick to what's already familiar to everyone involved. It's a shame, in some ways, but it has a lot going for it. Deciding to do something more ambitious is simple - pulling it off is decidedly not.

Seems this thread is prone to attracting lengthy rants, huh?

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

And then you fall into the trap I did of giving the aliens a completely different gender structure, and then struggling with pronouns and gendered words.

@OP: I'd say, the cause lies in the different roots of the two genres. SF was supposed to ask questions and create visions of the future. Fantasy was supposed to emulate the feel of a fairy tale or an ancient epic poem (well, or show Conan kicking asses, but that's different).

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

That really depends more on how much detail is given to description. It's certainly a diffiult feat if one wants to describe everything as elaborately as possible leaving nothing to the imagination. On the other hand one could simply say that for example the fabric felt a bit like wool and let the reader form their own image rather than spending years studying various ancient methods of clothmaking just to find the right words. I don't think I've ever seen any description of a sci-fi background detail as elaborate as the example given, so it seems like people can cope with a certain lack of them.

Of course, I do not mean to imply that such descriptions are a bad idea. All I'm saying is that they are only a limiting factor for certain types of creative approach and not a general rule.

I must say I don't find that excuse very convincing. Myths and legends were meant to deal with important issues. If anything it's the sci-fi that takes the place of mythology in modern society. Fantasy mostly recreates myths and legends as seen from the perspective of a modern person. To say it short: there's little 'fantasy' in fantasy and more pseudo-history in standard fantasy setting (rather than medieval Europe).

edited 26th Sep '12 11:19:07 AM by johnthebarbarian

Ah, but that's only possible under certain conditions.

It works when there's an identifiable narrative voice which can draw on human experiences. For example, if the human protagonist of a typical Planetary Romance touches an alien fabric, the text will of course simply describe it as being "a bit like something-or-other". Same if the author of the text purports to be merely translating an alien original, like Tolkien or Goldman, in which case such a description can be interpreted as a sort of inline translator's note.

It doesn't really work if the point-of-view character is themselves alien, or if the story is related by an omniscient narrator. In those cases, pretending that they have the same reference pool as the reader will at best lead to Fridge Logic.

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

I think it's genre convention by now. The utterly alien are rarely good things in fantasy.

If I was reading a fantasy book in which the protagonist and friends came across something that looked like a singing starfish-platypus hybrid with acidic blood, I would honestly expect it to be some kind of chimeric monstrosity birthed by madness or magic.

Not another sapient species.

But, in science fiction, I'd accept it without much of a fuss.

That was one of the few things I didn't like about Dungeon Siege II.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

In what way?*

With a few exceptions, a lot of the creatures were almost alien in appearance, in contrast with the first game, which had the more "traditional" RPG monsters.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

Indeed. And like all conventions, it exists for a reason. Which doesn't mean that one shouldn't try and see what happens if one bends or breaks it; one just shouldn't expect it to be straightforward to do so without breaking other things alongside - like, say, the plot.

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

What's with the appeal of elves and dwarves in fantasy? As far as I know, in mythology they were magical creatures, Tolkien was the one that made them humans of a different sort. But they've endured in fantasy since then.

I suppose Dungeons And Dragons played a part.

What interests me is that generally you just have elf, dwarves, and humans. If there are any other races, they're Petting-Zoo People, dragons, or goblinoids. When it comes to Rubber-Forehead Aliens in fantasy, elves and dwarves are usually it. I wonder why it's so hard to come up with more in a fantasy setting.

edited 28th Sep '12 1:32:57 AM by Topazan

Most fantasy is literature, so there isn't a special effect budget getting on the way of things. Very little written SF uses Rubber-Forehead Aliens either, for that matter.

it's kinda strange how so few fantasy novels reuse species from mythology outside of the usual Elves/Dwarves/Orcs stuff. You rarely, if ever see, say, Centaurs or Old-Onesesque-creature anywhere.

edited 28th Sep '12 12:56:24 PM by Benluke

But despite the lack of need to budget for special effects, they keep using elves and dwarves. These two Rubber-Forehead Aliens, and only these two.

Well, yes, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. My point was that anyone taking the time to invent and/or research less overused creature is unlikely to just make them humans with a bumpy heads.

Actually, in Norse mythology dwarves were pretty much always 'humans of a different sort' - even closer than in modern fantasy, even. (The shortness is an artefact of a mistranslation that stuck.)

...shameless but relevant self-promotion <_<

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

It's something that I'm having trouble figuring out in the world I'm building right now: do I want sapient species that are humanoid or non-humanoid?

At first, I wanted slightly non-humanoid species. Like "taurs" and what nots with a completely different size scale to humans. After all, why make different species if it's just gonna be humans with weird skin colors?

But then I got to thinking about it: are there clear advantages to giving your fictional species a humanoid human-sized body shape? I want my reader to be able to feel "in the shoes" of each of my characters regardless of their species. Are our brains just naturally wired to find humanoid species at our size scale more subconsciously acceptable? I'm not sure I want to make it any harder than it should be for me to immerse the reader.

Admittedly about fifty percent enlightenmentCaveman too.

As far as I can remember, I've only ever read one novel in which the protagonist wasn't more or less humanoid. A shepherd is murdered, and his sheep investigate the crime. It works surprisingly well for the most part, but then again investigating mostly involves observing and thinking, which is pretty anatomy-independent. There were a few action scenes of sorts, like having to break into a house or rescue another sheep from halfway up a cliff, but those always had the effect of breaking immersion, to an extent. As you say, our mental wiring just isn't flexible enough to really put ourselves in the place of a quadruped.

I've read two novels with theropod dinosaurs as protagonists. That works quite a bit better for action scenes, so their bipedality is apparently enough for one's brain to accept them as "sufficiently humanoid". I suspect, though, that that may partly be due to the authors' diminishing the importance of those dinosaurs tails to an implausible extent. If they hadn't, the immersion problems might have been as bad or even worse than for the sheep novel, simply because these had a lot more action scenes, as one might expect. There's also a series of young-adult novels featuring prehistoric cats. I haven't read that one, but the only way for it not to suffer from the same problems as the ones I mentioned above would be for its author to be significantly more skilled in writing non-humanoids in an immersive way than those others were, which seems unlikely.

My own setting has a species of somewhat sentient sabre-toothed cats, and I'm going to try and tell at least one chapters through the eyes of one of those. If I can figure out how to handle the "somewhat sentient" part, that is - that's something that would have to inform pretty much every sentence I write, not just something that becomes an issue occasionally, like quadrupedality. If I can't figure that out, I'll have to abandon that idea. It's not integral to the concept as such, in any case. But as a gimmick, it might be worthwhile.

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

I think that recall reading a book in which the main characters were all modern cats, and I don't recall having any trouble empathising with them, which seems to imply that it's possible. That said, it was a long time ago, and I recall the book somewhat vaguely, so I might be mistaken, and might be forgetting a degree of anthropomorphisation.

(I think that it was the book on which this was based.)

edited 20th Oct '12 8:03:02 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

Ah, yes, I read that one too, and I think there even were one or more sequels. I agree, that one didn't have any immersion problems of the sort I mentioned above - which is probably why it didn't come to mind, while the others did.

I actually reconsidered some of what I said above anyway: Quite possibly, the scenes which felt off had more to do with seeing a typically human environment, like a house, through the eyes of a quadruped for which that environment is alien and ill-designed. It's showing us something entirely familiar through eyes to which it is quite unfamiliar. That creates a mental mismatch, but unlike my previous take, that mismatch is likely a deliberate creation on the part of the author and not the result of any lack of literary skill. She's meaning to show us familiar things in this unfamiliar light, and breaking immersion is the necessary price to pay for that.

Also, I just read the latest Sigma Force novel, and it has a couple of passages told from the point of view of an ordinary (not possessed of human-like intelligence, I mean) dog. I thought the author pulled it off remarkably well, by combining two very simple techniques: On the one hand, he puts those passages in the present tense; on the other, he takes the "show don't tell" maxim well beyond the point that is usually intended by it and focuses almost entirely on the dog's raw sensory impressions, rather than on how those are filtered and interpreted. Anyway, reading them made me quite a bit more confident about my semi-sentient cats!

edited 29th Oct '12 5:37:52 PM by kassyopeia

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

Well, say I am writing a fantasy story. There is a good chance I am doing so because I want to write about a folklore that surrounds a religion or a mythology from a religion that is gone or is on its way out.

How many adventures do you see of Hati Hornvinson compared to Siegfried/Sigurd? Even the famous Thunderbird(s) is overshadowed by Wenebojo, Wendigos and Skin walkers. They obviously work in a fantasy setting just fine, but the stories are not as popular(thus few writers want to explore them further) or not as numerous(thus a writer must fill in a lot more blanks before even getting into things like plot or characterization).

Then of course there is laziness(deviating is too hard) or in some cases pragmatism(it has four thousand wings, six billion eyes and body made out of mouth's yet is somehow able to write and erase hundreds of names in a book simultaneously in a second? Every last one comes in a different shape? I made Memitim men with wings to describe how they fly and write.)

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack