Aliens

[JamesSavik]

So far I have not tried to do aliens. I'm not sure that humans actually can. Even some of the masters of sci-fi assign humano-centric motives and norms to them.

 

Aliens have:

• spent billions of years evolving
• taken a completely different branch of the evolutionary tree
• have their own history
• may see other species as a deadly threat or completely irrelevant
• developed star faring tech

 

Nobody has done a good job on them. Our Hollywood Aliens always arrive, kick the crap out of earths armed forces, *something happens* and, they go away.

 

In a recent paper by a SETI guy theorizes that technic civilizations might have been common but most of them die out over the 15 billion years of the known universes. Maybe as we explore the galaxy, we find ruins of the civilizations that came before.

 

I've read about some pretty dumb ideas for aliens. Actually I've seen a lot of them. Especially the butt-head aliens from the Trek mythos.

 

What makes a good believable alien?  It's both more and less an obvious question than you would think.

 

 

 

[Myr]

There are plausible arguments that we're aliens.   As best we can tell...humans are 100,000 years old.  that's a drop in a bucket to the planets 4.5 billion years.  Earth could have evolved a dozen civilizations or more.   Ancient Aliens is great entertainment for all the questions they ask.  (their Answer of Aliens for everything is funny.  You can tell how batshit crazy it is by "Ancient Alien Theorists say Yes" or "SOME ancient Alien Theorists say yes".)

[Myr]

I will say, I haven't talked about the aliens much in Psionic Corp, but I have them planned. I have a timeline that stretches a million years in Psionic corp.  Lots of stuff thought out on how it fits.

I've been inspired by everything from the Ancient Aliens show, to Star Trek, Babylon 5 to Seaquest DSV.  I'm still thinking how I want to deal with them and it'll stay that way for awhile yet, I think.  We humans have enough conflicts to keep me busy beyond plot MacGuffins.