Making "Alien Aliens"

[Vultur]

They're obviously able to live in groups, as a solitary creature developing technological civilization isn't really feasible, so there's a limit to how disruptive the mating season can be.

Oh, definitely... I was trying for it limiting them living in large numbers in close quarters, not preventing societies period. It seems plausible that a species might be able to get along in a tribe of a few dozen, or a spread out farming village of a couple hundred where each family or equivalent group has its own space, but be unable to cope with the sort of crowded conditions found in a human city, or a submarine or spacecraft. (I was thinking that if too many males in rut are too close together - say, more than two dozen per square mile - the pheromones build up to an unbearable level and cause insanity. A limit of 20 or two dozen adult males in a spread-out group would still allow a group big enough to function as a tribe or small fishing/farming community: 40-50 adults assuming a sex ratio close to 1-to-1 (which needn't be the case for aliens).

You've basically just described the Race - the problem is how such a species would ever get past Stone Age. You need a culture where olders actively pass their knowledge to youngsters in order to get a technological civilization. You're probably never going to get past subsistence hunter-gatherer level if nobody takes any effort to pass their knowledge on to the next generation.

I didn't mean *no* relationship between older and younger generations -- but maybe a much more exploitative one, with the young used as slaves maybe. An egg-laying intelligent species could easily have nightmarish population growth: it might NEED to be incredibly brutal to avoid starvation.

And I think even that sort of species would have to have altruism. I don't see how any kind of social grouping could work without some level of altruism; if everybody's always looking out for Number 1 and nobody else what's the advantage of living in a group?

I think it could be worked out somehow, though the critters would be really alien. I actually have a seed of an idea for a species like this, but it needs way more thought ...

[Junghalli]

One of those Sex= Male dies now animals.

The thing about that is IIRC animals that practice sexual cannibalism are usually very aggressive solitary creatures, like mantises. Not the best material for an intelligent species to evolve. You might have better luck with a species that's like certain flies, where the female lacks any way for the young to get out and they burst out of her like chestbusters (Alien). The thing about that is it would set up a pretty strong selection pressure against intelligence, as females capable of working out the link between sex and having larvae burst out of your stomach would probably do their best to remain abstinent.

It would probably work best if you had a species where only the males were sapient, like the Kzin. Actually, that would be a pretty interesting alien.

I imagine in their primitive stage they would be a society of pastoral nomads, with the sapient male "shepherds" leading around herds of subsapient female "sheep". The Shepherds would feed the Sheep, lead them to water, keep away predators etc., and in exchange when it was time to reproduce they'd pick one out of the herd and impregnate it, in the same way a farmer might pick a cow out of a herd to slaughter. Occassionally they might also supplement their diet by tapping the Sheeps' veins and drinking their blood, as some human cultures do with cattle and horses, and if they were really hard up they might slaughter a head or three for meat. Maybe, when new Shepherds are born, they might celebrate the event with a special feast of the flesh of the dead female. And of course they could use the bones and hides for tools and shelter. Think of it: a culture with females as almost literally cattle!

Imagine the effect this might have on their philosophy and religion; for every Shepherd to exist, a Sheep has to die when it's born. The creation of life requires a death. Maybe their religions might believe in a Creator Goddess that died to make the world. Or they might have Aztec-like blood sacrifice religions where the gods did favors to their worshippers in exchange for human sacrifices, in a mirror of the symbioses the Shepherds have with the Sheep.

Personally, this is an example of the kind of method I find works well for me in coming up with alien aliens. The Shepherds would probably be not unlike us in some ways, but in others their society would be extremely alien.

I think I might just incorporate this idea into my own uni.

[Samuel]

Another thing that leads to annoyance when they work together is the alien's day is a wee bit shorter than an Earth day. This screws up their precious sleep schedules and pisses them off to no end. They don't adjust to the longer day and are miserable the whole time.

So they never colonized more than the equator? I think this needs to be altered- humans are very adaptable for that reason. In fact, remove the Sun and you can get them on 40 hour days!

Oh, definitely... I was trying for it limiting them living in large numbers in close quarters, not preventing societies period. It seems plausible that a species might be able to get along in a tribe of a few dozen, or a spread out farming village of a couple hundred where each family or equivalent group has its own space, but be unable to cope with the sort of crowded conditions found in a human city, or a submarine or spacecraft. (I was thinking that if too many males in rut are too close together - say, more than two dozen per square mile - the pheromones build up to an unbearable level and cause insanity. A limit of 20 or two dozen adult males in a spread-out group would still allow a group big enough to function as a tribe or small fishing/farming community: 40-50 adults assuming a sex ratio close to 1-to-1 (which needn't be the case for aliens).

It is still to small for a technological civilization unless... Shaka Zulu!
?
Well?
Hmm Remove the ability to make pheromones for the subservient males.

I didn't mean *no* relationship between older and younger generations -- but maybe a much more exploitative one, with the young used as slaves maybe. An egg-laying intelligent species could easily have nightmarish population growth: it might NEED to be incredibly brutal to avoid starvation.

Nope- you simply fight your neighbors. Treat the hatchlings nice or they will serve the new overlords. Also, why would they reproduce so fast if it doesn't given them an advantage?

I think it could be worked out somehow, though the critters would be really alien. I actually have a seed of an idea for a species like this, but it needs way more thought ...

Sociopaths? Don't make a stable society- generally leads to "Freehold".

The thing about that is IIRC animals that practice sexual cannibalism are usually very aggressive solitary creatures, like mantises. Not the best material for an intelligent species to evolve. You might have better luck with a species that's like certain flies, where the female lacks any way for the young to get out and they burst out of her like chestbusters (Alien). The thing about that is it would set up a pretty strong selection pressure against intelligence, as females capable of working out the link between sex and having larvae burst out of your stomach would probably do their best to remain abstinent.

NO. This has the same problems as the Ocampa.

[Junghalli]

So they never colonized more than the equator?

Their homeworld could have a nearly straight axis. Then it would experience a more-or-less equatorial pattern of day and night everywhere.

NO. This has the same problems as the Ocampa.

Only if you assume the average litter size is one. Obviously, that would be absurd. For such a species I would expect the average litter to be 2-4 at least.

[Samuel]

Wait- aren't they Puppeters?

[Junghalli]

Wait- aren't they Puppeters?

The Puppeteers did have a somewhat similar life cycle: they had three "sexes", one of which was a seperate species which the two "males" implanted their offspring into as a parasite and it later (presumably) tore their way out of them Digger Wasp style. I think my idea is original enough to not be too derivative though. I wrote a quick write-up for my own message board, maybe I'll just post it here.

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The Shepherds are a species with a relatively unusual reproductive pattern. Females of the species lack any means for the infants to escape their bodies. In order to escape, the infants must literally tear their way out of the body of the female, killing the female in the process. This is similar to certain flies on Earth. Obviously, litter sizes among them must be relatively large, as each female can reproduce only once.

Shepherd males and females exhibit extreme sexual dismorphism. Shepherd females are large, relatively mindless quadrupedal creatures. Shepherd males are much smaller bipedal tool-users. Only the males are sapient. The sex-differentiation gene in Shepherds is recessive, so females outnumber males two to one.

The Shepherds take their name from their unusual social arrangment. They exist at a relatively primitive Stone Age level, as pastoral nomads. Their "cattle" are their own subsapient females. The sapient male Shepherds tend and feed these "Sheep", lead them to water, and drive away predators that might attack them. In exchange, when the time comes to reproduce the Shepherds will select a "Sheep" out of the herd and impregnate it, in much the same way that a human farmer might select a cow or sheep to be butchered.

Besides using them for reproduction, the Shepherds have learned to make extensive use of their "Sheep". They will occasionally supplement their diet by tapping the veins of the Sheep and drinking their blood. They make shelters, bags, and clothing from their hides and tools and musical instruments from their bones. In lean times, they will occasionally slaughter some for meat, and the birth of a new Shepherd is celebrated by a special feast of the flesh of the Sheep that has died to bring it into the world.

This unusual life cycle, in which one must die for another to be brought to life, has visibly influenced the primitive religions of the Shepherds. Some of them believe in a creator god that died to bring the world or the first Shepherds into existence. Others practice "human" sacrifice, believing that the gods do favors for mortals in exchange for blood or lives, in a mirror-image of the symbioses the Shepherds share with their "Sheep".

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I like the idea. Their lifestyle would seem deliciously creepy to readers, but through absolutely no fault of their own (objectively it's certainly no more inhumane than the way we treat our own meat animals, and arguably considerably more humane than some of our factory farming methods).

[loomer]

Life with a completely different chemical base tends to work well for this. It's a lot easier to discard all anthropomorphic tendencies when you're dealing with a sentient plasma cloud or a silicon based life form - if they look so very different, people have less of a 'need' to ascribe human tendencies to them.

I am personally very fond of a species I developed for my own sci-fi setting (Egads, an SDN member who makes sci-fi aliens? Alert the Originality Police! I know, I know...) known as the Bidori. They're basically floating gas sacks who inhabit a fairly large planet with an atmosphere of ammonia/methane composition. Their world is cold, has no land to speak of, and has tempestuous storms plaguing the upper atmosphere nearly constantly. There is minimal sunlight.

So how have they adapted? They're passive omnivores who farm large racks of floating algaes and stiff seaweed like structures (essentially a coral/seaweed style deal - the weed develops a stiff inner spine as it grows from the ocean floor, and often reaches up above the surface given time and nutrients enough to grow), and build traps amongst the sea gardens to catch 'fish' (obviously not actually fish, but the planetary analogue.)

They're warm blooded, though their definition of warm and ours don't exactly mesh (a warm day on Earth would quite easily cause them to fatally overheat), and one adaptation to said pressures was to coat themselves in a form of mucus which serves as a fine thermal insulator, much like vaseline. Their low-energy, low-activity lifestyle has lead them to a proclivity towards long age, with two hundred years being the average (another factor that helps establish an alien mindset for the writer is age consideration).

Communication with them is difficult, as they obviously do not speak - instead, they force air through a beak like structure to generate whistling sounds, which thanks to their acute hearing tend to be very soft by human standards. To top that off, they also utilize pheromone release, like ants (also helps.)

Even using colours and lights don't work well, as the bidori eye is tuned to differing wavelengths thanks to the different light emissions of its sun. Four genders (don't want to explain right at the moment, since it's a strange system not too unlike the puppeteer's, and is a genetic anomaly in that it serves no useful purpose and is a handicap compared to a 2 to 3 gender system)

They tend to form herds of 60 individuals, revolving in harems around 3-4 bulls. They're broadminded when taking in concepts, and as a side effect of their longevity have no problems concentrating. As a whole, though, they're skittish and don't actively seek out new concepts (you'd have to give them a space ship to make them really want to understand it, etc), have no empathy and are exceptionally jumpy and prone to paranoid states in a sense (they don't believe everyone is out to get them, they just lapse into heightened awareness and observation).

Are they Alien Aliens? Or have I deceived myself and stuck a strange costume onto humans?

[Coalition]

From "The Mote in God's Eye" (and "The Gripping Hand"), you had the Moties.

Each member has one large arm, and two smaller arms on the opposite side. Some are left-large, others are right-large. This reflects itself in their logic - a strong argument for and two weak arguments against, or vice-versa.

Their reproduction is a bit nastier though. Each Motie goes through the stages of young - adult male - adult female - pregnant - adult male . . . If they do not get pregnant, they die. You can see what that does to their population growth.

As a result, the civilization undergoes cycles of expansion where there is enough food to feed the expanding population, followed by reaching the limit of food production (Peak Food), followed by planetary Civil War, where the different groups try to survive at the expense of their neighbor. Eventually the population falls low enough for basic agriculture to be restarted, and the cycle repeats.

Lots of fun in the story.

[Duckie]

An alien race (actually a very alien in the adjective sense Fantasy Race, but it could work as either) I have come up with are the Kshya (which is an onomotopoeia for the noise they make when unsealing their mouth, the only noise they make).

They are hexapoidal invertebrates (with a faux skeleton constructed of hydromuscles like a spider in rings and columns, plus cartilage), with six eyes between each leg, which ends in a flexible tentacle with small suckers on it, allowing them to walk on flat surfaces that aren't too slick. Lifting the leg in the direction they face means that they have binocular vision. They usually have between 1 and 3 legs lifted for tool use if they have to carry something, since standing on two is hard. Their body is flat and coin shaped and dully coloured green, red, or yellowish, sometimes mottled between shades, and the bottom of the coin bulges outward in a rounded pattern- from the bottom it is radiating lines with one circule bisecting the lines. Thus from any given angle, the bottom half of a Kshya looks like a manic grin, while the top has cute little glassy eyes. Kshya can walk completely inverted due to the flexibility of their tentacles, but they usually do not as the grin gives them a preferred direction. And cause all their pouches full of stuff would jangle around and stuff might fall out.

Something like

with a flatter top, plus the legs between each of the six eyes. A Kshya with 1 leg lifted will usually rest it on her head's flat surface, meaning while radially symmetrical they somtimes act like they have a biased direction out of laziness if said arm is carrying something heavy- 'backpacks' will be affixed to the flat top with an arm as support but never via strapping to the grin for a very good reason outlined below (for one, it's hollow and would collapse)

The overall effect of the grin is, in my opinion, cute. At least until they open their mouth. The Kshya mouth opens by the 'grin' unhinging. It can unhinge to any degree save falling off, from any angle. The inside of the mouth has six tiny black eyes spaced around the edge and a huge, horrific looking mouth full of teeth (although in regular patterns there are non-pointed teeth for plant eating, it is still scary looking). Why the eyes? The 'grin' is actually the body of a tiny male (the picture is rather rough in showing the size disparity, it is about 2:1) attached to the female. At maturity, the thin and wide males (whose organs are arranged differently from a female's to produce this, and have a much more flexible torso) will flex up and attach, the tiny stubby legs locking in with the female's gripping ridges there and basically atrophying over years. He lives for quite a long time, almost as long as a female if cared for properly, but if he falls off after a brief period of disappointment and reproducing any last spawn of his, the female will go obtain a new one.

The male chews up food for the female as a curtosy, as he has a bigger mouth. When she is hungry, he arches upwards (the grin appears to dent inwards), and they 'kiss'. Then the male vomits in her mouth. Charmingly romantic. Surplus food can be carried in the male, as he is convex. Damage to his eyes might occur but he is nearly blind and doesn't use them much being facing inwards most of the time. Despite this, he is rather well cared for like a pet and Kshya try to avoid eye damage (it is why the eyes were evolutionarily and artificially selected to be on the edge). Small, less functional eyes and larger mouth is considered a desirable ('cute', perhaps) trait, but Kshya reject eyeless males or males with eyes on the outside as freakish so the logical extreme of this breeding program or the more sensible configuration, respectively, have never occured. It appears to be aesthetic, but born of evolutionary concerns about males not being able to walk around (nowadays someone can just carry them to whereever in a box, but it's still psychologically present). The inward dent was originally a protective adaptation for the smaller, weaker male as he was carted around being mated with for life, so it makes sense that eyes on the outside is unnerving (and imagine a human with eyes on the back of their head- freaky).

I would write a huge paragraph on how a caste-based pheromonal control ecology has affected their psychology (including the human attempts to understand that they are not 'under control' or 'coerced' to follow pheromonal orders and that despite being under the complete, even suicidial direction of a higher caste will still retain individuality including fashion taste and friendships with other kshya, or that they have (unlike stupid hive mind species in most fiction) learned to respect human life mostly because people have demonstrated a bizarre tendency to attack with disproportionate force for loss of underlings) and how other aspects of their biology affect their psychology (such as their bodyshape meaning that backpacks on the top and lots of leg pouches are the preferred clothing- pouches on pouches that would make Liefield proud). But nobody really cares so I'll spare you.

Still, I think it's cool. I haven't a clue how they'd develop sentience, but I think the 'how did these things get sentient' problem is a bottleneck for too many cool ideas as long as they aren't completely nonsensical. Sentient solitary preditors? Sure! The Ur-Quan made it work, especially with their "We clawed our way up to civilisation despite our rage, Human. We mastered ourself." arrogance about their civilisation. So why not Sentient hivemind?

or Sentient 'semihivemind' as these are. I've never like hiveminds in fiction. Ants should like being ants. They shouldn't feel like they have no individual will, or if they do they shouldn't mind being instruments. Obeying proper pheromone-registered commands should be as natural as walking or talking to them, and if they're sentient enough to talk to they should have an alien perspective on these things.

[edit: the idea was inspired by the anglerfish who attach to a female and eventually atrophy into a tiny attached penis and organs humping the larger female]

[Duckie]

ghetto edit: Oh, and the male are nonsentient- since they affix at breeding age and generally sit around being fed beforehand, there's no point to them being smart. They lack pheromones besides generic ones for, say, stuff like: "Hi? [You are part of my pheromone group?]" and "Hi! [Response:Yes_Group]" and "Mate? [Question]" "Yay, Mate! [Affirmative]" and "Scared! [Danger present]" and "Hungry! [request for feeding as a child]"/"Hungry? [to attached mate]", and cannot be taught to talk in any of the more complex uses of pheromones. They might be as intelligent as cats or dogs, if your cat or dog is pretty stupid. Kshya are affectionate towards them but don't overestimate their capacity to think since they only are biologically capable of speaking seven words.

Phermones of that complexity would need to be impossibly distinguished (especially the different orders having different 'frequencies' for different queens), but it's a necessity for a non-talking insecty species so I like it. And a silent, smell-based speaking species is cool. Especially if they have a script based around ideographic representations of smells. Unless I'm underestimating our animal kingdom's little creepy hive creatures, I doubt support for sentient language is present, but it could happen without straining disbelief too much. You'd just need really sensitive smell receptors and the ability to emit subtle smells. It's better than the 'psychic control' hivemind trope anyhow so regardless of plausibility I give it a thumbs up.

[Vultur]

It is still to small for a technological civilization unless... Shaka Zulu!
?
Well?
Hmm Remove the ability to make pheromones for the subservient males.

It's only too small if they're as limited in possible skills as humans. They're not. (They're much more capable of having multiple skill sets than humans are. This is partially just because their brains are wired differently, partially because they're more intelligent, and partly because they live longer.)

Removing pheromone glands .. they get there eventually, but the changes are bigger than that. (Basically, they keep the 'slave' types pre-puberty permanently by removing the growth glands. This makes them smaller and better able to do fine work, which is what really gets the species to a significant tech level. The full adults are exceptionally large.)

Also, why would they reproduce so fast if it doesn't given them an advantage?

Technological evolution is quicker than biological. Before they started really being able to influence their environment (farms, walled towns, etc) they NEEDED that many young just to break even - the local environment, unaltered by technology, is very very nasty.

[Big Orange]

The DwA!gog

Introduction

The DwA!gog are hive minded creatures that only make up a ‘person’ if there is more than three of them directly linked up to each other on a semi-permanent basis. Sometimes DwA!gog ‘individuals’ are made up as many as fifty DwA!gog component creatures linked up together as a big herd.

Physical Appearance

Solidly built, upright oval bodies (light brown skin) that are five feet tall and two feet wide with complex sensory organs at the top, the waists of these oval bodies bare four large tendrils and four communal umbilical cords, with forty to sixty smaller tendrils encircling a mouth and womb at the base. The mouth and womb are housed within a pair of hardened beaks. The four trunk like tendrils (dark brown in colour) are the DwA!gog composite creature’s arms, while the communal umbilical cords (fully retractable) are fleshy links that make DwA!gog ‘individuals’, the passing of nutrients, and their reproduction cycle possible. The DwA!gog have no carbon bone frames, but instead very dense and interlinked muscle cells. The composite creatures have four hearts and four brains. The sensory organs on top of the composite creature’s body is encased within a transparent, sealed dome of rubbery membrane; they ‘hear’ through their tendrils (which have long strands of hair).

Psychology and Culture

Since a DwA!gog ‘individual’ made up of upwards of a dozen disposable ‘units’, that contributes to the DwA!gog having very, very old living memories and being able to directly exchange their raw experiences by occasionally swapping or giving composite creatures between ‘individuals’. Composite creatures have a natural life cycle roughly comparable to homo-sapiens from Earth, but their reproduction cycle is markedly slower and they have trouble moving up steep slopes by themselves, let alone in connected herds that make complete ‘individuals’. They can submerge themselves into fresh water for prolonged periods of time and prefer their habitation built by the lakes and inland oceans on their homeworld. DwA!gog composite creatures have an intelligence similar to a pre-teen homo-sapiens, but of course herds are immensely wise, empathetic, and intelligent.