WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 7: An Alien Will Have To SENSE Differently…

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/01/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 2: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 3: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 4: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/04/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 5: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 6: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/02/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

Mammal, cephalopod, insect, reptile, bird, fish, and (of course), plant – of COURSE none of them could hold a candle to the MASSIVELY MARVELOUS INTELLIGENCE of Human Beings! We are the pinnacle (of Creation or Evolution, take your pick)…I know many philosophers are busy knocking Humanity off its high horse by proclaiming that its puppies or kitties or sea turtles or the climate or whatever that is TRUE PERFECTION on Earth and that Humans are a canker fit only to be cut from the face of the planet (except for the Human writing the articles, who are SPECIAL because they have kenned the true INTELLIGENCE and have forsaken the follies and attitudes common to the Canker of REGULAR People…)

Except for coffee. Nothing wrong with THAT! Or Big Macs…now THERE’S a fine naturally occurring food! Or electric cars – nothing at ALL wrong with them! Those children digging cobalt are really part of the LOATHSOME Humanity that is NOTHING SPECIAL AT ALL (https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/electric-car-makers-drive-remove-human-rights-stain-cobalt). Their lives sacrificed for a greener future and all…Or WINDMILLS! Natural as the air Mother Nature provides us! (They grow from seeds, right? The blades are SO reusable, you can just shorten them and you have a perfectly good…um… https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy)

Ahem. Excuse the rant…

So, if I want to write believable aliens, then perhaps practicing with creatures I can look up, study, and possibly even observe in a zoo or in nature!

How do I devise a test to see if I can do it? How can I have my animals focus on one thing or do one thing and then consider HOW THEY WOULD REALLY DO IT, then write the result? What will be my test? It needs to be something I could do without any kind of technology, because despite the evidence that other animals on Earth use “stone age technology”, any tech they’d encounter that we could manipulate automatically prejudices the tests. So…something natural…

Start a fire? Nah, too much tech there, even if you posit that our remote ancestors learned how to do it, it REQUIRES hands…and air…automatically eliminating fish, octopi, and plants…

How about changing something? Maybe…domesticating something? Let’s look at a fascinating

book I read years ago, GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL by Jared Dimond. He had this to say about domestication: “Domestication…the most momentous change in Holocene human history. Why did it operate on so few wild species, in so few geographic areas…why did people adopt it at all…how did it spread?”

Are there instances of the “smartest of their Kingdom, Phylum, or Class” domesticating some other living thing? What does it mean to “domesticate” something? Seems a definition is in order. According to Wikipedia: Domestication is “…a sustained multi-generational relationship in which one group of organisms assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another group to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that second group.” As well, tool using, city building, and even cooperation of normally incompatible organisms…

Insects: ants who farm aphids for their sweet secretions, and grow a fungus to feed the colony… https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-ants/#:~:text=Ants%20have%20domesticated%20fungus%20similarly%20to%20how%20we%20domesticated%20many%20plants.&text=If%20cutter%20ants%20are%20the,called%20honeydew%20that%20ants%20eat.
Fish: first ever case of an animal domesticating another…https://newatlas.com/science/fish-first-animal-domesticating-species/
Octopus: city builders! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopus-city-observed-180964936/#:~:text=In%20the%20waters%20of%20Jervis,scientific%20name%20Octopus%20tetricus%E2%80%8B.
Plants: a war between to very different plants to “a stranger peace…” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191115074414.htm
Birds: such legendary tool users, that their behavior became one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Crow and the Pitcher”: http://read.gov/aesop/012.html
Reptiles: even American alligators have become tool users! https://www.livescience.com/41898-alligators-crocodiles-use-tools.html

OK – I’ve established that animals can domesticate other animals, build cities, negotiate peace, and use tools…

So, how does the world look through the eyes of a representative of each of these. I’ll start with the ant farmers. How do they see the world? What do we know about ant senses? “‘…we have demonstrated that we have the basic tools we need to act as ‘odorant receptor detectives” to map the ants “odor space” and identify the chemical signals that trigger specific behaviors in the ant’s extensive repertoire,’ Slone said.” (https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/09/10/ants-have-an-exceptionally-high-def-sense-of-smell/#:~:text=Ants%20have%20four%20to%20five,team%20of%20researchers%20has%20discovered.&text=They%20found%20the%20industrious%20insects,proteins%20that%20detect%20different%20odors.)

According to the article, ants have some 400 specific “odorant receptors”, including one for cooked beef and pork – the researchers don’t get that one! In particular, “The olfactory system of most insects is centered in their antennae and is broadly made up of three different classes of receptors: odorant receptors, that identify different aromatic compounds and pheromones; gustatory receptors (GRs), that distinguish between different tastes and react to some pheromones; and newly discovered ionotropic glutamate receptors (IRs), that are narrowly tuned to various poisonous and toxic compounds.”

According to a different article: “The two antennae on either side of the head serve as the ant's main sensory organs. Ants also have a pair of compound eyes that consist of many photoreceptors that allow them to see light and shadows. However, their eyesight is poor, and ants rely primarily on their sense of smell for understanding their environment.” (https://www.livescience.com/ant-facts.html).

All right, given that, I’m going to make a stab at giving an ant-like alien’s perspective when landing on Earth…I’ll be making a few assumptions, so bear with me.

***

Two-hundred and thirty-fourth of seven-hundred and ninety-three Adults held their mandibles still. They could not control the corona of tendrils sweeping the air of Third Planet from Its Star. While nothing was precisely familiar, Two-Three-Four’s minds automatically categorized each odor into its chemical type. The odors of nitrogen and oxygen and their abundant compounds were obvious and of only academic interest. Two-Three-Four’s specialty was to sense the unique odors of life on a newly contacted world. While plant life was a given and the precise proportions of the atmospheric mix had been determined by a probe long-since returned to the Chamber Ship in orbit, Two-Three-Four’s highly developed and trained odor sensor suite was the reason it stood on the surface of the new world.

A squirt of strong impatience generated from the odor ring around their neck prompted it to fire a gentle puff of “Anticipatory patience” that would permeate the queen-commander’s chamber in the center of the ship. Her response was a whiff of apology. Two-Three-Four stepped down the ramp, followed by the rest of the landing party. Their larger size and heavier mandibles – as well as a small set of weapons chosen from an even larger collection and based on the preliminary assessment of life forms on Third Planet – were guaranteed to repel any accidentally hostile contact. The Smallers, like Four-Nine, Seven-Two, and Three-Eight, were less sensitive, heavily armed, and would do whatever Two-Three-Four needed them to do. Not that they were non-sapient, but they were only past their third and fourth molt. Each molt increased the size of the neural net. Each would take their place among the adults eventually. For now, they learned and did as they were told.

Basic scans had revealed a fascinating mix of life on Third, though hardly unique in the experience of the Memory on Homeworld. Two-Three-Four’s job was to investigate the unique characteristics. They scuttled away from the ship, not stopping for several hundred heartbeats. It released a waft of “listen” to the Smallers, and “commencing” to the queen-commanders chamber.

Under its direction, the ship had landed in an area where the view all around was unimpeded to allow the winds of Third to pass over Two-Three-Four’s corona. Smallers made a ring around them and powered up their weapons. They would be far too busy with their primary job to protect themselves from any of Third’s life forms that might exhibit aggression. It shut down its generic visual input and focused on the odors of Third.

Dryness. Mild decay, common for any world with seasonal plant life. Then something of interest: hydrocarbons! While hardly unique to intelligent civilizations, it made clear that the sapients of Third could manipulate their environment in a profound way. Of course they’d detected cities, a gigantic web of orbital satellites, a large presence of life on Third’s airless moon and in several orbital habitats. They’d even discovered a crater on Fourth that held several hundred life forms. All well and good; intelligence of a species that likely came from Third – all of that was, while remarkable in the First Queen’s universe, was still fairly common.

What they sought…ah! There! It was a very faint scent, but now that Two-Three-Four knew what to focus on, it found that the odor was present in small but significant quantities. It signaled the queen-commander a complex message, “Genetic manipulation! Artificial tissue construction!”

Resources: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dog-cognition_n_8398810, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-do-octopuses-experience-the-world, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/intelligence-test-shows-bees-can-learn-to-solve-tasks-from-other-bees, https://www.reptileencounters.com.au/news/the-5-most-intelligent-reptiles/#:~:text=The%20result%20was%20that%20the,reserved%20for%20birds%20and%20mammals.&text=And%20coming%20in%20at%20the,and%20weigh%20more%20than%2010kg, https://www.cnet.com/news/how-crows-are-the-smartest-birds-in-the-world/, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/six-fish-that-are-smarter-than-we-give-them-credit-for, https://www.ambius.com/blog/are-plants-intelligent/, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01019
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