WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 13: ALIEN Governments…Symbiotic or Parasitic?

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
Part 7: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/04/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 8: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/05/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 9: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/08/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 10: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 11: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/10/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 12: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/12/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

It would be easy to just copy and paste the forms of government that Human society has experimented with or is currently using, but as I’m talking about ALIENS, maybe the ones we’ve come up with wouldn’t make sense to incomprehensible aliens.

So, let’s look at “hierarchy” as a meme for how aliens might create some sort of “government”. Well then! It appears to be WAY more than that and there is a field of study specifically targeted at this (admittedly unexpectedly complex!) phenomenon.

In the article below, “Aggression heuristics underlie animal dominance hierarchies and provide evidence of group-level social information”, the authors have discovered “…how patterns of aggression depend upon information about the ranks of individuals within social dominance hierarchies…[there are] three main patterns of rank-dependent social dominance: the downward heuristic…close competitors…and bullying…The majority of the groups…follow a downward heuristic, but a significant minority…show close competitors or bullying…[this is] consistent with higher levels of social information use…heuristic use may depend on context and the structuring of aggression by social information should not be considered a fixed characteristic of a species…”

So, these aggression heuristics apply across most kinds of animal life on Earth.

The question is whether they would apply to OTHER forms of life.

Some people may argue that “aliens don’t have to necessarily be AGGRESSIVE”. But as a bio major in college, the ONLY way to become a dominant lifeform ANYWHERE is to get rid of or dominate anything else around that wants to eat you.

So, what about plants?

*harrumph*, you ever have crabgrass on your lawn? Really? It’s a war – with Humans drafted by Kentucky Bluegrass as the “shock forces” willing to throw themselves into the battle for little more reward than aesthetic pleasure or admiration from the rest of domesticated Humanity.

Next question! How about More Highly Evolved Life? You know, like the ones who’re going to come to Earth and give Scientists the magic formula for unlimited energy, unlimited food, and unlimited space, and unlimited power over everyone else on Earth! (mwahahahaha!) [CUE MUSIC: Everly Brothers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbU3zdAgiX8 ] Yep, the ones who have overcome poverty, hatred, war, avarice…etc…you know, the ones like…um…which one of the alien aliens we worship have come to bring us Universal Peace at NO COST TO YOU!!!?

OK. Life as we know it evolved (the First Commandment of Science). Evolution is life outcompeting other life for the things that make life.

How then, can evolution end in Peaceful Coexistence? Intelligence is supposed to overcome evolution and create peace…but is that even realistic? Of COURSE IT WILL (The Second Commandment of Science).

Evolution = Competition (not cooperation)…

Or maybe Evolution leads to competition that LEADS past it to Cooperation?

Are there any examples of cooperative life on Earth? Is Mutualism a form of cooperation? Let me peek at it and see if I could imagine a space-faring civilization based on Mutualism.

First a definition (from Wikipedia for brevity): "Mutualism is [an] ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit…it is often mixed with two other types of ecological phenomena: cooperation and symbiosis. Cooperation most commonly refers to increases in fitness through within-species interactions…Symbiosis involves two species living in close physical contact in a mutualistic, parasitic, or commensal [relationship]…”

Example of symbiotic aliens: the Trill from the STAR TREK universe. The Symbiont lives repeated lives while the Host lives a natural life, creating the effect of a “layered” individual. Could we live symbiotically with an alien civilization? I seem to recall that as a theme somewhere. Anyone? Of course, if you wanted to speak just emotionally, I’m pretty sure a good marriage might be considered a symbiotic relationship…

An example of parasitic aliens: the mitochondria in our cells are sometimes characterized as “good” parasites. At this point, neither one of us can live without the other. But that’s boring. How about some REAL parasite aliens? The eponymous Aliens in the ALIEN franchise are considered parasites. Even in fiction for kids, we have an example of a parasitic “alien”: “Lord Voldemort does this to Quirinus Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This would just be your garden-variety Demonic Possession, if not for the visceral manner by which the parasite attaches to the host: Voldemort's face grows out of the back of Professor Quirrell's head!” Clearly, contacting a parasitic civilization wouldn’t leave us with much of a future. Could WE be parasites off of another civilization? Hmmm…that might have possibilities.

So what could I do in a world I’ve invented? I call it River, a puffy Jupiter where the technophilic Empire of Man does NOT meddle with genetic engineering (except to clean up diseases and increase the survival factor on various of its worlds). Its decree is that anyone with LESS than 65% original Human DNA (from the original 2014 Human Genome Project results) is NOT Human. They live in the clouds of River by gravity modification and lighter-the-air craft.

The genetically savvy Confluence of Humanity allows not only genetic engineering, but creating lifeforms to live anywhere – there IS no limit to how much a Human can be modified. The main character has had a kilometer-wide, manta-ray-like, hūmbūlance created from his DNA, and internal organs modified to create a “surgical field hospital” with an nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere.

As Humans go, the Humans of River are recognizable (mostly), and interact in comprehensible ways. BUT…living in the skies of a world with no real surface, and that plants and animals are limited to habitats (no matter HOW vast), that are smaller than the world is going to change Human interactions. (Comparison Question: How has having a liquid water surface which makes up seventy-one percent of Earth’s surface, affected Humanity?)

Duh. How has it NOT? The question does not compute!

Let’s get back to government. In the Skies of River, how is the Confluence ruled? You’ve got vastly different populations – some who have no need of setting foot on ANY kind of surface; others who live in biohabitats, balloon-like cities grown from bone and sinew. Also, they have tamed and bred IMMENSE cloudwhales, a native form of life reminiscent of jellyfish; except worm-shaped and literal KILOMETERS long, undulating through the skies. Soil, a RARE AND PRECIOUS commodity, has been manufactured from asteroids (as have metals, taken from the moons of River) and then layered on the backs of even LARGER cloudwhales. They grow the food needed in the skies of River. Because they trade food for technology (has THAT ever happened on Earth? Nah!) harming the cloudwhales is a crime punished by INSTANT DEATH among both the inhabitants of the Empire and the Confluence – which societies inhabit alternate east and west blowing bands of clouds…

So, what kinds of government? The Empire has an Emperor or an Empress, either one depending on an elaborate process. But because the society is not on any one continent (we saw what happened when the British Empire split up onto separate continents. “The British what?” (said with Hindi, Telegu, Bahamian, American, Australian, Guyanese, Canadian, Nigerian accents). So, to keep a united Empire, every Entity (a Conglomeration of Balloons, a Relation of Cloudwhales, a Bunch of Gravity Modified Castles, (or what not) sends ONE representative to the yearly Parliament Platform that rides the Equatorial Belt, to serve a three year term.

The Confluence is slightly less…rigid. A Real Democracy, every member of the Confluence has a vote. The planet-wide voting technology is purchased from the Empire…

Certainly BIG changes are voted on one-hundred percent democratically (“What kind of imbecile would give up their vote and let someone else cast it?” is engraved on the heart of every Confluan, and history is frequently used to remind them what happens when a republic gets too big for its britches (not that anyone really understands what that means…but the IDEA is there)…

So – would an Empire and a true Democracy work on a world with no landmasses and no true borders, and where it approaches an “every being for themselves”; and the “solid resources come from an abundance of moons and a dozens of rings orbiting the puffy Jupiter River?

Is it a symbiotic government? Commensal? Mutualistic? Are the inhabitants of the skies of River living in commensal, mutualistic, symbiotic, parasitic, or “other” kinds of relationships? We’ll talk more later

Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/10/e2022912118, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_in_fiction
Image: https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-news/files/20190417214748/artist-rendering-585x299.jpg