Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction.
After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...
You can check out the Wikipedia article linked below as well as a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY I wrote a couple of years ago when I first started poking around the idea of “intelligent jellyfish”. First thing I found out was that jellyfish are single organisms – like Humans. But the siphonophores are COLONIAL organisms are made up of thousands – and potentially millions of individual creatures working together but still separate. One way to look at it is that Humans are individually identified; and Le Lignon in Switzerland is considered the largest apartment building on Earth with 6000 full-time residents. A jellyfish would be a Human; the apartment a siphonophore.
In the event of a first contact, the Siphon (I’m calling them that for the sake of brevity and admitting that, like every other long word, Americans would shorten names to nicknames; but not all cultures do it so, it’s my blog and I’ll do it how I want to! ;-)…Sorry, let me pick up the statement before I wandered off…wouldn’t be speaking to a Human as an individual, but as if it were a…I suppose “city” or “town” would be closer as the siphonophore is a co-dependent colonial organism. While distantly related, they are NOT jellyfish.
OK – enough biology.
How would I communicate with a sapient apartment building? Unlike talking to an individual Human, talking to a Siphon would of necessity be like talking to each resident of the apartment building alone. A decision made by one of the residents would be completely independent of every other resident.
That’s how it would go with a non-sapient creature. While incredibly tedious, it could, I suppose, be done. “A siphonophore is much more than the sum of its parts. In fact, none of its parts could function on their own. Each siphonophore is actually a colony of individual parts, called “zooids”, which are produced as the siphonophore grows, and stay connected together. Some form rope-like chains that can grow longer than a whale. Each zooid has a distinct job in this colony: some catch prey, while others digest it, and still others reproduce, swim, and keep the colony upright. The result is a biological marvel that makes us wonder just what it means to be an ‘individual’!”
But if a Siphon were to evolve to Human-equivalent intelligence there would be other types of organisms – probably brain-type cells as well as electrical communication-type cells. These would link up with the light-emitting cells, and while the Siphon would NOT have a brain or a mouth or one voice…hmmm…
Siphonophores live (at least on Earth) in the oceans, so if an alien Siphon came to Earth, we would likely be speaking to them in the open ocean. Probably the best way to work this is to bring a large submarine with Humans who serve all kinds of capacities. And once we made contact, the Siphon should be able to understand that while we appeared as they do – a huge massive “creature”, they would instead be a colony serving individuals. Maybe something like this:
The entire Contact team gathered in the forward Light Emitter of the Contact Ship. A disk of transparent plastic, each Human lay in a tube with a light disk facing outward – something like a giant, circular honeycomb.
The Siphon alien drifted across from them. Each Human Emitter was linked with the others via headset. At the back of the disk, Control was made of a cluster of Human monitors. Still others controlled the buoyancy and forward and reverse motion of the Contact Ship. They were banking on the probability that the Siphon would use light to communicate. As far as Humanity was concerned, if they were going to contact them via mental telepathy…well, it could be argued that if it WERE possible, some Human, somewhere would have heard the Siphon already.
WHAT they would have heard was a complete unknown. They had proceeded under the belief that “psionic powers” continued to remain fictional. Light seemed the most logical.
Control sent out a message from each console – scripted, but allowing for slightly different expressions. They had decided to initially use the ten most common languages on Earth, including JavaScript: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and German. The language was transcribed into electromagnetic pulses and translated into the same frequency of light the Siphon was emitting in and appeared on multiple light emitting disks of different intensities.
The first message: “Do you wish to speak to us?”
The response was nothing less that powerful and stunningly beautiful. Rather than a simple disk of light, messages flashed back to the Human Contact Ship from many parts of the Siphon. Not every message was identical, which the Humans had expected, but sometimes the response was radically different, not just in frequency, but in content.
At least that’s what appeared after that first flash of communication…
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophorae, Youtube: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=566487c1e8374dca&sca_upv=1&hl=en&authuser=0&q=flashing+siphonophores&tbm=vid&source=lnms&fbs=AEQNm0AiWqXpwpi4y_F8VDYetL6Dlnkps_EIKkohBFm2lDUsiBepNBjmASBr9uelbUYBbgOgSinKnsikOw8eX0WEsCCwGvOIvfwleINDrjuVTRluMTv3nX8Frtmxn4Qe_W2QKK1dJN5mLvfVGYgDzBpTcFZ4qRW9sb2H-dwGidyfFM4hXfFGP2K7PF0m3LKNusD786nNUaJGQIHCM3Az9G-LUbh-I4FUCw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb_-yiiNKIAxX7nokEHbhUM1gQ0pQJegQIEhAB&biw=1528&bih=704&dpr=1.25#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bbefe8ba,vid:OeflgYWxyVI,st:0;
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/search?q=siphonophores; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPUF40j47-o, https://twilightzone.whoi.edu/explore-the-otz/creature-features/siphonophore/
Image: https://www.mbari.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/blue-siph-glow-640b.jpg (Frillagalma vityazi)
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