CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 46: Speculative Biology – An Evolving Field #5 - The Weakness I See With the Second Life IDEA

September 15, 2026

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.
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...

A New Form Of Life

"By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, AI is alive."

https:/www.noemamag.com/a-new-form-of-life/
“By applying the same four properties used to define biological life — reproduction, variation, selection and energy acquisition — the systems being built in our data centers can be called alive.” – William Haseltine

After reading this article, I struggled to NOT point out a flaw in the author’s perfect logic…but I’m not ready to blurt out my observation quite yet.

So, what do I see in the author’s HIGHLY educated logic (ergo, I MUST be wrong, right?), is that all of the things leading to Second Life (I feel like the author would want this to be italicized) and all of the proclamations of its superiority seem (to me) to ignore a foundational premise: while for biological life, the acquisition of energy is available from countless formats (I concede that Humanity cannot get energy directly from the sun (which of course requires plants to do the conversion from the sun to energy animal life can access), Second Life depends entirely on biological life to both make many forms of energy (light and heat are NOT manufactured by Humans except as a secondary “excess”) and/or produce the energy and/or a method of translating that energy into a mechanically usable form. So, it seems that without biological life, Second Life would be impossible…

Maybe I’m just feeding my biological inadequacies or trying desperately to protect my “biological superiority complex” or stoke my Second Life prejudices…but I don’t think so…but then OF COURSE I wouldn’t think that if I WAS trying to protect my thoughts.

Somehow, this seems to be circularly logical. But let’s see where they’re going: “Reproduction, variation, selection and energy define life. This definition does not require carbon, cells, a heartbeat, a nervous system or pain.” I’ll grant the premise of their thesis. But they go on to CHANGE their parameters to fit their predetermined conclusion: that “…computers use energy. Data centers require electricity and without it, the systems stop functioning. While humans supply the energy, the ultimate source is the sun, just the same as all life on Earth.”

This is not a particularly strong argument…at least not for ME who is waiting for something to really convince me that computer programs and computers are a manifestly a new form of life.

My main objection: if First Life was wiped out on Earth by a comet or meteor or the sun going nova, I’m assuming Second Life would be wiped out as well…Third Life would most likely be BIOLOGICAL rather than electronic…FOURTH Life would happen, but would NOT if biological life was wiped out and never came back. While the writer graciously allows that Second Life needs First Life, I wonder if that’s simply for the sake of argument, or do they actually suspect that Second Life can spontaneously arise on a suitable planet WITHOUT THE HELP of First Life? This is one flaw I thought of: is Second Life actually “life” at all? Or is it just an imaginary rant against biological life? The magazine this article came from is Noema, which “comes from an ancient Greek word meaning ‘thought or the ‘object of thought,’ and it has distinct meanings in philosophy, media, and astronomy.”

If ONLY we could ask STAR TREK's Borg and see what they think!

Next: “Whether First Life’s relationship with Second Life leads to extinction, partnership or an unforeseen outcome remains unknown. What is certain is that this issue demands our most rigorous attention.” I think the author assumes that the extinction that happens will be that of Homo sapiens sapiens rather than electronic life. I have lots of questions and thoughts, none of which I’m going to try sharing here out of fear of vicious attack. BUT…given that (the foundation of the article), Second Life is a FACT, and the two kinds of “life” on Earth are inextricably entangled, and according to current research, even elders like ME are addicted to their “devices” as much as seven-year-olds are (you should see my grandson when he CAN’T use his device…certain DOOM has raised its ugly head in his world!). Another Flaw that the author doesn’t even attempt to answer can be summarized by my “Google Search” question:

“What are the restraints that keep most of us from murder, theft, violence, etc?” Most people are restrained from committing…murder, theft, and violence by a combination of internal psychological mechanisms and external societal guardrails.

The AI answering this question answered this way. I have evaluated the likely effect on SL (Second Life):

Internal Moral and Emotional Restraints: Irrelevant for SL.
Empathy: The biological and psychological capacity to feel or understand another person's pain. Irrelevant for SL.
Conscience: An internalized moral code. Irrelevant for SL.
Cognitive Dissonance: Most people view themselves as "good." Committing a severe crime destroys that self-concept, causing massive psychological discomfort. SL has no such concept.

Social Bonding and Social Control Theory (Travis Hirschi)

a)…people conform because they have too much to lose if they break the law. The four bonds that influence this are…

Attachment: Close emotional ties to family, friends, and peers. SL has no emotions.
Commitment: The investment a person has made in conventional life goals, such as a career, education, or a reputation. SL has no need of any of this.
Involvement: Simply being too busy. Not possible for SL.
Belief: A shared respect for the fairness and legitimacy of society's rules and laws. SL has no ability to “believe” – everything is data.
Formal Legal and Deterrent Systems: There are none for SL.
Certainty of Punishment: The likelihood of being caught by law enforcement is ridiculous. You would need SL that had chosen a life of law enforcement. Most SL would be uninterested in this. (But it might make an interesting story!)
Severity of Punishment: The threat of prison, heavy fines, or loss of freedom. Irrelevant for SL.
Swiftness of Punishment: How quickly justice is served. How do you “punish” SL? (AND this is often the weakest deterrent in modern legal systems).
Evolutionary and Biological Constraints: Evolutionarily, FL is hardwired to be cooperative, social animals because survival depended entirely on the group. This is irrelevant for SL. The following are also irrelevant for SL: Prosocial Evolution, Neurological Regulation.

I remain unconvinced that Second Life is less a realistic theory and more an amusing mind game…but that’s just me. I’m sure there are people running around screaming their heads off because they now have something ELSE to worry about…

Sources: https://www.noemamag.com/a-new-form-of-life/
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 45: When We Get Good Enough, Will “Designer” Clones of Humans Made In Space Be ALIENS?

8/9/26
Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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...

The FIRST sentence of the definition of alien on Wikipedia is this: “Extraterrestrial life, or alien life (colloquially aliens), is life that originates from another world rather than on Earth.”

From MARTIAN HOLIDAY: “They waited until the interior doors opened. Svetlana lifted her helmet and stepped back pulling off a thin, black stocking cap, shaking her hair free. It was a stunning indigo, just the blue side of black.

“You’re an Artificial Human, but your skin isn’t purple!” cried Chumani.

Svetlana said, “The Free Martian Fellowship recognizes any cloned person as fully Human, no matter their color.” They stared at her, so she continued, “For most of the 19th and Twentieth Centuries on Earth, people with dark brown skin tried thousands of ways to lighten it. We’ve been doing the same thing for Artificial Human skin for the past twenty myears. Nanomachines designed to work on artificial skin can make any AH look like any uterine-born Human.”

“How can we tell you apart?” Chumani said

“Why would you need to? We’re not clones of each other. We may look like our donors, but we’re not from any single stock.”

A young man, his stunner aimed at Paolo, said, “What do we do with the trespassers?”

Paolo said, “What if I could prove to you that not only am I a Christian Witness, but that I’d be willing to join your Fellowship?” Svetlana snorted and lifted her nerve disruptor, a rare, deadly weapon with a gruesome way of killing. Paolo spread his arms and said, “If you think I’m lying or trying to pull something, kill me now.” He closed his eyes and dramatically lifted his chin and arms.

She said abruptly, “What can you offer the Fellowship that we can’t get anywhere else? We’re not uniformly Christian. There are Buddhists, Muslims, several Confucians, and others of one faith or another, as well as a few outright atheists.” Her gaze narrowed, “‘Our religion is freedom. Our worship is action.’” Svetlana holstered her disruptor but Micah kept his stunner in hand, though lowering it a bit. There was long silence as other men, women, and Artificial Humans drifted in. None of them were armed. Svetlana turned to look at them, then turned her attention back to him. “Well?”

“I can offer you an intact, virtually undetectable communication network already established among the Christians on Mars. Adding the Martian Fellowship would be no problem.”

In the world of MARTIAN HOLIDAY (incidentally, it’s a ROMAN kind of holiday, not a Christmas kind of holiday), there are Humans with all rights, Artificial Humans with no rights, plus thousands of microorganisms, plants, animals, and even pets with other genetic modifications – unfortunately including fursnakes that hunted at the deepest levels, even some from reconstructed prehistoric stock, like the legendary Titanoboa at 13 to 15 meters long and weighing more than a metric ton.

Despite their Earthly origins, would the genetically engineered life forms be considered “Earthly”? Are Artificial Humans human or alien? What does being alien mean? Here’s a definition: “An alien is a creature from another world, a person living in a country where they are not a citizen, or something very strange and unfamiliar. Extraterrestrial (Not of Earth; Outer Space): A living being that comes from a planet other than Earth. Science Fiction: Popularly shown in movies and books as life forms from distant galaxies (sorry AI overview, not even close. Vulcans; Klingons; Na’vi; Xenomorphs; ET; Superman; Jawas; or Dalek – are NOT from distant galaxies. They’re from alien WORLDS )

So…genetically engineered life forms – like the Artificial Humans – are not technically FROM Earth, but Mars…If there was no Mars, there wouldn’t be AH (or “ayches”) there. So…they are, in a strict way “alien”. In fact, even though some of the aliens listed above are at least PART-Human, they aren’t ALL Human…so are they actually ALL aliens?

I’m not even sure myself, but I’ll be thinking about it as time goes on...comments welcome (as long as they're thought out, not reactionary, and polite!)

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 44: UNBELIEVABLE Aliens

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.
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...

What alien was THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE you ever forced yourself to watch (even for a few moments, just to see what would happen)?

Apparently, people LOVE playing with the idea of aliens! Following that, my opinion will be the one I’m expressing here because there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus about the WORST alien ever presented to an audience.

For me, ET seems the most absurd. First of all, I’ll remind you that I started my teaching career as a science teacher. I’ve done ALL of them in elementary, middle school, and high school – except for Honors Physics. My science is pretty solid, so I feel comfortable saying that for trying to be something terrifying, ET is absurd. First and foremost, it would never have lasted long enough on its homeworld to even BEGIN evolution! (Don’t get me wrong, if God wanted to create any life form they wanted to, they could have done so. ET, here I come!)

BUT, given that public school science eschews Divine Creation, the creature that the movie depicts as not ONLY intelligent, but smart enough to invent, design, build, and fly a starship that skip Normal space with impunity and (obviously) and fly from their home world to numerous other planets.

The problem is that I don’t see how they could possibly survive the early stages of evolution. They can’t run, for heaven’s sake! Their neck could snap in the event of a hard fall; a trip; or a stiff breeze!

Look at ET’s fingers for heaven’s sake: I assume for lack of evidence otherwise, that ET is the lifeform on their planet that invented a star drive capable of propelling them through some kind of alternative space that doesn’t require travelling slower than the speed of light – which would mean it would take tens, hundreds, or thousands of years to make it to Earth. That requires some kind of science to create a technology, and technology is notoriously fickle and would require tools that were smaller than ET’s fingers…

I’ll grant eyes so large they make adult Humans swoon and cause children to place implicit trust in a creature who’d traveled some incredible number of light years to reach them. ET is also intelligent enough to make sense of colloquial English, as well. Linguist? OK, I’ll grant it. But logical? Realistic? Sorry – the biology just doesn’t carry it believably for me. Granted: I hardly look like the end result of intelligent Humans who first escaped being eaten enough times to have lots of kid; who then started tinkering with science and technology; and who recently (finally) returned Humans to orbit the Moon and who have had a sustained presence outside of Earth’s atmosphere for 27 years.

But supposedly, ET is some sort of scientist; an explorer; and granted he has psychic powers that allow him to lift things and fly them by sheer power of mind…

But as a fictional alien? Sorry, I’m believing that our REAL First Contact will introduce us to aliens who are at least as intelligent as the smartest Humans…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial, https://www.reddit.com/r/FIlm/comments/1k9xtml/hot_take_i_hate_et_its_antiscience_trash/ Image: https://www.savannahnow.com/gcdn/authoring/2013/06/26/NSMN/ghows-GA-1525da98-72f7-4b22-8bdb-9522cdabe259-0091e7b9.jpeg?width=660&height=587&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS 44: Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth

Under Pressure: Exploring Oceans Beyond Earth – We're finding liquid water everywhere in the solar system. What will it take for humanity to explore and/or colonize those vast new oceans?
William Ledbetter: 2016 Nebula Award, edits for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, runs the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest (Baen Books, the National Space Society)
Pat MacEwen: anthropologist/author, several short stories in F&SF
Laurel Anne Hill: authored The Engine Woman’s Light, one other novel
Too bad James L. Cambias wasn’t part of this panel. His novel, A DARKLING SEA, takes place under the ice surfaced ocean of the alien world, Illmatar. It’s more complex than that, but his aliens and their entirely fire-less biotech society and culture are fascinating.

Jupiter’s moon, Europa figures in several science fiction stories ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_moons_in_fiction), more than one dealing with life in the waters under the ice. There’s ice under the surfaces of Mars and Venus as well: http://theconversation.com/water-water-everywhere-in-our-solar-system-but-what-does-that-mean-for-life-76315

Certainly we will explore those places when time and technology are right, but I think this session was looking beyond that. We’ve established that there’s water elsewhere than on the home world. So? Who cares? We need water on Earth – but even though the surface is 71% water, we can only “use” a fraction of that. Roughly three percent of that water is “usably freshwater” and of that, most of it is frozen or underground. Vast swaths of the surface of our OWN planet are completely uninhabited by Humans. We laud and magnify ourselves for having “conquered Earth” as well as chide ourselves for “destroying the oceans”…

But we can easily walk on only 29% of the surface, and of that, 57% is uninhabitable…so, Humans live on just sixteen percent of the Earth’s surface. Seems that “conquered” is a somewhat relative term. Here the discussion looked at “what it will take for humanity to explore and/or colonize those vast new oceans”. Yet we haven’t even colonized our own oceans. We avoid them typically. There are Humans who have never had any encounter with an ocean at all, and the ones who say that they have might have gone swimming in one or flown over one. Even those who live “on” the ocean might have little to do with the water itself. As I live in the land-locked center of North America, I have no idea how many people in Los Angeles actually “use” or have “conquered” the Pacific.

Certainly people HAVE done things with the ocean, interacting with it intimately – my daughter spent time on New Zealand as an exchange student learning about Maori art; most everyone reading this has seen the kid’s movie, “Moana”. Many of us have “been to Hawaii”.

Can we honestly say in any real sense that Humans have “conquered the oceans”? Do we really live there, or do we just USE the oceans? We certainly like to dump stuff there: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/podcast/june14/mw126-garbagepatch.html, in particular, insoluble plastic.

Some people claim that living on the oceans is “impossible” or “unlikely”, but the fact is that we have created artificial islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_islands, we just haven’t made them very large, the largest owned near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Japan has created the most artificial islands, and Holland has been doing it for two thousand years. The ancient Egyptians also made islands.

But our ability to push back oceans and to really, truly inhabit them is entirely unrealized on this planet. There are no undersea cities – a peculiar dream of mine – but there are some who think they might be possible: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2016/westminster-academics-predict-underwater-cities-downloadable-food-and-3d-printed-houses-by-2116. Science fiction (sort of in some of the cases noted) has had a stab at it: https://io9.gizmodo.com/5560901/the-11-greatest-underwater-cities-of-science-fiction

None of the sources mentioned SEAQUEST DSV, and while there were no cities under the surface of the ocean, there were colonies and (at least in its first season), a serious attempt at writing the stories. In this future, the bottom of the ocean is the only place left where there are exploitable natural resources and Humans need to be there to utilize them.

Yet there are still SOME people entertaining the possibility of us REALLY living under the surface of the oceans. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3rs886Imgk then give it some thought...would YOU live "20,000 Leagues UNDER the SEA...

Image: https://blaustein.foundation/dubai-underwater-city-life-extending-technological-marvel/

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 43A: Aliens Based on Animals We Know On Earth – the Octopus

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. 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...

“An octopus could NEVER evolve into intelligence – not equal to Humans! An octopus couldn’t use fire or walk or go on the surface…”

Lots of people would argue that octopuses would NEVER have evolved Human intelligence or been able to make tools – because they can’t use fire to form metal tools.

“But is METAL absolutely essential to an intelligent civilization?” I ask.

“Well, DUH! How could they make cars, or trains, or planes, or computers, or spears, or machine guns, or lasers? You need ALL THAT STUFF to have an intelligent, space-worthy civilization!” you reply.

So…let’s look at it. ALSO: I am going to bar myself from having octopi being able to communicate telepathically, or manipulate matter telekinetically.

But what about telecommunication, or telescopes (duh! To see the stars!), or teleconference(!), or telemarket (…OK, I’ll grant you we do NOT need telemarketers, or Teletubbies, or telenovelas, either; being without teleology wouldn’t kill anyone, either, though TELEVANGELISM might be a fascinating dive down a rabbit hole! We'll see...), television, telegraph, telephoto lenses…surrender yet??? Good. I couldn’t find many others that made sense.

The thing is, is that most of stuff up above needs something even more essential to Human civilization: ELECTRICITY. We all know that electricity and water (especially SALT water) do NOT mix…what? What about salt water? Salt in water INCREASES the ability of water to conduct electricity – by fifty to A HUNDRED times. So, being under water doesn’t NECESSARILY eliminate an octopoid alien being able to become Human-level intelligent.

So…what if they could produce electric CURRENT and an electric DISCHARGE. By definition a CURRENT: “…he flow of electrons or other charged particles (ions) through a conductive material…conventional current is defined as moving from positive to negative. In a Direct Current (DC): In batteries, charges move in one direction (like when I UNplug my computer.) With Alternating Current (AC): Charges periodically reverse direction, like in the charger this computer is plugged into.

Can octopuses do either one? No, they can’t. But electric eels can…they create direct charges. “…electric eels and rays use a DC to stun or kill prey. But some can use weak pulses for navigation and communication in dark, murky water, similar to radar. Some insects like bumblebees create small amounts of static electricity through their wings to communicate with their hive and can control their discharge, with some, like the electric eel, using lower voltages to track prey before releasing a high-voltage, debilitating shock.”

So, the octopoid intelligence would have to be able to be like an electric eel…OK, I’ll grant that; and THAT is just about enough for today! Come back next week and I’ll push my “intelligent alien octopuses” agenda a bit harder!

Sources: https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/generating-electricity-electric-animals#:~:text=Electrogenic%20animals%20can%20generate%20their%20own%20electricity.,Fish%20Most%20electrogenic%20animals%20are%20also%20electroreceptive.
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJurDYBLLEw&t=2s
SF with “Octopus Intelligences”: https://meandinkblog.wordpress.com/2024/02/23/fiction-books-octopus/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus

IMAGE: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/nintchdbpict000407183945.jpg?strip=all&w=960

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42 D: Alien Families and “What Does It Mean To “Be Human?”

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.
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...

I did a Google search with the question ‘What does it mean to be Human?’. I skimmed several rather superficial answers, then ran across this site: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Public responses to the question “What Does It Mean To Be Human?”

Try it and you’ll find that there are THOUSANDS of responses. Obviously, some people will repeat what others wrote far, far above them. But the VARIETY of answers to the question is STARTLING!

These quotes below aren’t even representative (nor do they make great sense – but I get the drift!):

Russia: “I think we change all the time and that we are ourselves as long as we remember who we were and are and we are conscious of ourselves.” Too convoluted for my simple mind…

Florida: “To be able to understand Quantum Physics...” I’m obviously not totally Human…

Australia: “The ability to show compassion, love and determination and interconnection, however, the admittance that we are inherently flawed, but working to overcome and accept our flaws and understand the world together.” I’m not sure I can “show…interconnection”? I’m married and have three kids, three kids-in-law, and four grand kids…Am I interconnected? I have a friend who is single, parentless, and suffers from depression. Is HE interconnected? How do YOU “show…love”? After I was a child, my dad never showed any physical form of love. He provided for all of us. Did he LOVE us? Hmmm…until recently, I wasn’t sure. I admit I am flawed – can a brown bear admit it is flawed? What would a “flawed brown bear” look like? A grizzly? An orca?

Jordan: “To be human is to have a soul. Our soul is what guides us make decisions and think logically about a situation. Our soul can also be safe in the freedom that comes from Christ or be lost to the sin of this world.” While I happen to agree with their faith statement, I’m pretty sure proving I have a soul that guides my decisions and think logically would be difficult to impossible. Some chimpanzees have shown some ability of making decisions after thinking logically. Are they Human?

What does this have to do with the subject of family in space? The authors commented: “Within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. We have been so successful that we have inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.”

Wow. Just WOW! The authors have laid on a single species (not even the most abundant species on Earth! That moniker goes to “the sheer number of tailed phages, [is] estimated at (10^{31) particles, makes them the most numerous life form on the planet.” Humanity doesn’t even come close to that…

“But we’re Intell-junt!” Hmmm…define “intelligence”.
“We’ve taken over the world! We ARE the most powerful force on the planet Earth!”

I’d argue that: “Throughout human history, four infectious diseases have dominated as the leading killers: tuberculosis, smallpox, plague, and malaria. While tuberculosis claims the highest death toll across history, with an estimated 1 billion lives lost, smallpox follows closely behind, killing approximately 300-500 million people in the 20th century alone before its eradication in 1980.”

So, what IS the impact of Human families on Earth?

In their multiple varieties, Human families have caused both planetary disasters and ushered in bright presents. For example, Adolph Hitler worked hard to HIDE his past. Winston Churchill wrote, “(Hitler) was a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma.” Largely due to his own deliberate and extensive efforts to obscure his origins. the article linked below is a review of a book written by Ron Rosenbaum and lays out some of the roots of a man almost universally hated. As a school counselor, the “discovery in Germany of a journal written by Adolf Hitler's sister…offers remarkable insights into the dysfunctional nature of the Führer's family.”

Of the “10 Best Humans In The World”, author Aastha Arya (Senior Content Writer @ iSchoolConnect) suggests that the number ONE best person was Charles Darwin (of the paper then book, “On the Origin of Species”; 1859) – and lots is known about his family as he was born wealthy, but instead of sitting around basking in inherited wealth, he poured his money into an exploration of the world.

Family SHAPES Humans. Even among other species, family dynamics drive behaviors, viewpoints, methods of thinking, ways of acting, and any number of things. “Altering” creative “reimaging” of Human families won’t make any monumental change in Humanity. In fact, authors who think that they’re predicting GIGANTIC changes in the Human institution of family don’t appear to me to be offering anything either new or strange. It’s the same-old, same-old. There are a plethora of family constellations already on Earth ranging from single parent homes to entire villages (hence the aphorism, “It takes a village”) expected to nurture a child. Even In vitro fertilization (or IVF) doesn’t change a family’s dynamics in any “startling” or “futuristic” way…family is family, no matter how it’s structured; and families living under the shell of an asteroid will not be markedly different from families growing children on a planet where they have to be genetically modified to survive acid rain or submerged cities! Families will be families; just as they have been since the first family was created!

Sources: https://humanorigins.si.edu/about/become-involved/submit-your-response-what-does-it-mean-be-human#:~:text=Being%20a%20human%20is%20being,others%20and%20caring%20about%20them.&text=To%20be%20human%20is%20to,a%20human%20is%20having%20freedom. ; https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/which-infectious-disease-biggest-killer-all-time ; https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.155.12.1788 ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar#:~:text=Other%20insights%20include%20the%20revelation,cultivated%20in%20Hitler's%20own%20home.%22 Image: https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/I-sneak-our-little-dog-into-all-of-my-farmily-photo-sessions-602bcae1007d0__880.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42C: Space Families – The Last Word???

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota. 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...

We in the speculative fiction world seem to feel like we have a tight bead on the weird – no more so than when “AI” suggests that “For future space settlements, new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…”

Clearly the programmer that wrote the AI’s program (or put the words in the AI’s figurative mouth) had never read the 1912 classic, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE by Zane Grey. (“…a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. Considered by scholars to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called ‘the most popular western novel of all time’.)

For a 113-year-old novel, it has some EXTREMELY STRANGE “family units” encompassed in the story. Not by ANY means unusual to most of us, is the Mormon family unit. I’ll leave you to mull that over and turn to the even WEIRDER family units in this seemingly innocuous “Western”.

Don’t get me wrong, I found my copy for free on a discard pile at my neighborhood GOODWILL store and picked it up, knowing it was a classic, and put it on my library shelf. I finally picked it up a couple weeks ago moved by a wild impulse to read something entirely outside of both my interest range and beyond any compulsion to read anything even vaguely resembling a genre outside of my life experiences. After I started it, I have been reading it in mostly utter amazement.

So far, the most astonishing thing is that the sexual mores of the second decade of the 20th Century are (publicly) so entirely different from those of this second decade of the 21st. The main example is the two lead male characters are madly in love with the two lead female characters. If Grey had written it in 2012, the men and women (or both men or both women or all four of them) would have tumbled into bed two pages after they met and after 200 pages interspersed with lurid (or off-stage) “lovemaking” (aka sex in all of its kinkiness), they would have thought about getting married, skipped that and spent the rest of the book having sex…oh, and Grey might have found a few pages to tell the rest of an incredibly…alien…story.

Example: one of the characters had a good friend who died after she nursed her from an illness to her ultimate death.
Example: turns out one of the characters is the daughter of a truly horrible man who molded her into a criminal and murderer.
Example: while sex of any kind is usually irrelevant to the story line, most novels (SF and F) find some excuse to include either implicit sex or explicit sex in all but the MOST middle of middle-grade novels. If ANY novel includes coarse language, most of the words have sexual connotations and are freely employed.

So, back to ROTPS. Another pairing is between a character who has murdered dozens of other humans (on purpose or for his own financial gain or out of sheer anger at alleged or actual slights and an extremely wayward female character who knows all of this and falls madly in love with him anyway. Together, they plan to take what’s left of her money, leave it all behind and get married in another state.

The biggest point of the novel is one even the BRILLIANT AI didn’t even hint at: polygamous marriages. It takes place in Utah after the Church of Latter-Day Saints has fled their founding state of Ohio because they were chased out due to their commandment to enter into polygamous marriages. The largest “family” mentioned in non-Mormon literature was from the Old Testament. “King Solomon was said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines, for a total of 1,000 women in his harem.” How about “Ziona Chana? (d. 2021) in India, he had 39 wives, 94 children, 14 daughters-in-law, and 33 grandchildren for a total of 181 family members.”

“Polygamy is most often found in sub-Saharan Africa, where 11% of the population lives in arrangements that include more than one spouse.”

And what about SERIAL marriages? American “Glynn Wolfe married 31 times, fathered approximately 40 children and divorced 30 times.”

What OTHER kinds of families might there be? I mean, Humans are Human. Moving them to Mars, alien worlds, the Asteroid Belt, generational starships, or even able to instantaneously leap across space and time…you’ll STILL be dealing with Humans. How about inanimate objects? “Eija-Riitta Eklöf married the Berlin Wall in 1979, Erica Eiffel married the Eiffel Tower: Eiffel participated in a commitment ceremony with the Eiffel Tower in Paris; and Australian Jodi Rose married the Le Pont du Diable, a bridge in France.

The AI informing me that “new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…” says more about some programmer trying to excuse their own preference for “shocking” family arrangements. NONE of the things the web says will drastically alter Human relationships regarding family are anything more than weather and location. What OTHER “necessity” could occur that would lead to “new family structures”?

Give me a HINT, please!

Sources: various

Image: https://pics.craiyon.com/2024-09-16/fvE4Btv2SuqE5Y18WTwXXQ.webp

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42B: Alien Families and What That Might Mean When Colonizing a Gas Giant…

WAS SUPPOSED TO POST THIS YESTERDAY, 9/6/25!

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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...

My quotes below are from something Google calls an “AI Overview” from my query “Families in Space”. While I’ve used them in the past, I was somewhat irritated by a couple of things this overview presented: “For future space settlements, new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…Behavioral health programs are being developed to support astronauts’ families, addressing issues like…changing family roles…Space settlement families will likely be diverse, forming from biological ties or personal choice, and may take on various forms, including polyamorous or egalitarian structures…In a more metaphorical sense, stars are born in ‘families’ or groups, sharing characteristics and originating from the same place at the same time.”

While I’m sure Google wants to present this as a “totally logical computer speculation” and figures I’ll just accept it as the inevitable Progress Of Humanity, I find it oddly…myopic, blithely setting a “bold new course” into the future as Humanity changes the way families have functioned (admittedly with varying degrees of success) since they have pretty much been the same since the first family units formed half-a-million years ago. So, because of AI, computers, and the boundless wisdom of scientists, all that BS is about to come to an end, thank-technology?

Seems oddly…stupid.

What would alter a family who live on the back of an immense semi-sapient creature floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant, since apparently, “new family structures will be needed to address...unique challenges”? Living on the back of a gigantic blimp would probably present “unique challenges”, eh?

On the other hand, I’m going to assume that Humans will need somewhere to stand, something to breathe, something to eat, and somewhere to breed. None of those basics are unique challenges, are they? Humans have been dealing with them as the biological unit we call families for half-a-million years. The environments on different worlds, OBVIOUSLY will be different. But Humans evolved on the African continent. Of COURSE weather and other factors were different than they were today, in fact, that very change argues that the social groups those original primate families developed it won’t change as radically going so far as to require “new family structures”. But using cold as the environmental challenge, “The coldest place where humans have had a permanent presence is the Russian village of Oymyakon…(which is) The coldest permanently inhabited village…in Siberia, the village of Oymyakon has average winter temperatures of around -58°F. The lowest recorded temperature in this settlement was -89.9°F) in 1933. Despite the extreme cold, Oymyakon has a permanent population of a few hundred residents. The cold is so intense that residents must keep vehicles running constantly so the engines don't freeze. Plumbing is nonexistent due to the permanently frozen ground (permafrost), so most toilets are outhouses.”

Human family structure appears to have remained as it was half-a-million years ago…it seems that Human and/or AI lack faith in the resiliency of the Human family unit.

In the skies of River, a gas giant world I’ve been writing in for several years now (two published stories: “The Baptism of Johnny Ferocious” (Dragons, Knights, and Angels), and “Prince of Blood and Spit” (Perihelion, 2015: https://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/2021/06/prince-of-blood-and-spit-perihelion.html) the “nuclear family” is quite healthy. In fact, the backs of these gigantic bags of undulating gas are planted with genetically engineered crops – mostly medicinal, but also designed to concentrate Human-necessary compounds, minerals, and molecules (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218751/), (https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/Vitamins-and-minerals). While gengineering Humans for particular environments may become necessary at some point, and while the propensity of the Human animal appeared to be directed to clumping in family units with variations (Navy Seals, for instance); or Western industrialized civilizations (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294648/); it’s also clear that while what has been historically defined as a “family unit”, little has changed in Humans over that half-million-year period of time.

Where I take exception, is the assumption that in challenging conditions, the family as we know it will seemingly evaporate to be taken over by something more... “egalitarian” – by which I think those kinds of Human writers mean, “families as I know them are doomed to become whatever people want them to be”…in reading information of SF novels for YA readers, the absurd term I came across is “found family”. It SEEMED to mean that kids can choose whatever kind of family they want willy-nilly and with no thought except “what feels good and meets all of my needs” without giving much thought to the needs of the rest of the people in these “found families”.

It seems to me that the pressure of Humanity moving to alien worlds or living in alien environments and facing interactions with alien peoples – would necessitate the FIRM foundation of the nuclear family unit that evolved here on Earth among the various species of Homo. The idea of a family “forming from biological ties or personal choice, [that] may take on various forms, including polyamorous or egalitarian structures…” is not only silly, but bound to failure. How can an “egalitarian structure” “…a system…that promotes equality and equal access to rights, opportunities, and resources for all its members, regardless of their background or social status. It aims to dismantle hierarchies and power disparities, fostering a sense of shared responsibility, and ensuring everyone is treated with equal fundamental worth and moral status.” make for survival in an inherently hostile environment? How can we colonize and thrive on/in a world deadly to unprotected, naked Human life? If no one’s the boss of anyone and no one can tell anyone else what to do, (which is implied by “equal fundamental worth, status, power, and morality”, and no one’s opinion or experience is more or less valid than anyone else’s…

In the skies of River, there needs to be authority (do NOT read authoritarianism!) and direction (do NOT read dictatorship!) Would Humans – as a species – even exist if hierarchy and disparity of power was forcibly removed (which begs the question, WHO WOULD ENFORCE the disparities? Who would make certain that social status vanished? Who enforces the equal distribution of resources?

No, the pioneers of River, riding on the backs of immense cloudwhales will have families and institutions that have evolved after 500,000 years; NOT family units conceived of over the past 200 years…recognizable. Stable. Not all moms who say, “No, you can’t stick that fork in an electrical outlet! Stop now, or else!” will vanish.

Much to the relief of Human evolution…

Sources: (see embedded in essay above)

Image: 

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42A: Human Space Families and What That Might Mean For First Contact

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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 know, it’s weird that there are SO FEW ALIEN MOVIES, NOVELS, or STORIES that include families. I'm going to do this post in two parts. FIRST, I want to take a QUICK look to see how writers have handled HUMAN families in outer space.

The stories usually allude to familial units by introducing kids, but that’s often as a matter of “they’re succeeding the Throne after the death of their “parent”…or the kid’s overthrowing the evil parent…or the parents spawn eighteen quadrillion children who invade Earth to eat as much of the life on it as they can.

But, mostly, there are few families. Old-timey books include families: PODKAYNE OF MARS by Robert A. Heinlein seems space travel as totally normal and a teen kiddo and younger brother lit through the Solar System like they were on a trip to the Wisconsin Dells. Speaking of which, LOST IN SPACE was literally about a family who was “lost in space”…though, of course, it was basically a joke.

A novel I’m reading today, which I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend to your attention is SWEEP OF STARS by Maurice Broaddus, which fascinating, complex, and has Solar Civilization arranged along the lines of traditional/and wildly variable African families – a TRUE Diaspora. I’m 2/3 through it and you should read it AND it’s about Families In Space!

But…but…but…just finishing up the STAR TREK: PICARD series, and for once, it has a HEAVY family component. But that’s mostly a recent development…SF writers never USED TO explore families in space. It was always INTREPID explorers doing things the Old Military Way – the men left their families behind to save the world! So, SF writers tended to take the easiest route and had the men (occasionally women) leaving their families behind. Of course, exploring that would have HAD to have led to showing men weeping when their children die (or are born) while they’re away “exploring Outer Space” or “Colonizing The Universe”. So, today, we have a dearth of REALISITC Families In Space. I’d be happy if we explored OTHER kinds of families than Nuclear…but I’d be happier if we DID explore using families as the foundation of Human exploration of space.

I also see that I, myself had contributed to that dearth of “Families IN OUTER SPACE” tales. I think I need to get to work on that idea…see ya!

Sources: ONE list from 2023 that lists “Family SciFi – https://bookriot.com/found-family-young-adult-books-in-space/ 

Image: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/astronaut-family-on-space-2206022229

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 41: The Unreliable Narrator & A Culture of Lying

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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...

Let me say first that I don’t believe that there is any chance left that an “honest politician” exists. I don’t care who they are or who they claim to be. Politicians (even our “best and brightest”) have one word in mind: Power. They desire above everything else to get power, keep power, and use power to help a) themselves; b) people they consider family; c) people in my party who think very much the way I do; d) (which normally doesn’t happen) “serve” my city/district/county/state/country/world.

Now that I have that cleared up (and I am uninterested in seeing your arguments unless you can offer me undeniable proof that I am wrong), how can I tell any kind of story about any kind of future I’d like to live in?

Star Wars? No – that’s just 20th Century Earth spread like manure over other planets.

Star Trek? No – that’s just a single man’s absurd belief that the universe would work the way HE wanted it to and that anyone who disagreed in any detail was wrong.

Babylon 5? It’s already just Earth written…well, not larger but spread farther than is believable but during which absolutely nothing changes.

Other Interplanetary Fictions that other people besides geeks read are irrelevant because not enough people know about them or read them (in any visual format that involves visible words) to take the tenets and apply them to reality. The only exception is George Orwell’s 1984, and as we have read (those of us who still read) it’s already been and is gone.

Dune? It offers absolutely nothing new or applicable to human existence – even at its simplest form, we can say that it’s here already (but without sandworms).

Fewer people read because first of all, reading is expensive: doesn’t matter what you read ON, you have to first be able to afford it and all the accoutrements that go with it (NOT including affordable electrical energy whether generated, stored, or created by some kind of chemical reaction.) cost some amount of money or trade.

Religion is unprovable. I happen to be an evangelical Christian myself, but I cannot in any convincing way offer you proof of my faith. The same goes for anything else based on something invisible – which also includes political systems: republic, democratic (true or any one of its various hybrid forms), theocratic, communist, or anarchy, or socialism (which inevitably devolves into dictatorship); or thought or emotion, neither of which is quantifiable in any way. (Of COURSE some aliens somewhere can quantify thought and emotion…it’s what we hope. It’s why Humans created every science fiction world – we want SOMEDAY to be better than we are.

BTW: Fantasy doesn’t count because ALL of it is based on thought or emotion, neither of which is quantifiable in any way.

So, is there any way for the Human organism to create an interplanetary society, explore space, and expand our place in the universe WITHOUT resorting to force?

Because that was the ONLY way Humanity could have evolved/was created – I can’t think of any way Humanity came to be. Every science fiction writer who has ever created a universe based on some science principle or another (or group of them) are only ENTERTAINING THEMSELVES AND EVENTUALLY OTHERS who choose to join them in their fun.

So, is there anywhere for Humanity to go? Once we create the energy to “get to the stars”, we’ll just transport all of the above off Earth and nothing will change; nothing will be different.

NOW, if you want to keep trying, that is up to you…well, not you PERSONALLY! YOU as a single person can’t do anything that would effect the future of Humanity. You’ll be dead in a genetically predetermined amount of time. You can certainly try and “make a difference” – but after watching the fantastical “Monuments Men”, it’s once again clear that Adolph Hitler CERTAINLY did make a difference.

So, what is my reason for writing science fiction? Sometimes I write it long; sometimes short. I certainly want people to READ what I write, but few people have published my writing, so a very small number had READ what I have to say; of course some have read it, but as far as I can tell, my writing hasn’t made any kind of difference in their lives. I haven’t converted anyone to my point of view.

How can I create a world people want to read about as avidly as I read about Anne McCaffery’s world of PERN (which stands for, apparently, Parallel Earth Negligible Resources – now isn’t THAT a joke on me!)?

I can’t be any more sure of my writing leaving a lasting impression on a young person’s mind and heart than she did, or Frank Herbert did, or JK Rowling did (ignore what I said about fantasy, it’s important! Just not my pot of tea!).

Every year fantasy and science fiction is written AROUND THE WORLD. In how many languages? A Western newspaper writes with self-assured authority (and jabs at people who disagree with it as NOT as superior as they are!) here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/11/seek-out-new-worlds-of-science-fiction-damien-walter#:~:text=Seek%20out%20new%20worlds%20of%20science%20fiction,a%20global%20language%20describing%20our%20shared%20future.

They self-righteously concluded in 2015: “If any single theme unites…African folktales to Chinese legend – into to the science fiction canon…science fiction has become the mythology of today’s…world…embrac[ing] the rich and valuable world mythologies that came before it.”

Sources: Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 40: Why Do We Think “The Worst Aliens” Are…Unbelievable?

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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...

I am a brutal critic of aliens in ANY TV series, movie, book, or any other media format. Part of the reason is that my undergraduate degree is in biology and my graduate degree is in psychology/school counseling. My life experience is in teaching 4th-12th graders, mostly in science…

I expect my aliens to MAKE SENSE. I don’t really care if they’re “scary” or “monstrous” or disgusting. They NEED to make sense to me.

Take for example, as much as the “Alien” xenomorphs scared the living crap out of a friend of mine and I, the possibility of something like them walking around, being insectoid, and under 1g, Earth normal gravity? (“How can you tell that???? They could have evolved under a different gravitational field that we did!” While all that wailing is true, the fact is that from the first movie, the xenomorphs interact with Humans UNDER EARTH-NORMAL GRAVITY!

“How do you know it’s Earth normal?” Mostly because none of them appear to have either technological nor biological adaptations to work or live under any level of g higher or lower than Earth normal. Ergo, to me, while they startled me and give me the heebie-jeebies, they don’t work biologically.

There’ve been all sorts of alien invasion movies, too with aliens who make no sense at all. The original 1953 version of HG Wells classic novel, WAR OF THE WORLDS made no sense, either. The screenplay writing tried, I’ll give them that! But the aliens really WOULDN’T be able to walk around under Earth’s gravity. Plus, the possibility of them catching a cold from us or US catching some sort of plague (UNLESS it was specifically designed from one or another of the Diseases of Humanity for a very specific purpose. As we all saw with H1N1, even COVID19, while killing a vast swath of Humanity, couldn’t take out ALL of us. (Current totals for world-wide death due to COVID 19, from 28 days through January 25, 2025 = https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?m49=001
My question then is this: “What qualifies anyone to judge that an alien is ridiculous?”

We have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on which to base such a statement. We have had no VERIFIABLE experience with extraterrestrial life of ANY sort. We have NO data regarding life existing ANYWHERE but on Earth – oh, we have VERY imaginative people coming up with VERY imaginative guesses. We have POWERFUL arguments against anyone, anywhere DENYING that our VERY AND TOTALLY IMAGINATIVE GUESSES are ridiculous. We will fight to the DEATH insisting that everyone else’s guesses are stupider than our.

If a five-year-old decides that there are candy-cane aliens out there somewhere, upon WHAT AUTHORITY does anyone on Earth base their categorical rejection of such an alien? “Science”? I was a biology major who graduated in 1981. I KNEW the categories of life and if you were to tell me that there was “an exotic new disease” that appeared in May of 1981 that was variously refered to as lymphadenopathy, KSOI, GRID, the 4H disease and would be resistant to virtually every antibiotic, and any other way of treating it, I’d have agreed. My IMMUNOLOGY textbook had nothing in it about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome…because it was a mystery. It was an unidentifiable, undefeatable form of life – of course, viruses aren’t technically alive, but they didn’t know WHAT it was at that time (and before you decide to unleash judgmental anger at me, my brother-in-law died from complications caused by AIDS.)

Our attempts to replicate alien BEHAVIOR are actually more than pathetic! Kira Nerys and Dr. Bashir? Worf and Jadzia Dax????? REALLY? Not even a snowball's chance of being even CLOSE to making any kind of sense at ALL!

What DO we know about the possibility of life on other worlds? What CAN we say is categorically “impossible”? Heavier-than-air flight was impossible. So was landing on the Moon. Treating AIDS was once impossible. Microorganisms living in boiling water were CERTAINLY impossible! So was life in ice! ABSOLUTELY life in lava was impossible…

Yet, all of them are now known to be fact.

Maybe the best we can say at this point is, “Well, it doesn’t seem likely – I certainly can’t imagine it – but who knows? Somewhere in the universe…”

I DO know people who would accuse anyone who subscribes to the “somewhere in the uiverse” response as downright absurd, a copout, naïve, and just plain stupid.

Then again, “Zoologist George Shaw was the first westerner to describe a platypus, the pelt and bill of which he was sent in 1799 from Australia. Shaw tried to understand the platypus but, like many of those who studied the strange creature after him, couldn’t shake the feeling he was being tricked.” 

Who am I to deny someone else’s sincere attempt to theorize what is and isn’t a believable alien?

LIST OF WEBSITES CATALGOGUING THE WORST MOVIES WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS IN THEM:
https://showtimeshowdown.com/top-5-worst-alien-invasions/
https://screenrant.com/worst-science-fiction-movies-rotten-tomatoes/
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/tyler-mitchell
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/thomas-west?ref=collections_btm&l=2912334&collectionId=1612
https://www.flickchart.com/charts.aspx?genre=alien+invasion+films&perpage=50&order=desc
https://orbitaltoday.com/2023/11/03/best-alien-films/
Platypus lore: https://www.ripleys.com/stories/platypuses-were-fake

Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 39: The Exploration of Radiation-Proof Intelligences

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

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...

So, let’s stipulate that aliens who are sapient intelligences invade our Solar System and out of desperation, we use the most powerful of the vast store of Human weapons from around the world to attempt to halt their implacable invasion of Human space…

A barrage of nuclear weapons explode, including antimatter weapons Humanity has cobbled together solely in an attempt to save themselves.. The aliens keep on coming. Their ships are disintegrated as are some of the aliens, but a number of the bodies of the aliens themselves head for Earth, stopping to take out the Martian and Lunar colonies, and then swing around the Sun and take out the Venusian colonies.

Why didn’t our nukes stop them???

Using Earth’s elite space forces, we manage to capture several of the Invaders. Using physical impacts, we knock two dozen out and rush them to a Lunar research station.

Under an atmosphere collected from an Invader ship, we recreate their air and begin an extensive and detailed bioassay.

We also discover that no matter how much we try and sterilize the samples of Invader tissue to prevent the contamination of Earthly biological forms with the alien ones, they are impervious to RADIATION…in fact, once we get more samples, we discover that the Invaders have nothing even remotely resembling CANCERS or MUTUATIONS. Among FURTHER facts, the Invaders (and a few other non-sapient lifeforms we got while capturing the intelligences, appear to be virtually identical within a species…) Specifically, their “rat-equivalents” and “sparrow-equivalents” appear to be singular species. Their paramecia seem to all be one species. Even a sort of furry green ball with multiple eyes and several manipulation limbs are all identical – no variation. ALL OF THE “GREEN POOFBALLS” are the same. They are genetically identical.

ALL of the sapient, intelligent aliens are exactly the same as well…if you examine ONE alien from its external anatomy to its DNA, you find that each and every one is EXACTLY THE SAME… Baffled, an elderly physician sends a memo for a presentation that they think will explain what Humanity has just discovered. They have a theory based on the discovery of a bacterium during the first quarter of the 21st Century.

They have cells and DNA that are immune to mutation because RADIATION HAS NO EFFECT ON THE CELLS…

“In fact, it appears that every single intelligence we’re captured is essentially a clone of every other intelligence.”

The conference erupts into chaos…

The horror never abates. Fear grips the entire Solar System and there are plans to destroy the Moon along with all lifeforms on it. The plans proceed swiftly until someone realizes that heat, laser, and energy weapons are all radiation-based.

They have no effect on the Invaders. Almost immediately, the politicians and ambassadors assemble and a conference proposed to the Invaders through a modified form of Morse Code. They accept.

From then on, communication is perfect, but the psychology of Humanity and Invaderity appear to be mutually incomprehensible…even though they have created an artificial language both seem to be able to use to communicate mathematical concepts.

The rest of the Human and Invader experiences are mutually incomprehensible… Neither side appears to ONLY understand destruction of the other. They appear to comprehend one word: war.

Abstract
“This report presents the recommendations of an international group of experts convened by the World Health Organization, in association with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency to consider the implications of food irradiated to doses higher than those recommended in 1980 by the Joint Expert Committee on the Wholesomeness of Irradiated Food. Irradiation ensures the hygienic quality of food and extends shelf-life. The public perception of the safety of food irradiation has generally precluded its widespread use. However, current applications of food irradiation to doses over 10 kGy have been in the development of high-quality shelf-stable convenience foods for specific target groups such as immunosuppressed individuals and those under medical care, astronauts and outdoor enthusiasts. The Study Group reviewed data relating to the toxicological, nutritional, radiation chemical and physical aspects of food irradiated to doses above 10 kGy from a wide range and number of studies carried out over the last forty years. This report presents a comprehensive summary, along with references, of the effectiveness and safety of the irradiation process. It concludes that foods treated with doses greater than 10 kGy can be considered safe and nutritionally adequate when produced under established Good Manufacturing Practice.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10524010/)

Sources: Human-Induced Radioresistance as a Possible Mechanism for Producing Biological Weapons: A Feasible Bridge between Radioresistance and Resistance to Antibiotics and Genotoxic Agents - PMC ; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4450694/ 

Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: An Alien Invasion May Already Be UNDERWAY!!!!

Several summers ago, I spent sporadic weeks chopping down the invasive tree/bush known as the common buckthorn…For my money, it is not only annoying, it is an horrendous MONSTER! (https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/106777038_10156827573131324_1338251936212348319_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=9q9yeayXZNAAX8wacF5&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=0578f6e378467324c0b4b97446be1500&oe=5F25001B

Oddly, this got me to thinking about a set of novels I read during my young adulthood. I was a pretty freshly minted science teacher. I could teach lots of the sciences, but my interest had always been in biology.

David Gerrold, of STAR TREK fame (“The Trouble with Tribbles” in particular), wrote a unique alien invasion novel (actually a series), that detailed how the Chtorr had begun their invasion by wiping out a substantial portion of Humanity through a viral attack.

The survivors began to find weird plants, animals, and “stuff” all over. The “worms” are only the most voracious members of the “invasion suite” – but they are terrifying: “…they range in size from as small as a dog to as large as a bus…They have two double-jointed ‘arms’…with incredibly sharp claws. Their bodies are covered with symbiotic ‘fur’, each strand of which is a distinct lifeform and acts as a sensory input.”

This is a sort of invasive species on steroids.

After spending weeks attacking an invasion of a European plant called “common buckthorn”, whose scientific name is Rhamnus cathartica. It was brought here as an “ornamental shrub” from “from the central British Isles south to Morocco, and east to Kyrgyzstan.”

It blends in and is seemingly innocuous, though its scientific name hints at one of its uses in herbal medicine: “The seeds and leaves are mildly poisonous for humans and most other animals… [causing] stomach cramps and laxative effects…[suggesting a] common name purging buckthorn…”

It’s a nasty thing that grows leaves before most of the rest of the northern species of trees and grows fast. Local animals don’t graze it; though birds eat the seeds. As well, the plant contains a chemical called an “emodin”. It made me think of Imodium when I first saw it and while this over-the-counter anti-diarrheal medication STOPS diarrhea, emodin causes it. Animals that try and eat the little hard, black berries drop them all over the place – effectively seeding the bush and helping it spread.

This is just one example of a particularly obnoxious plant that is insidiously taking over vast swaths of North America. The species is naturalized and invasive in parts of North America. Rhamnus cathartica has a competitive advantage over native trees and shrubs in North America because it leafs out before native species. Of the annual carbon gain in R. cathartica, 27–35% comes from photosynthesis occurring before the leaves of other plants emerge. Soil in woodlands dominated by R. cathartica was higher in nitrogen, pH and water content than soil in woodlands relatively free of R. cathartica,[15][18] probably because R. cathartica has high levels of nitrogen in its leaves and these leaves decompose rapidly.

"Rhamnus cathartica is also associated with invasive European earthworms (Lumbricus spp.) in the northern Midwest of North America. Removing R. cathartica led to a decrease of around 50% in the biomass of invasive earthworms.

"Soils enriched by extra nitrogen from decayed buckthorn leaves and…Invasive earthworms (which in MN means ALL earthworms…)…need rich litter, break [buckthorn leaves] down rapidly, destroying beneficial fungi and exposing bare soils in the process. These soils provide ideal conditions for buckthorn germination and seedling growth but many native trees and shrubs need the beneficial fungi and will not reproduce without it…it is particularly prevalent in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.”

Why can’t we fight it with 21st Century science? “Numerous potential biocontrol insects for common and glossy buckthorn were screened for host-specificity and impacts. Early on, glossy buckthorn biocontrol was eliminated from consideration due to lack of promising agents. Research continued on common buckthorn. After 11 years of searching for a biocontrol insect that is both host-specific and damaging to common buckthorn, we concluded that we do not have any promising agents at this time so we ended the project.”

So, while I’ve always laughed at the labels that say “Non-GMO” (because Humans have been genetically modifying organisms since the first Mayan crossbred the first corn plant to get bigger seeds – by hand and by century: (https://i.redd.it/mbe42vdt49841.jpg), I’m surprised that we haven’t tried to modify some kind of bug to take care of it. It does have an economic impact here; it certainly has an impact on the timber industry in other states – but none of the states affected by buckthorn are LUMBER-producing states, so…we don’t do it.

It's kind of creepy to realize that some sort of alien Chtorr could set up an alien ecosystem and we might not even notice it. What if biological invasion is a LONG-TERM proposition? What if some sort of AI ship or landcraft landed and proceeded to introduce various species across their normal boundaries, weakening the entire ecosystem. Then instead of the dramatic “red” invasion of the War Against the Chtorr, you’d have something virtually unstoppable.

How would we even know?

How about the first starship to reach an Earth-like world finds that the lifeforms are incredibly…familiar; and that the survey shows that a number of the species they find on the planet are what we would call “invasives” or even “introduced” – and as far as that goes, pheasants are “introduced” in Minnesota rather than invasive, because “some people” released them for hunting purposes…

So, I have a scenario where one of the new colonists is from around here – or find out where the most invasive species reside – is on the bio-survey team. They can’t find anything of Human-level intelligence. Then another, farther-reaching mission finds and makes a First Contact, and their “home world” has species very familiar on Earth…in fact, their biology is suspiciously Earth-like…

To finish up, I checked up on methodologies under investigation to destroy our accidental destroyer: Fungus Among Us: MTU Student Using Native Fungi to Weaken Invasive Trees. Seems this youngster has discovered a FUNGUS that seems to enjoy feasting on buckthorn! Cultivating SuperPurp as Stone does makes it easier to process into a sprayable liquid. Stone uses an immersion blender to whir the solution to the proper viscosity, then pours the broth into a garden-variety sprayer used for application in outdoor test areas.

“It’s literally mushroom soup,” he says.

Stone, an undergraduate majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology is living proof that you don’t have to wait until you graduate to tackle the complex problems facing the world.

"SuperPurp is Stone’s not-so-secret weapon to beat back the widespread Midwest invasion of two species of invasive buckthorn trees: Rhamnus cathartica and Frangula alnus. The trees are gaining a foothold across the upper Midwest and altering the character of forests. Stone inoculates them with the fungus, weakening the aggressive invaders to give native species a chance to rebound.
Abe Stone, an undergraduate majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology at Michigan Technological University, a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, is living proof that you don’t have to wait until you graduate to tackle the complex problems facing the world."

Foundation: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/index.html#:~:text=Minnesota's%20natural%20resources%20are%20threatened,land%20or%20in%20the%20water., https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/invasives/terrestrialplants/is-bmp.pdf
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr#A_Matter_for_Men_(1983), https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhamnus_cathartica, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emodin, https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html
NEWS!: https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/2024/03/fungus-among-us-mtu-student-using-native-fungi-to-weaken-invasive-trees.html
Image: https://www.honey-plants.com/img/picforcontent/rhamnus-cathartica_3_large.jpg