If you ’re sick of read about aliens who seem like thinly - obscure cite to races or nationality on Earth , then it ’s time for you to dip into the novel of Amy Thomson . She ’s well get laid for her novels The Color of Distance and Through Alien Eyes , both about creatures called the Tendu who speak calamari - expressive style through colors on their skin and can manipulate their own gene expression . More of late she published Storyteller , about a whale - like species called Harsels that can telepathically connect to humans ; and her first book was Virtual Girl , one of the only novels I ’ve ever take that deals intelligently with what life as a fembot would really be like ( for example : she ’s molested by her turned on geek Maker before she ’s even one year old ) . What please about all Thomson ’s Scripture is her unapologetic geographic expedition of intellect and refinement that are so foreign that human taboo do not apply . We were lucky enough to question Thomson last workweek , so read on to find out about where she gets her knack for extraterrestrial being - making . She also separate us a little about her new report , which she delineate as “ Pippi Longstocking vs. Conan the Barbarian with a side order of My picayune Pony . ”
Do you think it ’s possible for a skill fiction author to make up a lifeform or culture that is truly alien , or are all stranger really stand up - ins for human beings ?
Yes , I think writer can and have create really alien lifeforms . The stranger in Octavia Butler ’s Xenogenesis trilogy , Robert Forward ’s neutron star dwellers in Dragon ’s Egg , and many others come to heed .
That order , it is n’t well-heeled to create really alien - seeming aliens . There are plenty of script with stranger that are just humans in funny suit in a muckle of books . Sometimes that ’s all the account needs . More often it ’s not .
For me , I find the easy way to create a really alien - seeming culture is to start with an animal and ecological theoretical account . For exercise , the Tendu and the rainforest , and the harsel and the ocean . I seek to fend off mammalian animals , because strong and furry is too familiar , and to anthropomorphize . In The Color of Distance , I establish the Tendu on Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree frogs . The harsels are based on whale sharks , cold blooded , weewee - breathing filter feeders . I also try out to give my outlander a very different procreative biology than humankind . I find that it move over them very dissimilar drive and motives .
I reckon reviewer sympathize with my aliens because , like all liveliness forms , they are subject to the limitations of their surroundings . The harsel are entirely sea - bound , and the Tendu ’s rain forest is full of inimical lifeforms . The struggle against limitations is a middling general phenomenon , as is suffering triggered by the lack of sufficient resources , be they solid food , meter , energy , or fertilizer .
The two exotic creature you ’ve invented , those of the tendu and the harsels , both take a very nonhuman scene of death : They prefer to die voluntarily , though not without ruefulness . This is an unusual pick . Often , writer devise aliens make them immortal or most - immortal . Why did you decide to create aliens who choose death ?
Partly to be contrarian . Many writers write stories about deity who live always , with little or no thought of the societal impacts . They are stories that laud westerly individuality . But I believe that societies whose individuals have immensely long life , must either have very few young , resulting in a stagnant , unbending , rigid civilization , or else they must put ethnic limits on lifetime in edict to have the cultural reclamation of a younger generation .
There is a Japanese flick called Ballad of Narayama ( the Nipponese title of respect is Narayama Bushiko ) . It is quite literally , the heart - warming story of leaving your older mother to buy the farm in the snow on the side of a mountain . It is a remarkable story about a village that can only back so many hoi polloi , so the aged are left to die of exposure . The grannie is contented to accept this destiny , and is , in fact ashamed to be so healthy at her long time . I ’ve never seen another story like it . It take exception all our accepted westerly notions of dying , dying , sacrifice , and choice .
I conceive in the importance of take a younger generation that tries new things , even if sometimes they do stunned things , or reinvent the wheel . finally , they image out that the wheel runs more smoothly without corners , and sometimes design a better wheel . Then they go on to produce another raw contemporaries who reinvent their own roulette wheel . I believe a society that continually renews itself would be more resilient and adaptable than an immortal one . I also conceive that beau monde must counterbalance youthful replenishment with the continuity and wisdom that elders provide , hence the enkar in The Color of Distance . I in the beginning see them as an itinerant council of batrachian Gandalfs , going around and solve problems .
All that said , I personally am very attached to being live , and go a long time , preferably sound in head and body . But most importantly I would care to have control and pick in the time of my dying . Do I believe that this is likely ? No . Hence the difficult deaths in Storyteller .
Speaking of strange choices about dying , one of the challenging panorama of tendu culture is that they eat and enslave their young . Yet they are also very advanced ecologically - speaking , completely at one with their natural habitats . Do you think that well-informed species can reach residue with the environment only once they learn to curb their universe growing using radical touchstone ?
One of the reasons that I had the Tendu exhaust their young was to make them more foreign . After all , cannibalism is one of the great taboos of our culture . I wanted to challenge the reader to see through the eyes of these aliens , to understand , and even to sympathize with them .
Do I believe such extreme measurement are necessary to achieve balance in our environment ? No . All we want is admittance to good birth restraint , a willingness to evoke fewer minor , and a desire to live in a way that benefits the earth and its people . Of the three , I conceive the last is the hardest . So many of the environmental problems we face are a issue of the catastrophe of the commons , where one person ’s desire to have a big slice of the pie think of less for everyone else . We ’ve known about world-wide heating for decades , but we ’ve refused to curb our fuel consumption . We ’ve witnessed the suffering in the third world for a century or more , but never found the will to ensure that everyone on the planet has access to neat water and enough nutritious nutrient . There are countries in Europe that have achieved zero universe growth , and are years forward of us in terms of clean push , health care , and societal consciousness . Through Alien Eyes , the continuation to The Color of Distance , was partially intended as a cautionary tale about what might occur if we can not contain our universe .
What is the grown mistake you see SF creators throw when they seek to make alien cultures and worlds ? Many people kvetch about Star Trek aliens being fundamentally “ humans with eldritch brow . ” Is that irksome to you too , or are there other mistakes you see being far worse ?
I do n’t take care the fact that all the Star Trek aliens bet like humans with wierd forehead . That just the limitations due to the special effect budget back in the 60 ’s . What I bear in mind is that the Star Trek outlander run to ACT like humans with wierd foreheads . That ’s a failure of imagination , and resource is what SF is all about .
Are you working on a unexampled book right now ?
I recently finish a novel hollo Nomad . It ’s a love story between a nomadic herder and a woman who grew up in space . He loves the wide receptive steppe , she has severe agoraphobia . She cut across interstellar blank in fusion - power spaceship , he lived in a yurt and burned muck for warmth . But they both love horses , so of course of instruction have it off Conquers All . It ’s immense fun . And I got to do a pile of research on Mongol nomadic herders , which turned into something of an obsession . I wound up going to Mongolia , where I learned to build a yurt , drank fermented horse Milk River , rode cavalry , and get very intoxicated on some wicked Russian Vodka . About which the less said , the better . The matter I least look was how risible the Mongolians were . I was expecting dour , macho folk , and instead they made gag , and laugh a lot . Funny Mongols . Who knew ?
At the moment , I ’m working on a short level that ’s somewhat much like Pippi Longstocking vs. Conan the Barbarian with a side order of My Little Pony . Our schoolgirlish heroine pretty much reduces the uncivilised warrior to quiver jelly .
This narrative was also inspired by my Mongol trip . I was trying to explain to these swelled firm , incredibly competent , manly , Mongol men who had grown up on horseback about how in America horses were a girl thing . I could sort of see their humanity crumbling , so I changed the subject . “ Lovely conditions . My are n’t those yurt walls circular . ” Dum de dum . But the memory of that brief conversation remain with me and sour into this tale .
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