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Dead Alien Worlds

Some deserts look so weird, it can be hard to tell what planet you're on.

"-And He Built a Crooked House-" by Robert Heinlein:

A hot, hot sun beat down from lemon-colored sky. The flat ground seemed burned a sterile, bleached brown and incapable of supporting life. Life there was, strange stunted trees that lifted knotted, twisted arms to the sky. Little clumps of spiky leaves grew on the outer extremities of these misshapen growths.

"Heavenly day," breathed Bailey. "Where is that?"

Teal shook his head, his eyes troubled. "It beats me."

"It doesn't look like anything on Earth. It looks more like another planet—Mars, maybe."

"I wouldn't know. But, do you know, Homer, it might be worse than that, worse than another planet, I mean."

"Huh? What's that you say?"

"It might be clear out of space entirely. I'm not sure that that is our sun at all. It seems too bright."
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Another reason for all those dead alien worlds is the strong historical connections between Science Fiction and the Western genres. Many of the same writers who filled the American science fiction pulps of the 1930s and 1940s were also doing the same thing for the Western fiction magazines. The fact that so many "space operas" were (and remain) "horse operas" set in space is not merely a co-incidence.
 
A desert world also doesn't require one to come up with all sorts of exotic flora and fauna the way, say, a rainforest world would. ;)
 
Leaferne said:
A desert world also doesn't require one to come up with all sorts of exotic flora and fauna the way, say, a rainforest world would. ;)
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No, but there were some really good "rainforest" stories set on the old, wet, tropical Venus.
 
I want to know why if we are to believe they exist in true alien form as other worlders (not devils, us in the future etc etc) they maintain typical characteristics to humanoids. Ok some are lizard, some are rat, some are elven/nordic but all seem to be bipedal and with two eyes etc.

On our planet alone we have birds, fish, spiders etc all which have various unique physical appearences. How come its the bipeds with two eyes which dominate our skies? Or is it because bipeds are great at tech but rubbish with ecology?!

Just a thought.
 
jamesmaycock said:
I want to know why if we are to believe they exist in true alien form as other worlders (not devils, us in the future etc etc) they maintain typical characteristics to humanoids. Ok some are lizard, some are rat, some are elven/nordic but all seem to be bipedal and with two eyes etc.

On our planet alone we have birds, fish, spiders etc all which have various unique physical appearences. How come its the bipeds with two eyes which dominate our skies? Or is it because bipeds are great at tech but rubbish with ecology?!
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In written SF there's some very non-humanoid aliens, the caterpillar-like "Mesklinites" in Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, Larry Niven's "Pierson's Puppeteers".

In TV and film, until the advent of relatively cheap CGI, aliens have tended to be humanoid, because most actors are human and consequently so are the the rubber suits. I know the Daleks aren't humanoid or the Horta, in ST:TOS, but far more races have been definitely humanoid members of Equity in rubber masks.

For the contactees and abductees who in the USA and western Europe have reported basically humanoid aliens, it's probably evidence that whatever they're experiencing it isn't flesh and blood (or its equivalent) ETs.
 
could alos be that these planets are devoid of water as they have used the water as a fuel source
 
jamesmaycock said:
I want to know why if we are to believe they exist in true alien form as other worlders (not devils, us in the future etc etc) they maintain typical characteristics to humanoids. Ok some are lizard, some are rat, some are elven/nordic but all seem to be bipedal and with two eyes etc.
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I've heard serious exobiologists argue that the generalized humanoid form is extremely practical and thus may be the model to which evolution leads throughout the universe. One leg isn't enough - 20 would be unwieldly. Stereo vision is optimum for an intelligent species; it's the lowly fly who sports the thousand eyes.
 
Yes; Simon Conway Morris, one of the world's leading palaeontologists, has expressed the opinion that convergent evolution will produce organisms with similar bodyplans on other worlds. I have to say that I disagree very strongly, and rather tend to support the position of Stephen Jay Gould, who stressed the role of chance in evolutionary development.

Vertebrate tetrapods which have adopted a bipedal stance may occur on other worlds, but they are almost certainly not the only suitable bodyplan for an intelligent creature, and may be far from the most common shape for such creatures.
Even if bipeds do develop intelligence on other worlds, they may adopt the far more common cantilevered stance of the bipedal dinosaur or ostrich; an alien species resembling a velociraptor but with an entirely different jaw and skull structure seems quite likely to me.
(the jaw and the vertebrate skull are parochial features and likely to be rare outside the Earth, as opposed to the eye and the leg, which are likely to more universal in design).
 
I have to say that I disagree very strongly, and rather tend to support the position of Stephen Jay Gould, who stressed the role of chance in evolutionary development.
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out of curiosity, how to you see that tying in with the development of opposable thumbs or a suitable alternative to allow tool use? are you thinking raptor type things with stronger arms (and a longer tail to counterbalnce them)? or the mouth as a primary tool use device like Niven's pupeteers?
 
Exiobiologists who support the ineluctability of humanoids are a small minority. And there is indeed nothing in the terrestrial fossil record to defend the idea that humanoids should be common. Hominids remain unique. If more clever creatures are more or less inevitable (provided a number of conditions are required), none of them show a trend towards this shape: see crows, parrots, elephants, rats, octopuses, capuchin monkeys...

To some, the belief in humanoid shape is so ingrained that they make curious demonstrations. As the evolved Troodon, looking like aliens from "V". Supposedly, the increase in the head's weight should cause the straightening up of the body. It should be the reverse: bipedal dinosaurs who saw their head increase in weight all became more horizontal, like pachycephalosaurids or tyrannosaurids.

CONWAY-MORRIS 's stance is ambiguous. As I read "The Crucible of Creation", I was surprised to read a statement I had defended a number of years before: a space traveller who had come to Earth 10 millions years ago, would have had no clue from the observation of apes from that time, that one of them would one day follow a completely different path to become Homo Sapiens. This is perfectly logical: all other apes have remained content in the same state of being for 10 millions. And our puttive space explorer wouldn't have been in a better position 5 millions yeras ago, when the australopithecines were only one kind of ape among others. There again, only one lineage became something truly different, in a highly contingent and impredictible path. In fact, Conway-Morris implicitly acknowledges that the can't sustain his position from the fossil record. It seems he has become more pragmatic recently: in his comments of the documentary "Alien Worlds" , he says that after all, life may not develop beyond bacterial stage, and that sentient beings are not necessarily humanoid.

Seeing humanoids on every planet suits Star Trek or Marvel Comics worlds. But they're only that: Star Trek and Marvel Comics worlds...
 
Some of the alien species we have come up with for OA
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/thyresta.PNG
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/wayfarer.jpg
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg/p/Paulan.jpg
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/Muuh.jpg
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/toul1.JPG
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/jade2.jpg
http://www.orionsarm.com/xenos/Jeeper.jpg

I did make an image of a bipedal dinosaur-like alien once; it had the body of an iguanadon and a head a bit like a star-fish; but I lost the image somewhere.
 
wouldnt it be so that unless we went to there planet,we wouldnt see much other that humanoid type since these are more able to build a spacecraft

and that sentient species might not always travel
 
TinFinger said:
wouldnt it be so that unless we went to there planet,we wouldnt see much other that humanoid type since these are more able to build a spacecraft

and that sentient species might not always travel
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Anything that had a body plan that allowed it to use tools could develop technology that might it enable it to build a spacecraft...octopoids anybody?

Some sentient species might have no wish to travel, that's true, but it's nothing to do with body plans. It might be part of their psychology, part of their culture, or in a world perpetually shrouded by cloud, they might take a lot longer than us to realise that there's anywhere else to travel too..

It's hard to imagine how a sentient species shaped like a fish (or dolphin/whale) with no limbs capable of using tools could develop technology, so such a species might be stay at homes. Unless they manipulated another non-sentient species to build stuff for them....
 
Analis said:
Seeing humanoids on every planet suits Star Trek or Marvel Comics worlds. But they're only that: Star Trek and Marvel Comics worlds...
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If the Marvel view is correct, all aliens have huge, fat, blocky legs.
 
Old Time Radio: "If I remember correctly the old comic strip TWIN EARTHS used exactly that premise."
There was too the movie "Journey to the Far SIde of the Sun" (1969), directed by Robert PARRISH and starring Roy THINNES.

"If the Marvel view is correct, all aliens have huge, fat, blocky legs."
Well, usually ETs in Marvel Comics do not have fat, blocky legs, except maybe in the earliest times...
 
Analis said:
There was too the movie "Journey to the Far SIde of the Sun" (1969), directed by Robert PARRISH and starring Roy THINNES.
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I love that film, I spent a hour or two tracking it down late last year as I recalled it as the Dark Side of the Sun and couldnt get any hits on IMDB, etc. Anyway, it was a fairly chilling premise for a young kid (as I was when I saw it in, say, 77?) and the kind of vision that stays with you through life, since Ive never seen it since.
 
Analis said:
Well, usually ETs in Marvel Comics do not have fat, blocky legs, except maybe in the earliest times...
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I gave up on Marvel comics fairly early. They seemed so devoid of the sheer joy I read comics for.
 
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