One issue many, if not most, science fiction writers will face is creating realistic aliens. Just slapping on pointy ears or a wrinkly forehead isn’t good enough. How do you make an alien creature seem convincing and believable?
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Biology and Environment
Biology and environment are closely connected. Realistic aliens should have bodies specifically adapted for their home worlds. What challenges would the environment pose to developing life? What type of life would evolve in an alien world?
Your first task is to determine which is more important to your story: the alien or the environment? If you have a specific alien in mind, then use the alien’s biological makeup to determine what sort of environment would produce it. If your story is mainly about the environment, then use the environment to establish what kinds of life would be likely to evolve there.
But how do you do that? Say I’m writing a story about an asteroid heading for earth and the astronauts on a mission to destroy it with an atomic bomb. I’ve already researched asteroids and written half the story, but now I decide I want the astronauts to find intelligent life. Intelligent life living on the asteroid would make the astronauts reconsider destroying it and make the story much more interesting.
Since I can’t change the asteroid to something else, I will work from the environment to determine what kind of life the astronauts might find. An asteroid would pose many problems for an organism to overcome. For example, there is no atmosphere, and no sun to provide heat. What if the aliens lived underground? That might provide some protection from radiation. There could also be frozen water underground which would help them survive. Since the aliens live underground, they would be blind, relying instead on their sense of touch to get around. But what about heat? Perhaps this asteroid passes by several stars in its light-years-long orbit. When the asteroid is close enough to a star, the aliens are active, but the rest of the time they go into a long hibernation period.
Alien Cultures
With intelligent aliens, biology and environment also affect the alien’s culture.
Religion
My asteroid aliens use deathlike hibernation to survive the cold. To these aliens, death and resurrection are natural, not a miracle. A religion like Christianity would not develop in their world.
Imagine these aliens are conscious during hibernation. How would being frozen for most of their lives affect their view of the supernatural? Perhaps these aliens spend their hibernation period praying that the God of Warmth will return and thaw their world. While frozen, the aliens would be unable to communicate. They might rely on their god for a sense of companionship during this time.
Your aliens’ religion might be their response to a hostile environment. They might depend upon a deity to protect them from predators or natural disasters. They might look to the gods for food. What do your aliens eat? Are they agricultural? Do they raise animals for food? What about parasites? Would a species of intelligent parasites view their host as a god?
Language
The asteroid aliens live in a world with no light and no atmosphere, and all the water is frozen. Without liquid water or air, there is no way to transmit sound from one alien to another. So, they cannot use sound or visual cues to communicate. Their language would be entirely based on touch. They would be unable to communicate with the astronauts. Even if one of the astronauts understood their touch-language, what would he say? The aliens, being blind and deaf, would have a very limited vocabulary, at least from the astronaut’s perspective. The language gap would be immense!
What would the asteroid aliens talk about? Probably much of their conversation would involve hibernation. They would have special words for the “frozen time” and for the reunion period after the thaw when they get reacquainted with their friends. They would have many words for “frozen water” and “dirt,” but none for “star” or “sky.”
Imagine a species of aquatic aliens. How would living under water affect how they communicate? Many deep sea creatures have bioluminescence. Perhaps our fishy aliens communicate via light shows, with different combinations of flashes and colors forming different words.
French musician Jean-François Sudre created an artificial language called “Solresol”. His language has seven syllables to match the heptatonic musical scale. However, a writer could convert the notes into the seven colors of the rainbow and use Solresol as the basis of a color-based alien language.
What about your aliens? Do they have multiple languages, or is one tongue spoken worldwide? Languages develop in geographical isolation, so if your planet has multiple islands or land separated by mountains, there would probably be more than one language, at least at first. Even if your aliens all speak the same language, individuals have their own unique way of speaking. The way an individual speaks depends upon education, occupation, gender, social class, and many other factors.
What about when two alien races meet? When two groups who speak different languages meet, the result depends upon the length of the meeting and how often it happens, and the status of the two groups. Two equal groups will interact differently if one culture is more advanced or has a stronger economy or military.
When two equal cultures meet, they might become bilingual, speaking both languages. Or the businessmen and traders might use a separate language as a means of communication, rather like the way English is used today.
If two unequal cultures meet, the people in the less advanced culture might learn a simplified version of the other’s language, called a “pidgin.” The less advanced culture might lose their language entirely, completely switching to the other’s language. Or they might become bilingual, with a “high” and a “low” language. The high language might be used for business and the low only spoken at home.
A big part of communication is nonverbal. The more your aliens’ physiology differs, the weirder their gestures, facial expressions, and body language would seem to humans.
Consider what words or linguistic features the aliens’ language has that the human language lacks, and vice versa. Differences in vocabulary and language features are a great opportunity for miscommunication and story conflict. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, our language limits our thought processes and shapes how we view the world. This idea has proven to be fertile ground for science fiction stories.
What is the most important on your alien world? What object or concept would they have multiple words for? What would your aliens have no words for at all? If your aliens get their energy through photosynthesis, they might not have any words for “food”. How would they react to seeing a human eat, an action they have no words to describe?
Imagine a species of aliens who are all mentally linked, with the ability to share memories. Their language might never develop evidentials. In linguistics, “evidentials” are grammatical elements that explain the evidence for a statement. English does this through phrases like “I saw”, “I think”, “they said”, and so on. In other languages, evidentials are suffixes tacked onto words. However, these aliens would be no need to verbalize the evidence for a statement when they can just show it by sharing a memory.
Humans lack telepathic abilities and could not share memories with the aliens. Communication would be verbal or written. Humans would have no way of knowing if a statement from the aliens were a fact, an educated guess, or an unfounded opinion.
An alien species with a more intimate form of telepathy – say, a hive mind – might speak a language without clusivity. Clusivity is a grammatical distinction between inclusive we (you and I and maybe our friends) and exclusive we (my friends and I but not you). To a hive mind, “we” is always inclusive because the hive mind is all there is on the planet. However, if they encounter a species with individuality, communication becomes difficult.
The Space Marines come to attack the hive mind. The General announces, “Surrender immediately or we will destroy you!” But to the hive mind, the sentence sounds different. “Surrender immediately or my soldiers and I and also you will destroy you!” How can this human threaten to make the hive mind take part in its own destruction? Do the humans have some sort of mind control technology? So confusing!
What about extra linguistic features? Humans love telling jokes that take advantage of the vagueness of language, exploiting words with multiple meanings and sentences that can be interpreted in different ways. If the alien language was far more precise than any earth language, with little to no vagueness, the aliens might not understand our humor. They might find human language endlessly frustrating. Humans use the word “hate” to express how they feel about littering, their boss, their ex, violent criminals, and genocidal dictators. It’s the same word, but the emotion behind the word is vastly different in each case.
Art
Again, the asteroid aliens are blind and deaf. If they developed an art form, it would be tactile. They would probably excel at sculpture. They could use their hibernation period to plan an artistic piece in their mind, waiting for the active period when they could finally commit it to stone.
What kind of art would aliens develop if they saw heat, rather than light? What about aliens who communicated via smell? What kind of art would a race of sentient trees create? Could you create art if you were immobile?
Biology has a profound effect on art. Human standards of beauty are closely connected to biology. Scientists say that the faces humans find the most attractive are the most likely to be healthy and fertile. Many men are attracted to women with large breasts, which scientists say is evolution prompting them to choose a mate who can breastfeed many children. What standards of beauty would your aliens develop? What sorts of biological advances would they look for in a mate? What would they consider sexy?
Other Tips for Writing More Realistic Aliens
Alien History
It might be helpful to write a short history of your alien world. Outline the major wars, scientific discoveries, important artists, anything that is likely to affect your aliens’ culture. Their culture affects how they view other races, and their motivation for exploring space, fighting wars, conquering worlds, and more.
Alien Technology
Realistic aliens’ bodies and environment affect the technology they develop. Humans accomplished a lot with their opposable thumbs. Can aliens without hands develop technology? What kind of technology would aliens with flippers develop? Or hooves? What about giant amoebas? What kind of natural resources are available on your alien world? Is the environment harsh, making it hard to build? What kinds of technology would your aliens develop to defend themselves against predators or natural disasters?
Aliens and Individuality
Unless your characters always view the aliens from afar, it’s important to make each alien a unique individual. Don’t resort to stereotyping your aliens. Don’t assure your reader that “all Martians are warlike” or “everyone from Venus is secretive and mysterious.” Realistic aliens should be just as unique as human characters.
