Assumptions about "Them"

[Aaron LeClair]

Deducing a whole race on the actions of some may be an error.

Perhaps not all aliens are "equal". I'd hate for another race to deduce me from the encounter of a George Bush, Ted Bundy, or Rosie O'fathead.

In the end, origins and this whole good and evil bit, is a nice exercise in finding ourselves, not other species. Even if there were open interaction with these "aliens" there will still be some who doubt, or think they are demons in disguise. I'm more concerned with proof "they" exist than determining their license plate. For all I know, they are so spread out through out star systems, or even dimensions, that it could be like what states or countries are to us.

We are all from existence. Now draw pink lines in imagined space and time.


Actually, they're from the PLeadeez

 

[dorkbot]

Good post. I think it is fine to assume things as long as you can clearly keep in mind that you are doing so. Start with an assumption, play with the idea and see where it goes. I love science fiction because of it's sandbox nature that lets us play with pretty much any idea we want.

1) Assumption of intellectual superiority. I think some hardcore sci-fi critics may look down on Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye but I'm still fond of it as it was one of the first sci-fi books I encountered that really tried to imagine aliens that were still intelligent but in markedly different ways from humans as opposed to just being humans w/ blue skin and spaceships. I'd still recommend it as fun intellectual exercise for playing with ideas on how alien psychology might be dramatically different from our own.

2) Assumption that technology implies knowledge. This is a running theme of many sci-fi stories. Most visible perhaps is the Stargate SG-1 tv show where the Goa'uld have essentially pirated their tech from others without really understanding how it works or how to fix it. The Star Trek series uses this plot device a number of times. Strieber uses this idea in his book The Grays, promoting the idea that they know how to fly the ships but the engineering knowledge has been long lost. I'm not sure how he came to this conclusion but I do know it is hardly an original idea and has been explored in sci-fi literature for decades. Think of all the people with pirated copies of Photoshop out there that would have no clue as to how to recreate the code.

My personal pet peeve assumption is that "they" are a singular thing with a single goal/motivation. The assumption that seem most logical to me is that if there are others that can get here from there then it seems probable that there is more than one "them" and that they may have very different motivations.