Aliens

Let’s Write: Horror Elements

Posted by Aibird on April 21, 2015
Posted in: Aliens, Writing. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Horror can sometimes seem difficult to write, but the best horror is often distilled into several elements that comprise the major plot points of a story.

Elements

  • Pain

As humans, we often abhor excessive amounts of pain, and when confronted with it, we tend toward the path of least resistance. This avoidance of pain can be used to horrific effect in horror stories. For example, take a look at the movie Saw and its many sequels. The entire franchise is focused on two things: pain and death. How do you avoid being killed? You have to do the tasks the torturer in Saw commanded, and much of them involved incredibly painful things you had to do to yourself. Could you do it? The idea of this horrified people and made that movie an iconic story in our modern day horror mythos. Another use of pain is torture in military interrogations — recordings of people screaming in pain have been played before interrogations or during them to try to force the person to cooperate.

  • Unfamiliar

This element explores things that look and act differently than we do. The movie Alien is a great example of this; the Alien was not only black — a color often associated with the unfamiliar and unknown — but had vicious teeth, quick movements, and a long sinuous body and tail. The humans in that story had no way of communicating with this unfamiliar being — all they knew is that it sought to kill them. Since they couldn’t predict exactly where it would go next, it left the viewer on the edge of their seat as the heroine made her way through the ship. This also plays into the concept of the “other,” which describes any person that is not like the hero(ine). Lovecraftian horror plays into this element a lot with its fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.

  • Abandonment/fear of being alone

This is perhaps one of the biggest aspects of horror fiction. The hero(ine) often gets separated from others. This fear of being alone can set a person on edge. It’s a part of human nature to seek  other people to connect with. When people live alone in unpopulated areas, this is often seen as weird or creepy by society; this is also why villains in stories live alone — to play off this factor.

  • Unseen/Unknown

For people who are have vision, a lot of their sense of reality comes from visual cues. This is why sudden strange noises, especially when no discernible source can be seen, creates a profound sense of fear. For those who are blind, the sudden absence of sound and touch could be a factor that plays upon fears of not knowing where you are or what’s ahead of you. It plays into that same fear of not being able to sense directly what it is you’re experiencing. Games such as Amnesia play into this type of horror element, where you hear sounds but can’t see what is chasing you. You only know that you have to run and hide to avoid whatever it is. The Cthulhu mythos by Lovecraft uses the unknown horror element to a high degree, where unknown elements alter the environment in ways that can’t be stopped. His story “Color Out of Space” plays on this element; a meteor leaves behind a colorful residue that soon fades away, but then as time goes on, the ground around it begins to warp in unexplainable ways. Eventually it all begins to crumble into dust, and the investigator, unable to stop it, can only witness the horrifying demise of this farm community.

  • Being out of control

Losing our sense of control can really destabilize and frighten a person. We like to be in control of our lives and actions, but if that is taken from us — by say a supernatural person or creature or by being manipulated or tricked — it can lead to panic. In Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, this idea is explored through the use of magic, where people are taken control by magical means. The Angel Series, a spin-off of Buffy, also used this in the season four story-arc with Cordelia. Her behaviors became more and more creepy as the season wore on, and in time, it’s discovered that she’s being controlled by something else. When Fred breaks free of the enchantment and realizes people are being manipulated to see reality differently, it adds a whole new level of horror to the series.

  • Familiar gone wrong

This includes anything that defies our nature of reality. For example, in Stephen King’s books, he used the idea of a toy, that should be an inanimate object, that suddenly became animate. Chucky is a well-known toy that came to life, which has spawned many a terrifying tale. Another example is from the X-files episodes that feature the bees — what seems to be normal bees, but if stung, it warped the person, often killing them. Another was the black oil, that seemed like regular oil at first, until it moved and tried to enter the orifices of humans, where it’d control them. The black oil story-arc in X-files combined the familiar gone wrong element with the being out of control element.

  • Our limitations as human beings

This is where all the supernatural creatures come into play. Vampires horrify because not only are they eternal, but they prey upon humans with inhumane strength. Ghosts are horrifying to many because they are invisible and yet can still impact the environment in unseen ways. Werewolves have super human strength, and witches can cast spells that may manipulate those around them. All of these have been horror elements in countless western stories. Another example is an evil spirit that can possess people and lead them to their deaths — the Grudge, a Japanese horror movie, is a great example of this.

  • Depth of our depravity

Serial killers are people who are not bound to the same moral codes by which society abides, and often will engage in violent behaviors that terrorize their victims. This often leaves people wondering if these disturbing tendencies are buried somewhere in human nature — a potential we all could share. This factor is played up in various crime TV shows and was used in several episodes of the X-files.

Stakes

Another important aspect to horror is the stakes. How high are the stakes? The higher they are, the more intense the story will be. Death is often used as one of the highest stakes in stories, but sometimes people will play with the idea of hell and heaven to try to up the stakes past death. Other stories may focus on the loss of a loved one or the loss of your sanity or identity. Death and loss are often great motivators, and they also play off some of the horror elements described above, which can only increase the horror in your tale.

One way of showing these stakes is by killing someone early in the story or by injuring or warping your protagonist (or someone close to the protagonist). You can also show it through the environment, like Lovecraft did in the “Color Out of Space” or in the video game Dead Space, where you have to investigate a station out in deep space that seems abandoned at first. How you set the horror story can tell the reader/viewer a great deal about the plot, the characters, the world building, and the stakes. Often the best place to really dig home the stakes is in the beginning of your story — let it be your hook, and then you can proceed to drive it home again and again through the use of various horror elements. This will ratchet up the tension, building upon what came before, until it all blows open in the climax.

By driving home the stakes and adding in several horror elements, you can craft a truly terrifying tale.

Worldbuild: Cities

Posted by Aibird on December 6, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Elivera, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 3 Comments

In a society, people tend to gather in communities, and over time these communities can expand and grow, developing into cities. Thus, when world-building, cities can prove to be intensely beneficial to your stories. Taking the time to develop them can help you better understand the setting of your story and how your characters may be influenced or shaped by their surroundings.

For example, if your story takes place in a desert, the community may not be a sprawling metropolis, mostly because the environment simply couldn’t sustain it. Think about the amount of water necessary to keep those inhabitants alive. In a desert, water is scarce, and thus a large, sprawling city would be counterproductive and dangerous to survival. You’d quickly run out of resources to continue to expand the city. Even if this city is by an oasis, such rare water sources are not unlimited resources, and if over tapped, that resource will run dry, which would be disastrous for the inhabitants of the city. To avoid this problem, communities in the desert may be smaller towns.

Another consideration to consider is the design of the buildings. Cooling a building may be essential for some deserts. One way to accomplish this is to allow for the flow of air throughout the house. If nights get too cold, these buildings would also have the ability to be shuttered up. The materials for these dwellings should be a light color, as darker colors absorb more light (and thus more heat). As deserts can often be hot (though not all will be, depending on the latitude of your desert), a dark colored structure would make the indoors unbearable during the days. To maximize on cooling, it may be better to have underground structures, where the air can be cooler. There is a reason animals burrow under the desert during the day; this is because the area under the surface can often retain the cool temperatures of the night for much longer than the structure situated on top or above ground. However, there is a limit to how deep you can build your underground structures; don’t have them been miles deep, for the closer you get to the mantle, the more the temperature will rise as that part of the earth’s interior can be substantially warmer than the crust.

That’s just one example of how to build a city that makes sense in its environment. To help you generate ideas, study some of the cities built on earth. Look into how they are built, where they are built, and what problems they face due to their location and the environment in which they live. Not all cities last forever, so look into why cities decline. Sometimes it’s human factors that cause the decline, but also consider environmental factors as well. Make a list of possible ways cities can expand and decline over time, and try to create a timeline for your city. Researching cities on earth can be useful in helping you consider the timeline of your cities, but don’t feel like you have to model your city after Earth cities.

If you are writing science fiction and creating a futuristic city, think about how technology will play into the type of city you want to create. Will technology help compensate for lack of resources in the environment? If so, how would that work and what is the necessary infrastructure to make that technology work within the confines of your city? How many workers or robots would be necessary to maintain that infrastructure? How will the technology of your city play a role in the inhabitant lives? Will they have a city-wide network that inhabitants can tap into?

When examining the history of city design, there is several different styles of design:

  • Traditional designs tend to focus on long straight streets and squares, where there are green spaces or public areas in the middle of the city. A lot of traditional city designs focus on square grids, though some cities utilize a radial form such as Paris.
  • Modernist designs focus more on taller, more elevated buildings being built into city blocks, where the expansion of the city goes toward the sky rather than spreading out over more land.  Modernist designs also focus on large highways cutting through cities. The idea of grouping office buildings together also is part of the more modernist design for cities. In what ways can you examine modernist designs and alter them into something more unique and less earth-like?
  • Green designs integrate natural landscape into the design for cities. This is also known as landscape urbanism. This is a harken back to the pre-industrial cities which were often small with the landscape close by. However, in modern cities, urbanization covers such large areas that natural landscape is often disconnected from those that live in the constructed environment of the modern city. This relationship of the natural and constructed environments becomes more difficult to achieve, especially with the spread and expansive nature of modern cities. Green designs focuses on sculpting the city to fit in with the nature, where nature and constructed environments were integrated in ways that highlight the flow of the landscape. One example is the gardens within Japanese and Chinese cities, where artificial landscapes were constructed within the city. Other examples are coastal cities being conformed to the shape of the coast. Instead of forcing the coast to fit the minds of the designers, the city is molded to fit the coast and is built to handle possible storm surges and rising sea levels. In coastal cities, it’s often not possible to have square grids, as the coast line can often be irregular in its shape, and so the city must be molded to fit that shape.
  • Another design for cities is the Systems design, which focuses on viewing cities like living organisms. This design takes into account the complexity of cities. It highlights how over time they can grow more complex, if more people move to that city, or less complex if the city starts to fail due to various factors. These designs are often simulated in various city building software, and tends to create patterns that resemble more the structure of a brain neuron rather than grid-like patterns or city blocks.

When designing cities, it can be effective to think about what your world is like and the values of your species. For example, my Dragios species is very much focused on biological technologies, so their architecture and city designs are all oriented on the helix nature of DNA, and the buildings are grown through nanotechnology and can evolve into more complex structures. This type of city is very different from earth-like designs and less systematic and grid-like, as it takes more of a helical structure to its layout. This is one of the many ways you can diversify your city designs.

Now that you have the basic layout of your city and the environment in and around it, you have to consider the systems, services, resources, and industries within your city. Where will your people live? What type of housing is available? Where are the markets located and what do they resemble? How is the infrastructure handled such as water, electricity (if it exists), sewage, transportation and so forth? To help you examine this side of city-building, I formulated a list of questions, which I posted to the resources forum at LegendFire: http://www.legendfire.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6795

The above link includes a set of questions for you to answer as you build your city. It also includes some links to further information. I highly recommend exploring it. So readers, how have you constructed your cities? What do you consider?

Let us go Write! — Horror Edition

Posted by Aibird on September 14, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Characters, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 3 Comments

I write speculative fiction, where most of my focus is on science fiction with a dabble of horror. However, my roots were in fantasy, partly because when I first started writing in middle school I simply did not have the scientific foundation to write science fiction well, but that didn’t stop me. I tossed aliens into my stories, clones, and mind controlling gadgetry, all of which lived alongside feats that would only work if magic existed. I had dragons and demons and monsters. This need to understand science better to more effectively write science fiction played a large role in me earning the physics degree I have today.

Now I look back at those tales and recognize them for what they were: my practice sessions and my imagination garden. There I planted the seeds of my future fiction, and over the years I cultivated my imagination garden, helping it become more refined and less chaotic. I learned how to write a story arc. How to craft a consistent and coherent plot, and most of all, I learned how to build a science fiction world. This new series, that I’m starting with this post, will focus on various aspects of speculative fiction and will offer myself and my readers a challenge for their writing. It’ll help me plant more seeds in my imagination garden and hopefully expand my capabilities as a writer.

I’m still not perfect at writing speculative fiction, but no one ever is. We simply keep trying and keep writing the best we can. It’s always good to push our boundaries to the limits because the challenges are what helps us to grow the most. This is why I’ve tried to start learning how to write horror. So this first post in my “Let us go write!” series will focus on the horror story.

In the Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror edited by Laurie Lamson, several articles discuss horror directly. Glenn Benest, a horror screenwriter and producer, writes:

Unlike other works of fiction or film, the protagonist in this genre does not need to go through a character arc.

He goes on to explain how horror’s main focus is not necessarily on the protagonist character.

… we must realize that the real star in the horror genre is not the hero but the source of the horror itself. Whether it’s a haunted hotel in The Shining or the great white shark in Jaws, the crucial thing that makes a horror project really work is that which scares us.

This isn’t to say strong characters shouldn’t exist in horror pieces, but it is important to take notice that the focus isn’t really on the characters. They are the vehicle that brings the reader to the confrontation with the terrible evil; this means that there is something even more important that the protagonist character when it comes to writing good horror fiction. Another point the essayist makes is that often the audience for horror pays money to be scared silly, and so expect to be scared silly. It’s not the nuances of the characters that impress them, but more how well they are scared and how much of a lasting impact that has on them. Understanding this aspect of the horror audience can aid a writer in getting their story sold.

When I think back on my own experiences with horror, I notice that the pieces that stood out to me the most were indeed dependent upon the source of the horror. I don’t remember the characters as much, nor was their character arcs that important. What made the piece good was the source of the fear. For example, in the Alien Franchise, the aliens had a very lasting impact on my psyche. Yes, Ripley has become an iconic character, but examine her storyline. She is shown from the beginning of the film to be a strong-willed and courageous woman. This doesn’t change at all during the course of the movies. She remains strong and courageous, but what changes is that she confronts the terrifying aliens and finds a way to survive. Her confrontation is what made the imprint in my mind, and has made those movies some of my ultimate favorites in the genre. It’s that confrontation that made the movie, not necessarily her story arc (or lack thereof).

So when I write horror, I need to be cognizant of this factor. The horror that is confronted is the focus of the piece, and the characters are there to help force the confrontation. I need to bring out that confrontation, really examine ways to showcase the horror and the scare factor, but to do so in creative ways. I can’t use just one method of scaring a person, but instead, I need to utilize a whole tool belt of scare methods. If I use just one method, I risk losing the element of surprise and the piece becoming lackluster and boring. Surprise can play a large role in pulling off horror well. One way to utilize different methods is to cross-cut scenes with another line of action to build the suspense. Or the writer can utilize a fake-scare, where it seems like something terrifying will happen, but it turns out to be mundane, and then start the real terror directly afterward. Another way to add variety and keep the reader on their toes is to build the suspense slowly by adding creepier and creepier situations, and then add an unexpected scare. Alien was excellent in this regard, as the creepiness of the discovery started slow, and then the alien bursting from the guy’s chest was an unexpected terror.

If a writer is having trouble finding scenarios that could be scary, examine what scares you. What causes you to jump in fear at night? What sort of dream causes you to wake up in a cold sweat or with a stifled scream? Ask friends and family about what truly scares them, and compile a list of ideas. Then try honing that list and creating ways of writing them effectively.

The essayist also points out that humor, especially in longer pieces, is a very useful tool to have in the horror tool be;t as well.

Humor always plays well in the horror genre because it gives the audience a chance to laugh and dispel tension, before you ratchet up the suspense and horror even more. When you scare us, it makes every fiber in our being taut with tension — so occasionally we need a reprieve, and humor is how that reprieve is achieved.

So it’s not enough to just learn how to utilize various scare methods. I also need to become more fluent in the use of humor done well. That will, of course, take practice, but then that’s all part of the job of writing. Now, my readers, let us go write!

Feel free to share your thoughts on horror in the comments below, or even excerpts of your own horror pieces. How else can we improve our horror fiction, and what methods (and combinations of methods) do you find most useful?

To stand on an alien world

Posted by Aibird on August 10, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Physics, Science, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment
stand alone in the void of your mind from Flickr via Wylio

© 2012 David Dehetre, Flickr | CC-BY

Our eyes can’t see Infrared light, so a world that thrives on IR might look like the above picture to us. Though the color of the sky might be a different color than this picture shows.

Our Moon

What is it like to stand on a world that is not Earth? For those that have had the chance to walk on the moon, they experienced this to a small degree. The moon is a hostile environment. There is no atmosphere, and has very light gravity. You must have technology in order to survive on the moon; without it, you’d be dead. Yet, what is it like to stand there and look up at the sky? First, you’d see the earth. Large and colorful. You’d see the clouds drifting across its surface and the blue of the oceans, the more pastel colors of the continents. You’d see the sun as a bright white light tinged with yellow far in the distance. You may even see stars, but the black void that is space will be all around you.

There isn’t an atmosphere that refracts light, giving day time a blue tint. The day and night sky would be black. There isn’t any protection from the sun’s more harmful radiation. You’d have to put the whole moon between you and the sun or hope your suit and technology could protect you from the more dangerous rays — the ones that could damage your cells and slowly kill you.

To live on the moon would require a massive undertaking, where we’d have to build a base that is sustainable and highly shielded. Any leaks would be disastrous, and help may not reach us in time. We’d have to be able to jury-rig solutions on our own and extract our own water from the moon, grow our own food within the protected and sealed base, because supplies would be expensive to send from Earth.

Alien Planet or Moon – Red Dwarf System

What about a different planet altogether? Let’s examine a system where the star has a different range of light than our sun. Let’s start with a red dwarf star system, one of the more common stars in our universe. Red Dwarf stars are fairly small and burn their fuel slowly, and thus have a fairly constant luminosity. However, its luminosity is only 10% the luminosity of our sun, so this star’s light is faint. It may appear as more of a dull orange or red in the sky.

The planet, in order to be habitable, must be fairly close to the star to receive enough light and energy to fuel the systems necessary for life. This means the planet may be tidally locked, which would cause large temperature variations. The side that faces the sun would be blistering hot, making it hostile to life, and the other side would be incredibly cold. The cold side may even be cold enough for the atmospheric gas to turn to liquid or solids, which isn’t conducive to life at all. To compensate for this, a heavy atmosphere and a large ocean would be necessary to distribute this heat from the tidally locked side to other places on the planet. However, a thicker atmosphere means you run the danger of having a greenhouse effect, where then the planet’s surface would be too hot to sustain life (a bit like Venus, the ultimate example of a run-away greenhouse effect).

Another way for life to exist in this system is if the planet is a gas giant and the moon is tidally locked around the planet. As it orbits the planet, it’s able to receive sunlight from the star at several stages of its orbit: when it’s between the planet and the sun and when it’s to the side of the planet. It’d receive no sunlight when its behind the planet. This gives the moon a day/night cycle and distribution of heat. In certain parts of the orbit, the sun will appear very low in the sky on the tidally locked side. This means that the tidally locked side won’t be completely cut-off from sunlight, which is good for life. There’s also the demarcation of the night and day side of this tidally locked moon — this border region would have less extreme temperatures than the tidally locked side and its opposite side. Thus life may be more prevalent in this border region.

Let’s say that we’re on that tidally locked moon. Remember, the red dwarf star is small, and thus will mostly emit radiation in the infrared spectrum and will be fairly faint. Even close to the star, the planet still must contend with variations in the energy output of the star due to sunspots that can cover up to 40% of the surface of the star at a time. This effects the output of the energy released, which in turn effects how much of that energy reaches the planet. During these periods, temperatures may dip a bit and plants will find it harder to absorb the needed light for photosynthesis. Perhaps they’d evolve a form of hibernating state during the sunspot periods? Sunspots often are cyclic, and thus after a long amount of time, it is possible life would adapt to the sunspot cycles.

Any plants on that moon will have to absorb spectra other than the red and blue spectrum of light that Earth plants’ absorb (and thus give them their characteristic green color) in order to receive enough nutrients to fuel its photosynthesis. This will change the color of the plants, giving them a different color than what we’d see on earth. It’s possible the plants would be black if they absorb all visible light wavelengths.

However, since infrared light is the dominant light, the plants are more likely to evolve with infrared light as the driver for photosynthesis. This means they may not appear as black at all. Our eyes, which require the visible spectrum to see, may view the plants as colorless. However, to aliens that evolve on this moon, they would likely evolve eyes that see infrared light, so they’d see the color of those plants. They’d see a very different world then us.

What will that look like? The best way for us to simulate this is to show false color images of infrared sight, where we translate the infrared spectra to visible light spectra in order for us to “see” what it’d be like. The focus would be more on the process of life — where we’d see temperature differences more keenly. In fact, the world would be based upon temperature differences since the amount of infrared light emitted (or reflected) by objects depends on the temperature of that object.

How would that alter the alien society if the world they saw was based upon the temperature variations in their environment? How would it alter their views of themselves? Their view of their world and how they construct their cultures?

Also remember, if this is a tidally locked moon around a gas giant, that planet will take up a huge section of the sky for the tidally locked side. It will take up a smaller portion for the border area, and won’t take up any of the sky for the side not facing the planet. How will this effect the evolution of the alien culture?

It’s also possible that this moon may be either be a fairly dry, desert-like world or one that is ocean rich and full of moisture. To develop an ocean, the moon needs to form with an abundance of water molecules and eventually evolve a process to keep that water cycle moving. However, it is also possible for this moon to develop a dry, desert landscape, where water is hidden under the surface or trapped in the atmosphere. This would be a warm moon where water is more scarce, but life could still evolve. However, for either possibility, the moon would still need an atmosphere to protect life as it evolves.

Another important point is that the moon would experience stress from the gas giant’s gravitational pull, which could drive enough tectonic activity to help bolster the formation of life. Tectonic activity would allow for the formation of mountains, valleys, plains, ocean trenches, rivers, lakes, and other interesting geological features. Take a look at Titan as an interesting example of a moon with an atmosphere and some minor tectonic activity. Water doesn’t exist on Titan because of how cold it is, but it still has lakes and rivers — it’s just liquid ammonia.

The temperature of that planet will influence what exists as a liquid on that surface, and if the planet is too hot, it may not have liquids but instead will be dry and arid. (This is also possible for a planet that is fairly cold. Mars is a good example of a planet where there is no flowing water because of how cold it is. A thin atmosphere also inhibits liquids existing over long periods on a planet/moon’s surface. It’s always a good idea to know the phase transitions of different elements and molecules, especially those that are fairly abundant on your moon or planet.)

The above is mostly a thought experiment to help you visualize what it might be like to stand on another planet. What else should I consider as I examine standing on an alien planet or moon?

Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted by Aibird on August 4, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Reviews, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

I watched this movie with my younger sister this weekend. I admit I didn’t have very high expectations for the movie; I assumed it would be somewhat humorous and at the very least a run romp. In this I was not disappointed, and to my delight, it turned out to be far better than I had assumed. I like it when a movie surprises me.

Guardians of the Galaxy Poster with all five main characters.

Guardians of the Galaxy was made by Marvel Studios and is yet another movie in their superhero/Avengers universe. Or at least I’m connecting it to the Avengers universe because of the existence of Thanos in the movie. He had a cameo at the end of the Avengers, so the two will forever be linked in my mind. (I wouldn’t really call this a spoiler since in the first twenty minutes the main villain has a hissy fit when he talks to his boss Thanos, so this is established right off the bat.) I’m also under the impression that Thanos does not need to breathe since his base is in an asteroid belt, his chair is basically rocks with rockets on them, and none of the villains have any air masks. How are they not all dying?

Whatever. We’ll just pretend they all have magical body mods! Anyway, let’s get back to the meat of this movie, which is the five “guardians” of the galaxy and how they save the day. Mind you, I’m trying to keep this post as spoiler free as possible, but if you want to discuss this movie (complete with spoilers), feel free to do so in the comments.

The movie begins with a little boy listening to Awesome Mix Tape 1 – 80s music in all its glory. His mother is dying, and in her final moments, she asks him to take her hand. He hesitates a trifle too long, and she dies. This moment had me nearly in tears because of the intensity and the care given to each character, despite their brief presence in this movie. This moment is also one of the defining moments for Quinn, our main character, so keep this image in your mind, for it will return later in the movie. After Quinn’s mother dies, he runs out of the hospital and falls to his knees in the grass, crying over his mother’s death. And that’s when he’s abducted by aliens. Our romp has begun.

Fast forward to the future when our hero is an adult. The pace of the movie is fairly fast, but it does slow a bit to show us quirks the characters have. For instance, Quinn, also known as “Starlord,” still has his headphones and mix tapes his mother gave him as well as the present she gave him right before her death. In the act of stealing an orb, he puts on his headphones and dances through the ruins. It’s silly but it’s also glorious, because of the insight it gives us about the character. He loves his 80s music, and he feels pretty comfortable in his own skin, as well as not caring what others think of him. This scene also establishes the mode of the piece: life can be silly and outrageous things can happen, and we just roll with it and make decisions that work the best in that moment. That’s the core of this movie.

The five guardians: Quinn, Rocket, Groot, Gamora, and the brute guy (what is his name?) all meet in prison. How they escape is fairly humorous, and it’s the first time they work together as a team, which they end up becoming despite their distrust of each other. During the escape and the attempt to sell the orb scenes, each character showcases a bit of their personality but they also reveal, very organically, the losses these characters have suffered and how that vengence and/or pain drives them all in slightly different ways. It’s beautifully done in my opinion, and really helps cement the connection these five have.

Remember the orb that Quinn stole? This turns out to be the most coveted item in the galaxy, and in the wrong hands could destroy all life, so what do our band of heroes do? Well, they try their best to keep it out of the hands of the main villain. Which, of course, they fail to do. This forces them to learn how to work together, utilize each others strengths, and in turn rope others into helping them in their final attempt to save the universe. Their decisions lead them straight to the final boss fight above the world our desperate band of heroes hope to save. This is also the planet that had originally imprisoned them for breaking its laws. It all comes round full circle.

The end of this movie, especially the “dance-off” as I like to call it, is probably my favorite part. The movie is all about having fun, despite the severity of the situation, and yet it still pauses long enough to really show you who these people are and why they’re worth your time. It’s a good balance and definitely worth a re-watch, especially to find all the wonderful puns, witty dialogue, and references to other pop culture items. And yes, even Stan Lee appears, however briefly, within the movie (for who could a Marvel movie be complete without him?).

Overall, it’s well worth your time. Go watch it.

Book Review: Grass by Sheri Tepper

Posted by Aibird on July 6, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Reviews, Science, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Grass by Sheri Tepper is a fascinating science fiction book.

Here is the blurb on the back of the book:

Here is a novel as original as the breathtaking, unspoiled world for which it is named, a place where all appears to be in idyllic balance.

Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time, they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture…

Now, a deadly plague is spreading across the stars. No world save Grass has been left untouched. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier has been sent from Earth to discover the secret of the planet’s immunity. Amid the alien social structure and strange life-forms of Grass, Lady Westriding unravels the planet’s mysteries to find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.

Although Lady Westriding is featured as the main character, she is but one of many in a large and colorful cast of characters within Grass. Although sometimes it can seem a bit much to keep track of them all, each of them are beautifully imagined, their personalities clear and stark on the page, that I found no difficulty in keeping track of them all. The book takes time with each character, even minor ones, to give a glimpse of who they are and how they view the world around them. If there is anything this book does well, it’s an examination of events from multiple perspectives. This book tackles quite a few questions all at once and does a marvelous job of juggling and answering each one.

We all enter a situation with our own experiences, biases, and worldviews coloring our actions, thoughts, and words. This book shows how each of the characters maneuver through a complex world of politics, religion, strict traditions, and the mystery of the unknown. The book begins on Grass within the family of the bon Damfels, who are an aristocrat family who believe that they are the true rulers of Grass. Those that live in the Commons, the ones that craft much of their furniture and other necessities, are seen as lesser and not as important. The world itself is one giant biome that is various types of grass. There is some seas and Commons is built on a highland surrounded by swamp, but these are anomalies on a world that is nothing but colorful and often enormous varieties of grass. Trees are often few and far between. It’s interesting that even the landscape of the world will play a role in the unraveling of the plot and climax of the book.

The bons society is a stratified tradition-based society that centers around the hunt, where they ride the mysterious Hippae, a life-form native to Grass to hunt the Foxen, another native life-form that is even harder to see and more mysterious than the Hippae. It is on this bizarre little colony world that humanity will find the answer to its biggest and most dangerous problem: a plague that kills indiscriminately.

Back on humanity’s homeworld of Earth, Sanctity, a religious organization that also rules as the main government of Terran and its colonies, is dealing with the onslaught of the plague, trying to keep it a secret, but trying to find a way to investigate why Grass has not been affected. There’s been reports of people who have come to Grass with the plague and have left it cured. How and why? To find out, Sanctity’s dying monarch will send the Yrariers, an Old Catholic family, as ambassadors to Grass, to secretly determine why those on Grass are unaffected by the devastating plague.

Rigo, Lady Westriding’s husband, is a fiery character, who serves as a catalyst for the book’s examination of gender roles. As Old Catholics, Rigo and Marjorie often fight to stay within the realms of their gender roles, often confessing to their priests (who travel with them and often serve as their advisors) their sins and struggles to stay true to masculinity and femininity as defined by Earth society. Yet as the story progresses, both are limited by their adherence to their gender roles, and while Marjorie begins to fight past them, doing what she must to find the answer the larger questions, Rigo falls behind, trapped in this constant state to live up to his false ideal of masculinity. The book does a marvelous job of showing how the two interact and often fail to understand each other due to the great differences in their personalities. It also shows that their lack of understanding of one another isn’t because men can’t get women or vice versa, but is instead a breakdown in communication stemmed partly because of the strictness of gender roles, and the lack of patience and unwillingness to view another’s perspective that both suffer from, Rigo far more than Marjorie. Marjorie, as the book progresses, learns how to put herself into another’s shoes and grows because of it; however, Rigo struggles with this the entire book, often trapped by his own rigid adherence to traditional ideas of masculinity. Tony, his son, is depicted in sharp contrast to his father, and offers up another way to view masculinity — one that is softer, less rigid, and more empathetic, which Stella, his sister, offers up another way to view femininity, which is harsher and more fiery. Stella also serves as a disturbing catalyst for one of the biggest turning points in the entire book; what happens to Stella is the final push that forces Marjorie to act brazenly without regard to the rigid traditions that govern Grass. Through this action, she pushes a train of events that will change everything and bring her closer to the answers she so desperately seeks.

Another issue tackled by this book is the idea of what constitutes a person’s identity. Where is it housed? One of the most disturbing moments of the book lays in what happens to girls who disappear within the grass. The people within Commons eventually find the missing girls, but why they turned up at the port and the fact their minds seem to be wiped clean offers a disturbing examination of consciousness and what constitutes a person’s identity. How malleable our minds may be. This provides a horror element to the tale that weaves its disturbing thread all the way to the climax, for the role these girls play in the larger conflict is one that is just as disturbing as the mind-wipe they suffered from.

The book also examines politics, religion, and belief in wonderfully complex and intriguing ways. The society of the bons sits in stark contrast to the freer and less rigid society of the Commons. Here we examine how two very disparate societies work in tandem, and we see the differences aren’t truly caused by the location or even the people themselves but the interactions one group has with the native lifeforms that the other group does not have. Here we see how alien contact can alter and change a society, and it offers up questions as to what constitutes intelligent life? What if one intelligent life seeks dominance over another? How does one mitigate the violence or seek understanding, especially if there is a wide gap in understanding? How is the native lifeforms of Grass interconnected? The story hints at a biological connection between the main life-forms of Grass — ones most prevalent that has the most interaction with humanity. This plays a huge role in the plot of the story, and serves as the catalyst for finding the cure for the plague as well as an explanation for how the plague came to be. These lifeforms even play a role into why the Arbai, the extinct intelligent race with its abandoned cities spanning numerous planets, died. They are fascinating alien creatures, and their role in the plot was a wonderful twist that I didn’t see coming.

Another contrast is between Sanctity, the Green brothers — where those who fail their oaths are sent as punishment — who are studying the ruins of the extinct Arbai, and the Old Catholics. Here the conflict of religion and how it intersects one’s decisions, behaviors, and worldviews is examined in detail. Marjorie in particular has a crisis of faith as she struggles to deal with her duty to discover a cure for the plague and solve the mystery of Grass and her duty to be a good wife and mother; her crisis of faith digs deep into the nature of belief and how it influences us. Does God truly know us as individuals? Or are we similar to white blood cells within a larger body, only little things that are set into motion, but not truly distinct in the larger scheme of things? The Green brothers examine what it is like to be thrown into religion, where you are not given a choice as to whether you want to believe or not, and the consequences of such an approach. Sanctity itself provides insight into the question of how far is a religion willing to go to assert its dominance over its believers?

There is a lot of complex questions tackled by this book, and each one is deftly and thoroughly explored through the characters, the intricate worldbuilding, and the complex but beautifully woven plot. As disturbing as this book was at times, it was a fascinating read and one I highly recommend.

I’ve done my best to keep this review spoiler free, but for those that wish to discuss this book in the comments, feel free to discuss in detail. The comments will not be spoiler free.

How I craft a language Part 2: Phonetics and Phonology

Posted by Aibird on April 2, 2014
Posted in: Aliens, Biology, Elivera, Linguistics, World Building, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

You can read the first part of this series here. This is a continuation of that first post.

I’ve made some concept drawings of my Dragios species, but as I’m not the best at drawing, this is mostly sketches with only the head done in any sort of detailed fashion. Here’s one of the design sketches:Image02172014154740 I’m still not fully satisfied with it — the mouth needs to be a bit more triangular and smoothed out, but it’s close enough for my purposes.

In order to start creating their language, I need to consider the details of how this alien species evolved and their biology. The Dragios species evolved on a light gravity planet around a low mass star (spectral class of K5, which means it’s surface temperature is only 4,400K and it is 0.64 the size of our sun. This means the planet has a closer orbit in order to be in the habitable zone.), where the gravity is 3/4ths that of Earth. They are mostly a bird/reptilian type species and can glide short distances on their planet. They have the ability to alter their outer appearance to some degree, the two outer layer of cells fairly flexible, allowing for them to camouflage themselves extremely well. It takes some time for them to learn how to look like other similar sized animals, but once they master the skill, they can easily blend and walk amongst their prey without being noticed. This makes hunting fairly easy, and fairly easy for them to hide if they’re being hunted. They are bipedal with strong legs and strong wing bones, allowing them to run fairly fast and glide great distances. Their hands have a thumb and three fingers, which gives them the dexterity to grasp objects and undoubtedly proved essential in their development of technology over time.

Their mouth is shaped a bit like a bat’s snout, very compact, but with a large nasal area. Their ears are large and can easily move nearly 270 degrees. This gives them a wide range of movement, and allows for greater breadth in the range of their hearing. They also have no lips, and thus would have no consonants corresponding to those types of sounds. Within their throat, they have a four thin vocal chords, layered upon each other, which allows them to sing four pitches at the same time. This gives them versatility with their music and speech, and also makes it hard for a human to ever truly learn to speak their language. Because of this, their language is heavily based around music. When devising the phonology of their language, I had to take all of this into account.

Now I could examine the phonetics of their language, which is the production, transmission, and perception of the sounds of language. This is different then phonology , which concerns itself with the examination of the systematic organization of sounds (such as into words) and how this organizing of sounds constructs meaning. To examine how the sounds are organized, I first have to create the sounds. Here are the two phonetic maps I created:

Consonants: Dragios consonants

Vowels: Dragios vowels

As you can see, I left some space for improvement as this is a work in progress. Although I did base the categories loosely upon human linguistics, I took out a few categories that they wouldn’t have due to a difference in mouth construction. With these sounds and the characters I use to represent them, I can start to construct words, which is where I start to examine the phonology of their language. To do this, I created some simplistic word construction rules, where C stands for consonant and V for vowel:

VCV
CVCV
CVVC(V)
VVC(V)

Although this is somewhat simplistic at the moment, it’s enough for me to start constructing words based on these sounds. I decided to focus first on the musical terminology because of their ability to sing more than one sound at a time and how crucial music will be in their culture. I then expanded the vocabulary to include words for their environment and their society. From there, I could start to work on how they actually construct their sentences. In order to construct sentences, I needed to create a set of rules, also known as syntax. These rules would help speakers form sentences in which to communicate larger and more complicated ideas. Another way to view syntax is to think of grammar rules — all languages have them. Those grammar rules are the syntax of that language.

I started with a simple rule for basic sentences that focused on the word order within the sentence itself: Subject — object — verb

From there I decided that the clicks within the language would serve a bit like punctuation and articles. They’d signify when a sentence is a command, statement, or interrogative. They’d also serve as connectors of one phrase to another within the sentence. With this idea in mind, I began to construct a few basic sentences. Now this is all very simplistic currently, and I do have further plans on how to add depth to the syntax of this language, but as of this moment in time, this is where I currently stand with my alien language.

So that’s the basics of how I created my first alien language. Having a linguistics resource nearby aided me tremendously during this project, but more importantly, I had to examine how various species’ mouths were constructed. This gave me a wider range of ideas on how an alien mouth may evolve, and what it may resemble, and in turn, allowed for more versatility with the sounds they could make. Will I use this language within my stories? Possibly but even if I don’t, the act of building this language has allowed me to examine my alien species in depth. To visualize it more fully and to give me a chance to examine their society and views of the world and how that may differ from humanity. This has, in turn, given me ideas on possible conflicts that can give rise to even more stories. So the act of building their language has inspired me in a great number of ways and further enriches the world-building of my Elivera universe.

It can be a challenge to create a language, but it’s definitely rewarding in the long run.