Parallel Evolution

I'm reading Tales from Super-Science Fiction (yay ER book win!) and boy if the old "parallel evolution" trope isn't popping up in almost every story. I thought it was just Star Trek being too cheap to pay for really good creature effects, but apparently it was de rigueur. I can't imagine why they would stick this in all their stories, given the lack of budget it takes to write versus put it on the screen. And these are stories by Silverberg, Bloch, Vance, etc., so it wasn't due to a complete lack of creativity. I suppose it was due to the narrow story selection by the editor.

Were all of the period pulps so constrained?

I just think that it is easy for the writers. If all intelligent life looks the same then they don't need to extend themselves and design a whole new biological system. Readers also immediately know what's going on in the story and they don't need to stretch themselves to get into the story.

I'm reading the exact opposite at the moment with The Clockwork Rocket occurring in a completely different universe with different biology and physics to our universe. It must have taken Greg Egan a long time to think through the physics and biology to make it all work and get the story to say what he wanted it to say.

#2 by @bj> It may be easy for the writer, but only sorta - I mean, you might buy convergent evolution of humans, but also dogs, cats, chickens, etc.? Or do you have convergent humans in an environment with completely alien animals? At some point, it starts feeling much more like fantasy.

And it's not actually easier for me as a reader. I have to stretch my disbelief to not just put the book down and move on to something more interesting. Aliens that are very close to humans are boring. At least make them bipeds, but give them otherwise non-human biology and mentality. To me, that's far more interesting to read.

It must have taken Greg Egan a long time to think through the physics and biology to make it all work and get the story to say what he wanted it to say.

I wouldn't be surprised if he got the idea of the physics and biology long before he figured out the story he wanted to say. I think that's how it is with a lot of scifi. :D

I feel the same way as you about it, but many other people don't. That's why to me it's trashy sci-fi and it loses my attention really fast.

It's ALL bad biology that I get annoyed by, not just the evolution bit. I was really put-off by an upright walking tiger-man in a book that I can no longer remember the name of (and can't be bother finding) that I ended up giving up on the book because it was just so stupid and distracting. It wasn't just the upright walking that did it, it was also the speaking english with a cat's mouth that also really got to me.

Sad, isn't it? I can't remember the name of the book and didn't bother to finish it but I can still remember the shitty bits quite clearly :-D

When Caesar shouts "No!" in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I started laughing. I'd been reliably informed the film was good. It's not.

Are you sure the information was reliable Ian?

I had thought so at the time.

Well if you were right I guess that means your taste is not reliable.

4> Ringworld?

4> Perhaps the Wing Commander series?

Is it sad that we can think up multiple possibilities? :-)

#10 by @pjfarm> Well, not that surprising, since the Kilrathi from Kilrath were directly based on the Kzinti from Kzin. ;)

Apparently (I never played it) one of the missions is even fought in the Niven system.

#8 It means my informants were not as reliable as I had believed them to be.

it couldn't possible be that taste is subjective could it Ian? but enough sniping, thoseb Puppeteers of Niven of are exceptional bad Three legs are so implausible.

How about five legs with a head in the center? How is a three legged animal less likely than a 5 legged starfish?

#13 But a chimpanzee talks in it, a chimpanzee with a larynx incapable of articulating human speech. Good films don't do crap like that.

It's hard to believe that would be the major sticking point for you. The whole movie has far more scientifically impossible points than just that one. I'd say that's actually one of the minor ones in comparison.

But that's not to say it can't be an entertaining movie. If I thought so, I'd never be able to watch a single superhero movie again. :D

>9 brightcopy: No, not Ringworld which I have read but because the kzin wasn't actually described as an upright tiger-man I didn't have that much of a problem with it. It was Prophets: Apotheosis and it wasn't just tigers that they made upright walkers, it was all the large cats. Another really annoying bit was that even though they walked bipedally they were still able to jump great distances as if they still were a normal cat. That doesn't seem likely to me.

David Brin also has talking chimps and other animals in his Uplift War series which I stopped reading because they got boring. If I remember correctly he even had dolphins talking to humans. I can't remember if they had a translator device or they could actually speak human languages though. Then again, he had his aliens speaking fluent english and that seems unbelievable also.

#17 by @bj> which I stopped reading because they got boring

Same here. Sundiver didn't bother me much, but then it had no dolphins. Startide Rising bored me to tears. I only managed to make it through on audiobook (I tried reading it multiple times). I couldn't take it after that, even on audiobook.

#16 No, it wasn't the major sticking point, just one of the things that spoiled it for me.

>18 brightcopy: Glad to hear that I'm not the only one. I know I've read a few of them but I can't remember where I gave up. The alien with the wheels instead of legs was really odd, way odder than a three legged alien.

>17 bj: In defense of the "moreaus" of Prophets:Apotheosis and that show up in several S. Andrew Swann novels, these are engineered chimeras of humans and various animals. So, the biological problems you cite could have been accounted for -- though I'll definitely grant that combining human and animal DNA to create a viable soldier is hefty level of genetic programming.

Reminds me of Cordwainer Smith's "underpeople".

True, they have been engineered but I think that the amount of modification that needs to be made to a cat to make it walk up right and talk will make it no longer a cat and you can't then call it an upright walking tiger-man. He is clearly described as a tiger that is able to talk like a human and walk upright which means (to me) that he will no longer look like a tiger. He may have fur and be really strong but that doesn't mean he's a tiger just that he's a man with fur.

13> because they walk, three legged creatures hop, there is no walking gait for three legs.

Oh it seems I was wrong you can walk by flipping the body over.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12668

Well, maybe at slow speeds you could call it a whop, but when this dog speeds up is is pure running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNavQ6h8Ks

I have known at least three three legged dogs, their gait seems very natural, I don't think I saw it as a hop after watching them for a bit.

nods runs are not a problem.

@3 "Aliens that are very close to humans are boring."

Try and tell that to Captain Kirk!

Kidding aside, Hal Clement once provided a very practical reason why most aliens that humans interact with would be very similar to us (and why the aliens encountered by the Enterprise were mostly humanoid, oxygen-breathers, voluptuous females who were eager to interact with...(slaps self)).

Our technology, our space ships, are set up to accomodate human beings. If the what-ever-it-is is a eight-legged octopi that lives in a methane soup, it isn't going to do well; we'd need to build special accomodations to even have it live on board. Militaries (and para-militaries) hate making special accomodations; they want things to be mass-produced and uniform. So, it would just be easier for humans to interact with aliens who were roughly similar to us.

There's also the question 'How do we contact them, anyway?' Clement proposed a conflict where the aliens lived in the middle range of a gas-giant's atmosphere. Humans began sending down scoop-ships to gather rare raw materials, inadvertently scooping up crops, livestock, stray kids... the aliens object. In such a conflict, even if each side realized the other was intelligent, how would you make contact? And if you did, direct physical interaction would be difficult, to say the least.

Parallel evolution was also a cheap way to create alien protagonists (or antagonists) the reader could identify with. Very few writers wanted to tackle the thorny questions posed in A Martian Odyssey, and fewer still could handle the subject.

Parallel evolution is a sign of a lack of imagination or a small special effects budget, ie. both Dr. Who and Star Trek. They had imagination but no budget. On the written page it is strictly a matter of lack of imagination.

There are exceptions. Is it Ursula Le Guin who has the universe populated by remnants of one interstellar species whose civilization fell and is recontacting their forgotten brothers?

Niven manages to have a Bug Eyed Monster be one of "us" in his book Protector. He simply reintroduces a hormone that we have lost access to, a hormone that allows us to mature into our final adult stage.

For me the Pearson's Puppeteers are more interesting for their herd mentality than their tripod configuration.

I've thought of that first situation on my own and it makes sense - as long as you acknowledge it in-story. In-story for Star Trek, there really isn't that much beyond the standard humanoid. They had the rather primitive horta (which they were absolutely shocked to find had a non-carbon-based biology). There were others here and there later. But never anywhere on the scale of even one single humanoid civilization. And the galaxy was lousy with humanoids.

So really, it is what it is - cheapness and laziness. You can try to retcon it (like they did with the DNA seeding), but it is what it is.

You say laziness, I say efficient and incremental development.

The humanoid species of Barsoom are excusable because Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn't writing philosophically-based speculative fiction. He was writing H. Rider Haggard-style "lost world" fantasy on Mars. But he created such a successful precedent for planetary romance that a whole genre grew up from its seeds.

In Warlords of Xuma, which I just read, the parallel-evolved Xumans are partly an homage to the red and white Martians of Burroughs. But author Lake also uses them to make some interesting points about humans, by virtue of the things that are different between the two races, including sorts of things that we almost take for granted about terrestrial life.

My sense of imaginative verisimilitude is far more offended by extraterrestrial life that varies from ours just by virtue of a different limb or organ count, to mention a Barsoomian feature that Lake dropped from his version. But even that doesn't bother me too much, because I'm just that kind of a slutty reader if the story has something interesting to say and exercises other virtues in saying it.

It's been a long time since anyone had to invent even radically non-humanoid aliens from scratch. Heck, Lovecraft's version of the abominable snowman (i.e. Yeti = Mi-go) was a fungus shaped something like a lobster. It all just depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell.

One of the most intriguing non-human intelligences I ever read was in Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels, where it didn't even know it wasn't human for a good chunk of the tale. And there was no parallel evolution there!

I have no problem with something like that - in fantasy. It's just in a scifi mold where stuff like that becomes even less plausible than telepathy. At least when you don't even bother explaining that there are lots of non-humanoids around, they just won't be featured in this story.

I really enjoyed The Dreaming Jewels as well. Just goes to show you even back in the day you didn't have to go the lazy/unimaginative route.

> 33

I don't think there's such a painfully obvious line between fantasy and science fiction. The two are constantly inter-pollinating, even when you aren't looking at the curious edge cases.

And, yeah, sometimes writers are just lazy, but that will show in other features besides the design of the non-human races.

#34 by @paradoxosalpha> Oh, no doubt about the division being fuzzy, and that's a whole discussion that can fill up plenty of threads. To quote Rod Serling, "Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable."

A certain amount of handwaving is generally accepted in science fiction (FTL). But generally the big red flag is when you don't even try to explain why some fantastical thing is happening in your allegedly science fiction story.

#5, #8, #16 Are you talking about the recent version "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"...I think that was a very well done and plausible storyline.

As far as a Chimpanzee speaking goes...there is one that actually said "mama" in real life...so shouting "No" while difficult is not implausible ...it is after all a sci-fi movie after all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Z0xn4pYSY

Here is a link to the you tube video of the chimp saying MAMA...bit gruff but understandable. Heck. I saw a news article recently where chimps and orangutans are playing with apps on a notepad...

Do parrots "speak"?

Aye, there's the rub.

Some African Greys have gone beyond mere "parroting", as it were....

>37 brightcopy: Do parrots "speak"?

hahaha...that reminds me of a joke.

Burglar breaks into a house and while he is working on removing the TV he hears a voice saying;

"Jesus is watching you!"

He turns around and looks side to side but seeing nothing he goes back to work.

"JESUS is watching you!!"

Feeling a little nervous he looks over his shoulder, wondering if he is going crazy but seeing nothing he continues on.

"JESUS is watching YOU!!!!"

That's it!...he spins around and sees a parrot in the corner of the room.

"What's your name?!"

"Moses"

"What kind of jerk names his parrot, Moses!!!"

"The same jerk that calls his rottweiler, Jesus"

Anyway...if you accept that a chimp has the ability to use sign language to communicate with its handler....and that is well documented. It is not a great stretch to think that verbal communication is a possibility at some point in time. Isn't there some guy in Japan that makes translators for dogs along the lines of that dog collar in the cartoon "UP"....

39>

Anyway...if you accept that a chimp has the ability to use sign language to communicate with its handler....and that is well documented. It is not a great stretch to think that verbal communication is a possibility at some point in time.

Actually, there are good reasons why chimp language research has been done using sign language or pictograms, rather than spoken language - the chimps' larynxes and vocal cords are constructed such that they can't make most of the sounds involved in human speech. So yes, it's a very great stretch indeed to make your assumptions.

I think you're stretching things a bit there, Lynxear. The ability of non-humans to actually communicate in the same way we mean communication is still fairly debatable. Is a mouse "communicating with its handler" when it presses a button for food? Likewise, is a chimp doing the same thing when it signs "food"? Well, yes, they're communicating in a sense of the word. But is it "language"?

Here, this actually explains it far better than I could, particularly the "So, can chimps talk" section:

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/ling002.html

>40 lorax:, 41

I don't understand how the two of you can be so critical over such a trivial assumption that a chimp can say "No" in the movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" yet you probably accept time travel, space ships exceeding the speed of light and other scientifically impossible events when reading other novels.

Is not the sign of "good" sci-fi the ability of a writer to take an implausible event and develop it logically thereafter? If one was so critical about the science in science fiction you would never enjoy any of it....

#42 by @Lynxear> I'm not being critical of the movie, I'm being critical of your assertions about what the reality is with teaching primates to "speak" today. ;)

42>

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never seen that movie, and I think time travel and FTL (the two are after all completely equivalent) are ludicrous (which isn't to say that I don't enjoy SF with either or both - I can, however, distinguish fiction from reality). I am talking about your claim that because chimps can communicate at a level that may or may not constitute language (I think probably not, but that's beside the point) they can therefore speak.

If the movie postulated both genetic engineering effecting changes in the brain and in the larynx that would allow both the processing of language and the vocalization of speech, then I really see no problem.

But that's not really what we're talking about here. We're responding to what you've brought up about apes talking and signing now.

And btw, my preferred version of that joke is the one where the parrot is saying, ""Jesus is gonna get you". :D

44, 45> In fact the movie did talk about brain enhancements using chimps as a test subject for an Alzheimer drug ...making chimps smarter was a side effect...

I see where the problem was in this thread it was the comment by 5> Iansales saying that the movie was laughable because "Caesar" said "No". Sorry for getting you and Lorax mixed up in this. ..my comments should have been directed to him alone.

I thought that the recent version of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" was extremely well thought out, excellent screen presentation, and well acted... far better than that cheesy predecessor with Charlton Heston. John Lithgow was super as an alzheimer sufferer. My own father died of alzheimer related disease (you never die of alzheimer disease it always leads to something else...in my case my father starved himself to death (215lbs in his prime...95 lbs when he died)...Lithgow showed the confusion, the humour and ultimate sadness of the situation...I don't think his performance was recognized as much as it should have been

#46 by @Lynxear> As I said, I think the real problem came in because they didn't even bother to try to explain how they larynx had changed. That's the point we've been trying to get across to you. It's not just the brain, but the actual structures of the larynx as well that prevent chimps from speaking in any meaningful way. It's like if a superhero movie explained that the hero got his powers by getting a radioactive spider bite - and then he flew.

And I hear you about living with Alzheimer's. My stepfather's mother living with them after hers became prominent. On the positive side, hers eventually progressed to a state where the confusion and sadness faded quite a bit and she was at peace with just being in the moment.

47> Why is there a necessity to explain the changes of a larynx of a chimp in a SCIENCE FICTION movie??? There is no detailed description of space travel in such movies....Also when Caesar does say the word "NO" it is quite a shock to the the scene in the movie. The chimp said one word...one word....he did not give a Shakespearean soliloquy...That is what I am trying to get across to YOU.

And you believe a radioactive spider bite gives the power of flight???...BTW Spiderman cannot fly...sorry to break it to you.

You confess to not seeing the movie...I think you should before you pass such a judgement....the chimps were used in experiments on super drugs to fight Alzheimer disease....that is explanation enough for me....Who knows the side effects of such a treatment could be?...perhaps modification of vocal cords as well as the brain....about as plausible as how a super hero gets their powers.

As far as your stepfather's mother goes...you have my sympathy. A good day is when they remember you. On the funny side (there is often a funny side to this disease) my aunt had the disease and was put into a nursing home as my goldbricking uncle (Joe) could not take care of her. It was hard to feel sad for her as she went back to when she was 20 years old in her mind and was a social butterfly. On a family visit she spotted her husband (of 50 years) and said "Oh look, there's Joe....he's a nice man but I'd never marry him!"...

And you believe a radioactive spider bite gives the power of flight???...BTW Spiderman cannot fly...sorry to break it to you.

I'm afraid you missed the entire point of that analogy...

not really...a radioactive spider bite giving the power of flight to a human is about as believable and brain enhancing drugs giving the power of speech to a chimp...

sorry about the crack about Spiderman...could not help myself :)

#50 by @Lynxear> not really...a radioactive spider bite giving the power of flight to a human is about as believable and brain enhancing drugs giving the power of speech to a chimp...

I'm going to spell it out since you are so close. :D

A radioactive spider bite giving the powers of a spider to a human may be fanciful, but at least it has internal consistency. A radioactive spider bite giving the power of flight to a human is just... DUMB. It shows a lack of care about the consistency of the storytelling.

Much in the same way, we can just go with it if a movie says some brain enhancing drugs will enhance the brain of a chimp enough to process language. But then if out of the blue with no explanation suddenly structures completely unrelated to the brain in the throat have changed without any bother to trying even to give a cursory explanation is what we keep telling you makes it a plot hole.

Why is there a necessity to explain the changes of a larynx of a chimp in a SCIENCE FICTION movie???

This statement makes me wonder if you really even know what science fiction is and what makes it different from fantasy. In the Lord of the Rings, the magic ring gives the wearer invisibility because... the magic ring gives the wearer invisibility. They don't bother to explain it because it's fantasy. The big difference is the rationality and expository nature where they give you a reason some improbably thing happens because of a rational explanation. When you leave out the rational explanation, it starts losing the "science fiction"-ness and veers off into "science fantasy" or outright fantasy.

None of this means I can't enjoy a movie that is science fantasy or fantasy (or dislike one even if they got all the science right but it's a terrible movie). It can, however, cause a bit of a problem with the suspension of disbelief much in the same way if you were watching the new Spider-Man movie and he started flying. X)

I 'll throw a stink bomb into this discussion - what if the "brain enhancing drugs" acted as a DNA mutagen/genetic engineering agent to serendipitously "humanize" both the brains and other discrete portions of the chimps? I mean the movie didn't specify anatomical brain changes in the chimp's brains or just an amyloid deposit retardant/removal system as I remember {& my memory not to be bet on!}.

Yeah, that's the thing. They're already asking for a suspension of disbelief on the brain thing. But at least they threw us a bone to help fudge it a little. Like I said, I can still enjoy a movie even when there's plot holes. But I don't just pretend they're not there.

>51 brightcopy:

"A radioactive spider bite giving the powers of a spider to a human may be fanciful, but at least it has internal consistency. A radioactive spider bite giving the power of flight to a human is just... DUMB. It shows a lack of care about the consistency of the storytelling."

Sorry I was furthering your DUMB analogy...it was you that equated a radioactive spider bite to human flight ...not me.

Look humans (unless you are a creationist) apes and chimpanzees have common primate roots, with apes and chimps splitting off from humans several million years ago. Part of me wonders at the ability of the human of a few million years ago...did they talk or grunt....I have a feeling they were of the grunting variety myself and their vocal chords were probably not suitable for human speech as we know it today...it evolved into the vocal chords of today eventually of course.

Perhaps a futuristic brain enhancing drug had the effect of modifying the 2% or so DNA in a chimp that is different from humans, in effect speeding up evolution of a sort and allowed this chimp to be able to utter a single word "no" I have no idea...

and yes I believe it is "hard" science fiction...nothing magic induced here at all. It is as "hard science fiction" as belief in faster than light travel, Aliens from other planets, and time travel among other sci-fi issues, which have not a grain of provable science currently.

Anyway, it is time to end this thread unless you want it continued :)

>52 DugsBooks:...thanks for the stinky support :)

"Sorry I was furthering your DUMB analogy...it was you that equated a radioactive spider bite to human flight ...not me."

Of course he used a bad analogy. He was looking for the worst possible.he was looking for one as bad as the idea that high intelligence grants speech.

The problem for an ape is that if a larynx were musical instruments. Humans have swanee whistles and chimps have a jug.

Still "no" is a short word and while I suspect that the N consonant is based around a different throat configuration than the vowel O. I will concede that it could be within the limits of a chimps one vowel repertoire, I am no expert. For that matter the treatment could have dropped the chimps larynx and modified the bone structure, to make it as flexible as a humans.

So what? Babies have the mechanical capability to to say no from the moment they understand the word. (the larynx normaly drops at about six months I believe) but they still spend six months mastering the muscular control needed.

Being able to understand a word does not grant you the ability to speak it. could you for instance pronounce any of these short words? click on them to hear the pronounciation.

http://phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter7/quechua/quechua.html

You have a limited vocabulary of familiar sounds that you have practised over and over. outside of that you have the skills of a oneyear old. There are plenty of people with the ability to understand a language they cannot speak to speak it takes practise a lot of practise.

As to Prehumans None seem to have the same flexibility, While it is still up for debate our cousins the Neanderthal seem to came closest.with maybe enough flexibility for a language if not a human language.

Oook!

Yeah, I give up trying to explain this one to you.

Take care.

56 > Was that a reference to the Librarian Orangutan in Discworld, or just saying okay? :)