Is there some "rule" that aliens must be "bad"?

I realize there have been many "good" aliens in science fiction...

I wonder, though, what your thoughts are on why so many aliens are portrayed as "evil" and "bad" and "dangerous"?

I have a theory but would Love to know what others think/feel...

Because it's more dramatic to have them as bad, evolutionary competitors for resources. That goes back to Wells' War of the Worlds -- not the first appearance of aliens or even the first alien invasion but the most influential. There the resource being competed for was Earth's land.

Assuming an alien is dangerous is the prudent evolutionary default until evidence comes forth otherwise -- especially if their technology is more advanced and they're smarter. Stories that have bad aliens simply don't move off that default setting it seems to me.

Of course, once you postulate an advanced enough technology, it's hard to imagine humanity and aliens fighting for resources. Then you have to postulate war as a pre-emptive strategy or idealogical. Of course, there are other ways for aliens to be bad or evil or dangerous than to fight a war with us.

Actually, to me, you could make a convincing argument that alien contact is fraught with danger and assuming aliens are dangerous is realistic. This was strongly argued in George Zebrowski and Charles Pelligrino's The Killing Star.

And, of course, aliens can be dangerous just be virtue of their alienness as classically illustrated in Terry Carr's "The Dance of the Changer and the Three" or by the allure they have for some humans as in Alexander Jablokov's "The Place of No Shadows".

I don't think fear of the unknown is an innate fear but I believe the portion of the gene pool who has no fear/caution of the unknown {alien} is a necessary and functionally expendable minority portion of said pool. They also usually wear red shirts.

One established rule I hate seeing broken is the one where aliens are required to remove strategic parts of women's clothing while chasing them. Prometheus, the movie, flagrantly broke that rule and suffered for it!

I think bad aliens are the default only in visual media, where gut reaction matters. In written SF, evil aliens are pretty rare. The silliness and lack of serious justification is too apparent.

Maybe because we have no predators we have to create our own. This is why we have bungee jumpers, crazy fairground rides and such. We have no monsters chasing us so we create our own!

#4 > I find your comment very interesting: "In written SF, evil aliens are pretty rare.".

Could you elaborate on it?

And the "evil" aliens could just be pursuing their rational self-interest. Nothing in the universe says they have to be nice to us -- or vice versa.

Yes, Randy...

#6> Expanding... Given how many 100s of SF novels and 1000s of SF short stories have aliens in them, I'm struggling to come up with more than handful off the bat with evil aliens. Sure, there's The War of the Worlds. One book from Wells' oeuvre. But, to stay in classical SF, any from Asimov or Poul Anderson? And from Heinlein there's The Puppet Masters but otherwise? Pick any well known author who had aliens. How many, if any, were evil? All the ones I can think of were either traders, average joes, victims, mysterious, but not invading. Planets had deadly fauna but usually not all that intelligent.

And, to expand on the difference between written and visual media, look at this list of famous dumb premises from movies and TV, many of which involve invading aliens:

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/02/ten-totally-illogical-science-fiction-premi...

Visual media get to do that if the special effects can turn your brain off. I can't see anything as silly as those ideas working in written SF past chapter 1 -- well, maybe R l Fanthorpe

Yeah, I'd agree the default for aliens in written SF is either good, neutral, or there's multiple aliens and some are from each.

I can't give you any hard data for that; it's just my gut instinct after heaving read thousands of books.

Hmm -- at first I thought there must be a fair number of evil aliens in books, but after thinking for several minutes, all I came up with (besides the puppet masters aforementioned) was Andre Norton's Throgs and A.A. Attanasio's Xotl. There must be more, but already I can think of many more aliens that are sympathetically done.

Could it be, partly, because in the process of creating the aliens, the author becomes more empathetic? The old truism of how hard it is to know someone well and still regard them as "other" and "evil"? When I think about it, for instance, in the Chanur series the Kif start out pretty much evil, but the more she writes about them the more one sees that they're just operating by different rules. To some extent that process might begin as soon as an author starts imagining the species.

That leaves the question of why more film aliens are monsters. It occurs to me that although films are visually creative, books are more dependent on use of the imagination and can explore interior states at leisure -- again, creating more empathy. I.e., it's easier for films to look at beings from the outside, and for books to look at them from the inside. But I doubt that's the whole answer (if it's any of it at all).

#12 > I think "...it's easier for films to look at beings from the outside, and for books to look at them from the inside." is part of the answer...

Hmm. I think in hard SF theres a realisation that significantly advanced alien races would be benevolent, or at least indifferent. *If a race remained violent over aeons they would self-annhiliate.* Our fate?? Perhaps unless we 'wise up'
(Of course its not always the case. The aliens in Bear's Forge of God are not nice guys, or at least one race isnt.)

*Of course if youre making a movie and need butts in seats you can forget the above rule!

I'm not bad.

Hmm, lets see @magnumpigg,

You are implying you are a 'good' alien.

Only a bad/mad man would try to pass themselves of as an alien.
Thus if you are indeed human you are bad/mad.
Hence I can ignore your statement.
If you are an alien pretending to be a bad/mad man, you must be bad!

QED.

And don't try and confuse me with the rules of logic.
I know a Bad Alien when I see one.

ETA. Look 'magnumpigg', just confess and we will accept you into our society (as he reaches for his Ray-Gun...)

Any alien with a name that sounds like a large pig must be evil!

don't break my chops.
I ham what I ham.

Apple sauce anyone?

Ok, send the red t - shirt guy out to poke Magnumpigg with a stick & see how he/it reacts!

Used to be a joke in the chow line in the Navy about where to find the pork chop on your tray:

"Just look under the apple sauce..."

books with 'bad' aliens

Heinlein's Starship Troopers
David Gerrold's Chtorr series
Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth saga
John Scalzi's Old Man's War series (although not ALL of the aliens are always bad)
some of Iain Bank's stuff (but I may be mistaken, it's been a while)

so yes lots of evil aliens out there...

Old man's war and sequels are certainly not Good Humans v Evil Aliens. For John Scalzi 's take on the bad reputation of aliens try Agent to the Stars .

am familiar with Scalzi's work ... and that's why I qualified my inclusion. It is indisputable that some of his aliens have evil intentions towards the human race ...

Even though I started this thread with the words, "I wonder, though, what your thoughts are on why so many aliens are portrayed as "evil" and "bad" and "dangerous"?", and, I'm sure, as the thread grows there will be folks claiming there are few and folks claiming there are many.........

I remember some aliens, in Cherryh's work, Faded Sun Trilogy, who were pretty bad---the humans.........

oh yes! Scalzi and Orson Scott Card also take that tack in some of their work ... and in the end, Walter Jon Williams in his Dread Empire series, is at best ambivalent about the 'goodness' of the humans.

Ah, Neal Asher's aliens are REALLY nasty! !

did Asimov EVER write about aliens at all? Robots and future humans, but I don't recall any alien stories.

Actually I guess the question should be altered to deal with intelligent aliens, i.e. spacefaring aliens.They should really be benevolent. Once you hit a dark and swampy world though get your carbines out!

Well, he was proud of the fact that he "invented" the no-alien universe, and he stuck to that for at least most of his novels. I'm drawing a blank on a novel with aliens though I'm pretty sure I can think of a few short stories.

#29, The Gods Themselves? Ive only managed to read the first section. Once the aliens appeared it got too weird!

31) I forgot that one, I liked it myself. Although, technically the aliens were in a different universe :-).

I recognize the title but must have skipped it ... off to go look it up ...

hmm interesting reviews of The Gods Themselves, surprised that I haven't read that story as I was a pretty big Asimov fan in my youth. Now of course I recognize how tedious he was at times (most of the time?). Still it looks like a good read given the awards etc ...

John Wyndham wrote bad aliens books:
The Kraken Wakes
The Midwich Cuckoos
even The Day of the Triffids, although Triffids are man-made.

Kraken Wakes is interminably bad!

Whether the general opinion falls toward many bad aliens in books or falls toward not that many, I'd still Love to know folks' ideas on why aliens are portrayed as bad---perhaps reasons beyond it-increases-the-tension-of-the-plot.........

#36 Ive already added my thoughts on that question. Mankind has no natural predators, so he invents his own

Yes, sf_addict, hoping others will weigh in :-)

hmm I thought that there was some question as to the origin of the triffids ... having to do with a convenient blindness-inducing meteor shower.

why bad aliens? Xenophobia ... the more different the more we fear and hate ... which is probably an evolutionary survival mechanism likely to be replicated universally. We'd like to think that we can grow out of that (and we may have to in order to survive our self-destructive tendencies) but I doubt we ever will completely. It seems likely to me that other species will have the same survival imperative, so ...

Well . . .

A couple of million years of natural selection has hard-wired us to react to the strange creature making the grass rustle just beyond the edge of the firelight with extreme caution, if not outright fear.

Five thousand years worth of written history has taught us (as a species) that a group of strangers who show up in your territory probably want something

The last 500 years of that history have involved strangers using advanced technology to impose their will on societies without it . . . a process that's invariably disruptive, likely permanent, frequently detrimental, and occasionally lethal to the latter.

Any species capable of interplanetary travel is, by definition, more advanced than we are . . . so it's easy for SF writers to follow Wells down the road he took in War of the Worlds: "Hey, Britain . . . ever wonder what it would feel like like to be the Zulus or the Ashanti? Check it out!"

(It occurs to me, as I type that, that "benevolent alien" stories like Clarke's Childhood's End or Robinson's Stardance trilogy could be read as metaphors for the "kinder, gentler" side of European imperialism: "Yes, yes, we're going to obliterate everything you know and understand, and yank you by the scruff of the neck through a transformation you have no way of truly comprehending . . . but trust us, you'll thank us for it later! Now, step this way please!")

Another factor is paranoia. Foreigners are called aliens, and world leaders tend to inspire fear of illegal aliens! Actual aliens from outer space are a metaphor for this!

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Humans vs aliens allows the ultimate tribal bonding experience. I think it's a combination of our fears of "the other" plus our desire to overcome that and join together (at least the fear of other humans). It's kind of a "have your cake and eat it, too" situation.

one of Harry Turtledove's many many many alternate history series brilliantly portrayed what would PROBABLY happen if aliens ever DO show up (this particular series has them showing up during WWII) ... rather than putting our differences aside, it seems likely that all the world's governments would jockey for the most advantageous position re the aliens and their technology ...

>36 AMZoltai: Maybe it is a projection on those aliens of what information or intuition we have about humans' own evolution and historical records where/when different human groups, or preservation of other Earth life forms (which do happen to share at least part of our evolution), were involved.

Overall, it's not rosy.

Maybe it is spontaneous to imagine that an alien race would have been shaped by similar pressures of competition and finite resources, and that even in their space age their representatives would still be warped as we are to favor what they perceive as their group if there is the least perception of threat or competition.

One reason that I know of that aliens are portrayed negatively is that they are stand ins for human groups that it is easier to examine without naming. The aliens that Keith Laumer's Retief battled were poorly disguises Soviets. Dominic Flandery allowed Poul Anderson to look at the decay in American society. The movie "Alien Nation" examined US racial intolerance and "District 9" did the same for South Africa. Or maybe Palestinian refugee camps, I am not sure on that one.

Just because aliens are portrayed as dangerous does not mean they will be "evil". The Tharks in A Princess of Mars are first seen as dangerous but develop into John Carter's allies. I know these are an old examples but what can I say, I have been around for a while.

Ofcourse aliens are bad. The alternative would be looking in more than one incovenient mirror :P

Back serious, I think, aliens really do not tend to be evil by default. It is actually very rare to encounter something truly alien in science fiction. For the most part the alien is part of a symbology that reflects on our our human mentality.

Those tales in science fiction that do seek the truly alien often manage to explore the absence of a human mentality, after which we as humans often misinterpret the alien mentality - and those differences are often the engine of a story.

As for the concept of dangerous. Well, life is fragile, the universe is big, and we are rather subject to simple dependancies. The universe may be beautiful, but it is dangerous by default. If not because Murphy rules it, then because the human species is a very immature and dumb species.

Liking that, #45...

Hmm. Its like its not the Aliens themelves that are bad, rather its what they represent. The Difference and the fight to overcome the recognition of that difference. Maybe thats why most aliens need to be seen as repulsive as possible-we have to fight to see past that difference and discover the real issues. And then realise our own issues!

Oh!, cool comment sf_adict :-)

Like the aforementioned District 9 or Alien Nation. Its not about aliens its about racial prejudice, social integration etc.

As well as being a comment on other human groups or human history, they could also be a projection of our own subconscious fears & desires. In that case, it's interesting how many aliens have a strong interest in human females, esp. in the earlier eras when SF was mostly by & for males. (I always was amused by the completely alien beings whose greatest desire was to have sex with delectable human women, the women often shown on the cover in bodice-bursting detail with an alien looming over them.)

#46, "It is actually very rare to encounter something truly alien in science fiction. For the most part the alien is part of a symbology that reflects on our our human mentality."

I agree! Most aliens, physically and mentally, are way too much like homo sapiens - not plausible at all when you think about it. Of course, if they're REALLY alien, they're too incomprehensible to be very interesting to us. I guess ravening monsters are easier, or humanoid aliens who act & think a lot like humans. It gets most interesting when an author imagines an alien race which pushes the limits of difference, but still remains either somewhat comprehensible or able to be interacted with in some way.

Its interesting how Clarke never shows his aliens (Childhood's End being the exception)
Theyre hinted at but not shown. Its like hes saying the physical form is unimportant. After all in life looks are unimportant.

I would say Alien contact would be something along the lines of Aboriginal natives meeting European explorers.

Were the Europeans inherently bad??? Other Europeans did not believe so...it was business and the weaker native population were there to be exploited and the land with its riches to be possessed.

I have a feeling that it might just be like that if/when man makes first contact with an alien race. They would be the superiors as they would have interstellar travel and we do not.

Thats reminded me of a scene in the book Im reading . They try to postulate how they would stand up against more advanced aliens. Then someone mentions how an intellectually advanced Captain Cook landed on an island full of primitives. Yet the primitives with inferior technology bested him!

Stories require conflict. Generally speaking, one side is presented as the initiator of that conflict. And making the initiator 'evil' is a handy short-cut to get the audience to support the other side.

This isn't always the case, and there are plenty of examples in SF where the aliens aren't evil, or the humans are evil, or the conflict is something else entirely (e.g A Martian Odyssey).

So no, no rule exists; it's just a standard trope that gets used (a lot).

Oh goody another poll...

In the vein of the Lovecraftian Weird there are often menacing aliens. HPL's designation of "externality" as a qualifier for chilling horror implies the alien in a more generic sense than the merely extraterrestrial. Writers inspired by this tradition often describe beings that are menacing first, and perhaps extraterrestrial as a supplementary feature. Colin Wilson's Space Vampires and Mind Parasites are examples.

#56 It depends on how you define "further the interests" of the genre. If we are looking for originality and artistry then no, probably not. However, financially the "standard trope" offers a safe and reliable choice for the reader to spend their ever shrinking disposable income and free time on.

#59 > Thanks for your clarifying comment...

"First contacts" and " Aboriginal natives meeting European explorers" brought to my mind a very non-trope story. H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy stories. A Colonial prospector discovers a cute little wild animal, no, a cute but intelligent tool making species, no, the, still cute, descendents of a space-faring race that crashed there generations ago.

Advanced weapons vs primitive weapons illustrated in Apocalypse now- remember the spear scene?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7u5WzLSo_E

#58 but isnt Lovecraft's monster a giant squid? Yet to read any of his Chthulu stuff.

#63

HPL had a lot of monsters/entities that appeared in his stories; C'thulhu is the most famous, and hence why it's called 'the C'thulhu Mythos'.

And many of Lovercraft's stories deal with human reactions to incomprehensible aliens; the aliens often dsetroy sanity and lives, but they're not malevolent or evil in the classical horror sense of the term. Many of them may be barely aware of humanity's existence at all.

The Colour Out of Space is the best introduction to an HPL story where Great C'thulhu is entirely absent, and a good example of an alien that is highly destructive and yet not exactly evil.

> 63

Lovecraft had lots of monsters. Notorious Cthulhu was a titanic anthropoid (of extraterrestrial origin), inadequately glossed by Andrew Looney as "Godzilla with a tentacle moustache." The Mi-Go were crustacean-appearing extraterrestrials with a biology more fungal than animal. "The Colour Out of Space" arrives with a meteorite, and may involve micro-organisms or even alien technology. I refrain from further summarizing the various Things.

> 56

Genres have interests? What does "celebrity memoir" want?

65 I must find some decent Lovecraft!

#66

More sex and scandals done by famous people, of course!

More evil aliens... Hunters of the Red Moon, Enders Game.

Good books tend to have conflict of some sort, and what easier way to create conflict than the evil alien? Asimov actually had a short story anthology with three races. He set it up so that there would be no competition for resources, and asked other writers to craft stories in that universe. I don't recall the name of any of the books.

Are the Kzin to be considered evil aliens?

"Are the Kzin to be considered evil aliens?"

I think that "troublesome" is more accurate than evil. They may someday become the people you want living next door but not yet.

Now, is evil absolute or relative?

54 > if superior technology always won the war...Afghanistan would have been conquered long ago.

#70

That would depend on who's viewpoint we took, now wouldn't it?

The K'zin don't think of themselves as evil, certainly. The races that they conquered, either for their resources and/or food, would have a much different view. The puppeteers clearly thought that the K'zin needed taming in order to be acceptable neighbors. A human Protector would just exterminate the K'Zin as being a threat to humanity, but would probably not think of them as evil; merely too dangerous to be allowed to live. (ditto for a Pak Protector.)

And who knows what the Outsiders would think about the K'zin?

30: Well, he was proud of the fact that he "invented" the no-alien universe, and he stuck to that for at least most of his novels.

The non-alien universe was based upon the editorial demands of John W. Campbell. Campbell insisted that all aliens be in some way inferior to humanity, which Asimov found to be kind of ridiculous. So he just eliminated aliens from the stories he submitted to Campbell, and that affected most of his work.

74 that answered a question I had- who requested that no aliens be superior to humans. Campbell!

69> The aliens in Ender's Game weren't evil. They just didn't realize humans were intelligent.

SF_Addict: "I must find some decent Lovecraft!"

Be sure you get his better tales. There are lots of collections which mostly contain lesser stuff he wrote, or pastiches by others (some of which are good, many of which are not so good).
I would look for "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Dreams in the Witch House", "The Dunwich Horror", "The Call of Cthulhu", and "The Rats in the Walls".

One of the best paperbacks available now is the colllection selected by Joyce Carol Oates, Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

I wonder if this varies across cultures? In Western film and literature robots are often seen as threatening, while they're more likely to be portrayed as helpful in the East.

Could robots be considered "aliens"?

>79 AMZoltai: IMO they could be, if

(1) they're the product of an extra-terrestrial culture, see Saberhagen's Berserkers;

or (2) while originally human-made, their artificial intelligence attained a level that could be described as sentient, able to engineer their own modifications and further evolution, and able to take it toward directions not primarily dictated by human needs and concerns, see maybe the TechnoCore AIs in the Hyperion/Endymion universe.

Points taken, Jarandel...

With Folded Hands

aka 'When is too much TOO MUCH?'

I think there is a good point to be made, though, for robots/AI often serving the same role as invading aliens in sf. Both are often used as a non-human "other" against which humanity unites. Both invite xenophobic reactions.

Read Chris Claremont " Nilcole Shea series" The humans are attacked by space pirates from Earth and rescued by aliens. So the aliens are the good guys.

Yay for the aliens :-)

And then there are the aliens in Chess With A Dragon by David Gerrold who can be seen as being "evil" or simply a bunch of scheming bastards looking out for themselves.