What would aliens really be like: humanoids like us, or totally beyond our ken?
JL Merrow and Josephine Myles are joining us today to discuss aliens, in celebration of their latest Mad About the Brit Boys anthology, a collection of sci-fi shorts, Help, My Boyfriend’s an Alien!
When you think of aliens, what do you really imagine they’d be like? Short and skinny with bald heads and big eyes – but still pretty much humanoid – or something else entirely?
Jamie: I know the old standard four limbs (+/- tail), two eyes, two ears humanoid thing is tried and tested, but I like to think real aliens would be totally alien. Like, say, the silicon-based lifeforms Captain Kirk came across in Star Trek: the Original Series – “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” I think in an infinite universe, there has to be infinite variety – so why not sentient rocks? Or maybe gaseous lifeforms?
Jo: You might be right, but let’s face it, the Crystalline Entity (Star Trek TNG) was one of the most boring Star Trek aliens ever. It’s just really challenging to dramatise first contact with a rock. So when I imagine aliens, I tend to imagine the more humanoid variety. Or at least, ones that can appear to be just like humans. That’s far more creepy. I thought you did a great job with that idea in your short story, Better Than Cola. How tough was it to imagine the inner life of someone with a hive mind?
Jamie: Hmm, possibly not as difficult as it should have been *starts to worry about own mental state* 😉 Actually, one of the things I really had fun with was working out what body language would be like for someone who was used to being a free-flowing swarm and was now inhabiting a humanoid body – luckily no one was around that day to witness me flapping my arms about like a madwoman!
And yes, aliens that can appear to be just like humans can be VERY creepy. The pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers spring to mind. There’s something uniquely horrifying about the thought that your loved ones are not themselves any more – and that you might not even notice at first!
Jo: Those rectal-probe wielding Greys from the X-Files weren’t all that creepy, though. I think I’ve seen the little-green-man-type alien too many times for it to have any effect these days. There are far creepier aliens out there. Doctor Who comes up with them time and time again. As a child I had nightmares about an alien clown on Doctor Who. Clowns and aliens: two things that should never, ever appear in the same sentence!
Jamie: *Shudders* For me it was the big maggoty things. And the weird slime that did horrible things to everyone who touched it, and they insisted on touching it, no matter how much I shouted at the screen for them not to!
Jo: Yeah, some of these characters are really asking to be taken over, aren’t they? I remember being horribly traumatised by the Tripods in a kids TV series too (creatures in giant three-legged contraptions something like the aliens in War of the Worlds). Nothing these days seems anything like as scary, but I still keep on watching in the hope I’ll feel that urge to hide behind the sofa again.
Jamie: Enough of the scary stuff. What about friendly aliens? Do you think they’d be like ET, charming kids with their glowy fingers and wrinkled skin… actually, that sounds kind of creepy now I’ve typed it… Do you think we’d only really be able to relate to a race that was sufficiently like us?
Jo: I think we could cope with something cute and cuddly like Star Trek’s Tribbles. Everyone would want one for a pet! But when it comes to erotic encounters with aliens (of which you wrote two in our latest anthology!) I think they would have to be sufficiently humanoid to be sexy. Anything else would be either disappointing (sex with a cloud of gas, anyone?!) or too weird for all but the most depraved pervert. How did you find it, writing human/alien sex?
Jamie: Actually, for me the most interesting part of the sex scene in Better Than Cola is when (spoilers!) Summer Storms’ human envelope breaks down and they revert to their alien form of a swarm creature – it was a challenge to write this, as it’s clearly a very different form of sexual encounter, but I’d like to think it still comes across as sexy rather than depraved. 😉
The sex in Gifted in Tongues, on the other hand, between a human and a feline humanoid, was fun to write in a different way – after all, when you think about cat anatomy, what with a tail and, um, other feline attributes…
And if you look at affectionate Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest, with the rather sweet relationship between Fred Kwan and Laliari (including tentacle sex) – well, I don’t think everyone would agree non-humanoid is non-sexy!
Jo: You might be right, but I think I’ll stick with my very human boyfriend, thank you!
Readers, what do you think aliens would be like? And which is your favourite alien species from the realms of fiction?
Help, My Boyfriend’s an Alien!
A Mad About the Brit Boys collection
Love—and desire—that’s out of this world…
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JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.
She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and her novella Muscling Through and novel Relief Valve were both EPIC Awards finalists.
JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.
Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow
English through and through, Josephine Myles is addicted to tea and busy cultivating a reputation for eccentricity. She writes gay erotica and romance, but finds the erotica keeps cuddling up to the romance, and the romance keeps corrupting the erotica. Jo blames her rebellious muse but he never listens to her anyway, no matter how much she threatens him with a big stick. She’s beginning to suspect he enjoys it.
Jo publishes regularly with Samhain, and now has over ten novels and novellas under her belt. Her novel Stuff won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Bisexual Romance, and her novella Merry Gentlemen won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Romantic Comedy. She has also been known to edit anthologies and self-publish on occasion, although she prefers to leave the “boring bits” of the ebook creation process to someone else. She loves to be busy, and is currently having fun trying to work out how she is going to fit in her love of writing, dressmaking and attending cabaret shows in fabulous clothing around the demands of a preteen with special needs and a soon-to-be toddler.
Website and blog: http://josephinemyles.com/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hrQ4s
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josephine.myles.author
Twitter: @JosephineMyles
One lucky commenter will win a book of their choice from both Jo and Jamie’s backlists!
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[…] over at Love Bytes Reviews today, talking about what we reckon aliens might really be like. Why not pop on over and let us know how you envision close encounters of the third, fourth or even fifth kind? All […]
thanks for the chance
You’re welcome. 🙂
Hmmm…I really don’t have an idea of what aliens would actually look like. For fictional aliens, I am quite partial to Tribbles. We have some stuffed ones that trill and they are adorable.
Thanks for a fun post!
Oh, Tribbles are gorgeous. I want one too! 😀
And glad you enjoyed the post!
I think part of it is that as kids we’re better able to submerge ourselves into the logic of a fictional world, y’know? I find stories that make you question who is actually who and if they’re even human super entertaining.
Oh, yes – I love stories that keep you guessing. 🙂
In a previous post on this blog tour I discussed my love of Stargate SG-1. My favorite alien is from that series. Teal’c is a Jaffa warrior, who has enhanced strength and healing, due to a symbiote.
Hmm… Great character, but I’m never sure about this symbiote business. Slightly icky feel, like the sci fi story I read in which everyone had a genetically engineered tapeworm to keep them at the perfect weight. *shudders, whilst simultaneously kind of wanting one*
I remember THE ADVENTURES OF PETE AND PETE (classic, underrated US ’90s kids’ show–very quirky, would have been great in the UK) had an episode about how to tell if someone was an alien. A friend of the Petes devised a questionnaire for a science project. There were subtle clues (weird cowlicks and the inability to hop on one foot without falling implied that you had issues with Earth’s gravitational pull) and dead giveaways (blue ear wax). It made sense, especially since (spoiler alert) the friend turned out to be a secret alien himself. So, I gravitate toward the “humanoid with quirks” model (probably why I’ve always loved punk-colored hair, since it evokes Muppets and aliens to me). As for favorite screen aliens, the Sesame Street Martians (the velour guys who go “yup yup yup” and consult their Earth manual a lot) were always mine!
A guide to telling if someone was alien? Sounds very useful to me. It’s good to hear that your kids’ programmes were educational as well as entertaining! 😉
I do love stories with aliens in disguise as humans. Especially when played for laughs, as in Third Rock from the Sun.
Nanu, nanu! (showing my age)
In Mork we trust. 😉
(showing mine!)
I kind of want aliens to look a bit similar to humans. I really don’t care what they look like as long as they’re nothing like the ones from Aliens (the movies).
*I really don’t care what they look like as long as they’re nothing like the ones from Aliens*
Ye gods, no! I’m all for interplanetary detente, but surely only a mother could love those guys! 😉
Mork and Mindy was awesome!
So true! 🙂
I have a feeling aliens are going to be completely different than anything we imagine for the most part. Favorite aliens…how about Lelu, from the Fifth Element. Mork from Mork & Mindy was great too.
dont have a fav alien but book sounds great…can only think of mork from ork
A long time ago, now I’m showing my age, was a TV show called ‘My Favorite Martian’. The alien was humanoid, but could become invisible & antennae grew out of his head. Loved that show.
I’m figuring aliens will not be much like us, but as long as they are peaceful, I don’t care.
I would like to think they are not destructive although I would be surprised if they were openly helpful with helping us advance our technology. Physically – I have no idea. Look at the variation of life forms on Earth. My favourite alien would probably be ET.
I always like Mork and Mindy. I love books about aliens and can’t wait to read this one.
Mmm – can’t help thinking that aliens will be ALIEN to us, in every aspect. And even if not, it would still be an enormous shift in our (humanitys) ideas about the universe.
But I like those stores 🙂