On Alien Aliens

So, I'm trying to create some alien aliens for a science fiction game I plan on running.  My goal is to make them fun, dangerous, and very difficult to relate to.  part of the fun of the campaign is that humans are better at understanding other species than other species are.  This takes the normal troped advantages of humans in sci-fi (better tech, central place in the galaxy, better military, smarter, what have you), and throws it out in favor of a weirder advantage, and one that at least I feel requires a lot more thought to take advantage of.

I'll finish this post with the summaries I have so far of a few species, but I wanted to talk about something I see a lot of.  Everyone complains about rubber mask aliens.  The most common aliens being humans with make up (say... pointy ears), and the most alien we generally see being a human with a funny shaped head.  Even the xenomorphs from Alien are distinctly human (explained in canon, and certainly understandable given the sexualmachinery of Giger's work).  We occassionally get a smattering of truly alien aliens on shows like doctor who.  I'm not talking about things like the Dalek, who are so human it's a painfully obvious social message.  But things like the weeping angels in blink (they are stone, they "feed" by consuming potential energy, which is somehow magically harnessed in a process that sends people back in time approximately the length of time they have left to live), and the energy being in "42".

For the most part truly aliens seem to be relegated to fiction that gets cast aside or only set up in a niche.  Occasionally they are the only original idea of a product and so fail on other grounds.  somehow alien aliens seem to be an anti-selling point.  Something that will doom a project to failure.

The most common explanation for this that I hear is that once something becomes so alien that it can truly be considered alien, the reader can't relate to it.

My counter argument.  Lovecraft.  Lovecraft wrote of horrors not just unknown, but unknowable.  So far beyond mortal ken that to grasp even the slightest fact about them, in earnest, would drive the mind into oblivion, and leave nothing but a keening shell of mortal flesh.  Just take that and instead of making them horrors, (and Lovecraft painted them pretty heavily as horrors), make them unknowns.

I propose that one could enjoy reading something about truly alien aliens BECAUSE they are so difficult to relate to.  To give an example.  I was talking about these aliens, and was thinking.  Some people have trouble grasping sarcasm.  The concept just isn't familiar to them, and it takes a while to understand on an intuitive level.  But back up, imagine there is a species that has no concept of humor.  How do you explain the concept to them?  How could you explain that something is funny because X, Y, Z when they have no concept of "funny" to begin with?  But, now we go one better. imagine an alien species that has a concept that is the equivalent of humor above, except to us.  A concept we have no definition of, no anchor points for, no intuitive understanding of.

Am I completely alone in thinking that would be FASCINATING?!

Of course, it is limited by the fact that a human mind is the force behind this creation, but still, if I can find joy in seeing the creativity of others when it comes to things I have a common grasp on, shouldn't I be able to appreciate the creativity necessary to bring the truly bizarre into light?  The great part about this is, the advantage of humans in this game, to be able to understand alien species more easily than they understand us or each other, is exactly what this exercise is practice for.  It's the fascination we have with trying to stretch our minds around concepts that are truly foreign to us.

Course, with all this build up my alien aliens aren't all that alien at all.  But maybe that's a good thing.  I'd love to hear any comments or ideas people want to send my way.  One friend already gave me one fun idea that I incorporated into one of the species.

Without further ado, Aliens:

Cyrex: Tiny bat-like creatures.  They are between 8” and 2 feet in size, averaging about a 1’4”.  They communicate in ultrasonic pulses.  Oddly it is fairly easy to get computers to read their language given that base 8 occurs so frequently in both their number systems and their languages.  They are smart, and work in incredibly tight passages easily.  Oddly, many of their ships carry humans without difficulty due to their love of open spaces to fly in.  They have two pairs of mammalian wings, stubby legs, and a tiny set of armlike graspers.  They have 4 major joints in each wing and can use their wings as manipulators in a pinch as well.

Andrazi: Insect-like creatures they are about 5 feet... in diameter?  They are rather spherically shaped most of the time.  They have ten legs, three manipulators (two smaller manipulators on one side, one larger one on the other), and a hard brownish shell.  they communicate mostly through scent and movement.  They see in a dozen dozen spectrums compared to the human eye, and can see the circulatory systems of most mammalian life.  This makes them seem telepathic.  when threatened they unfurl to a massive length of 15 feet or so, and expose thousands of addition vestigial feet from their underbelly.  Some members of the species have venomous fangs, but most simply have the fangs as a part of their oral structure.

Quolth:  The Quolth are a semi-fungal species of life.  While they don’t technically fit into the fungal category of life by all appearances they are basically a mushroom colony.  They live on the back of what can really only be called a true slave race.  These creatures are about 4 feet high, and resemble a quadrapedal mammal with four muscular arms ending in six toed geckolike feet.  They have no problems climbing just about any material, are remarkably strong, and have no head.  Whether or not they have a brain has yet to be discovered by the human race, but they are certainly under the absolute control of the Quolth.  

Ippal:  The Ippal (pronounced a bit like “ipple”) are energy beings, normally outside the human spectrum of vision, occasionally appearing as pink or blue ghostly flames.  Their highest purpose in life is to observe all things.  little is known about them, but the little communication the human race has with them implies they are... semi-immortal.  They never die, but their form of reproduction is actually a merging, two entities becoming one, and forming a new mind so to speak.  Their numbers don’t dwindle for some reason though, and it is though that there is an opposite process where they divide.  They also don’t seem to be affected by quantum uncertainty, which makes NO sense.  The biggest “national project” human intelligence knows about the Ippal is that they are trying to map the exact position of every particle in the universe.