The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson » scifi

The Many forms of Alien Life

Bryan Lee Peterson — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:12:19 +0000

I keep seeing criticisms of science fiction alien design by various sources, scientific and otherwise, that intelligent alien species across the genre are fairly universally anthropoid and fail to take into account the myriad of other possibilities of the universe, and then there will be some discussion about how life forms one earth don’t all follow this pattern. Eventually, it winds up at the concept of beings comprised entirely of energy. Take this article as reference.

There is a sub-argument I’d like to address, that of telepathic communication. It seems the same people who deride the currently paranormal ability of telepathic communication while then hypothesizing aliens may communicate directly mind to mind.

Now perhaps I have a anthropoid centered point of view, but I’m not buying any of it.

Let’s start with an easy one, bilateral symmetry. Most aliens in most movies are bilaterally symmetrical for a very practical reason, before CGI became believable and affordable, prosthetics were the way to go, and well, you’re sticking a costume onto a bilaterally symmetrical entity. There was no good way to, say, add a third leg. But we can learn quite a bit from earth. There’s really three types of creatures on the earth in the higher life forms category, things that walk (or scuttle or crawl), things that swim, and things that fly. Of the things that walk or crawl, the predominant means of doing so is by legs. There is that whole gastropod thing, but moving along on your belly floating on a trail of slime isn’t really an evolutionary fast track.

There are many different schema for legs, two, four, six, eight, or many. Never three. Can we imagine an environment where it is so significantly different from our own that having three sides would be a significant advantage? What sort of environment would do this? There are all sorts of ecosystems around, and all sorts of niches, all sorts of temperature ranges. Certainly one of these would have produced a creature of other than bilateral symmetry if it was an evolutionary advantage. There’s a reason we have bilateral symmetry, and it isn’t just that a successful ancestor species somewhere a long way ago happened to make it work, and if it had turned left instead of right, we’d all have three legs. There has been plenty of opportunity, and we haven’t yet seen such a creature.

As we think also about those other things, things that fly and swim, we notice the same thing. There are some odd means of propulsion in water, from jet propulsion to the full body writhe, but the most dominant by far is one tail fin and two side flippers. For flying creatures, two wings, two legs. There are a couple experiments with four wings, but they were evolutionary dead ends.

I’m all for creativity, but the overwhelming evidence tells me the predominant creature design features bilateral symmetry with legs and arms in pairs, more likely fewer rather than more. No conceptual artist has ever been able to show me a practical model for trilateral symmetry, so as a realistic fiction device, I have to reject it. The argument is, just because we can’t prove it doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean it doesn’t, but as a practical reality, I’m not convinced of any life beyond the bilateral.

Then there are the more far-reaching visions of this criticism, things where we’d have to redefine what we mean as “life”. We rely on our world of carbon-based life forms as a basis for what we should expect. Carbon is in every bit of life, and in every bit of DNA, I suspect this due to carbon’s flexibility in its chemical properties to chain together in so many forms and in so many molecules. It is structural and chemical, and I have yet to see evidence that any other atom is so flexible in its uses. We aren’t making nanotubes and buckyballs of hydrogen or iron or uranium. Even crystalline structured molecules are useful in only a couple ways each. Sure they’re pretty to look at, but diamonds and sapphires and quartz all have their own industrial and technological uses.

At the same time there are viruses, rogue bits of DNA which can replicate and evolve, but have no organs, no brains, no cell walls, just a code. Our way of killing them is to break them up so the code cannot replicate, which is an astonishingly difficult thing to do. Do we consider these molecules, or alive (or merely inconvenient)?

Minerals have evolved over time, in the natural world becoming more complex, and while they are a complex union of atoms, and while the unions can replicate, they aren’t a virus, and we don’t consider them living, so a virus, which is after all just a large molecule, should fall into this category as well, right? There is a side argument in the article mentioned above against life being necessarily complex, so I also have to conclude complexity is not a defining characteristic of life, but complexity is an important characteristic of character and writing.

What a virus has over a mineral is code. The code of DNA provides instructions for the molecule to do what it does in certain environment, which is a step from intelligence, and unless you’re doing an Outbreak/Andromeda Strain story, a virus as a character doesn’t make sense, and a virus with decision making intelligence doesn’t make sense, remember we’re really talking about writing interesting narratives here, and character is a big part of that task. I can’t call code living either, otherwise computer programs would be living entities by definition, and I always had problems with this, even in the transplant consciousness into computers storylines. I do have to say that this code is one of the things that is a requisite for the definition of life, but not a definition of life. So maybe at this point we could conclude code a precursor to life, which leaves open the possibilities of computers one day coming alive.

But this also precludes the idea of an energy field being alive for me, even though scientists will caution us that life may exist as energy fields of some sort or some way, I’m not convinced. It strikes me that Douglas Adams was criticizing this concept with an off hand line about “super intelligent shades of the color blue.” Thing is, energy fields are unorganized clouds of plasma, i.e. a cloud of electrons, or the side effects of the flow of some sort of energy, like the magnetic field of flowing electrons. There is no coded information, nothing that can self-replicate. When the source is gone, so is the energy field. I have never seen any scientific evidence that energy fields can store data, especially without an external power source.

This reminds me, if “paranormal investigators” say ghosts are made up of electromagnetic fields, and scientists say ghosts don’t and can’t exist, but they point to the possibilities of “life” existing as an energy field, how do you justify that cognitive dissonance? Energy fields are disorganized, and carry no code. We know from our study of DNA how it affects our views on life in surprisingly specific ways. The needle on nature vs. nurture is shifting ever towards nature as we study the coding in our DNA. This is not to say we are simply a product of coded information. We are more complex than that, we can make decisions based on stimuli that are beyond what is coded in our DNA.

This goes for telepathy as well. My aliens will not speak via telepathy without the support of some technology to justify it. Scientists have found no means for direct brain to brain communication, and yet scientists describe aliens who could do it. Maybe there is a split in the generic group of “scientists,” and scientists who believe in telepathic aliens also believe in telepathic humans, but I don’t see a lot of evidence this is the case, it seems like another cognitive dissonance in science moments. For me there must be a medium for that broadcast.

I guess this leads me to my conclusion, life begins at response, for me as a fiction writer. I see very little reason why life shouldn’t be some sort of organic being, be it based on carbon or not, but corporeal. This doesn’t mean I won’t write ghost stories, or stories using magic or anything else, these are based on established tradition, but I’d doubt I ever write a character who appears as an energy field.

One of the hallmarks of characters who appear solely as energy fields is a detachment from concern about those of us unfortunately stuck in a body. The last story where there were hyper intelligent shades of blue I read was The Last Theorum by Arthur C. Clarke and Fred Pohl, in which galactic overlords decided to wipe us out in their own sweet time because we had nuclear weapons, so they should probably take care of us before go were a nuisance to other galactic neighbors. This is a general trend among energy field beings. They feel so elite and godlike, they have no qualms of destroying us because we looked at them wrong, or fed them a tuna salad sandwich that had gone bad. Thing is, I can write characters with the same detachment, and more importantly I can make a better back story for a character’s detachment, make a better story by doing more work as a writer than having a species with corporeal body envy. Just once I’d like to see an alien energy field who is struggling in life in a dead end job, or is the underdog to humans, or just wants to pop in the diner for a bite to eat on its day as an interstellar trucker. That would be a change of perspective at least.

So that’s how I’m calling it. There may be times to deviate from this I don’t foresee, but right now, I can’t imagine a reason why I should have to.

The Hidden Podcast episode 2 is up.

Bryan Lee Peterson — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:43:10 +0000

This covers roughly 2/3rds of chapter 2. In this episode, the main plotline of the story begins, and we meet a few new characters. I’ll be posting the text in a separate blog post, and Malcolm has a journal entry.

A couple points of news:
My short story “Tev” is kicking off the season for the Horror Addicts Podcast. The episode will premier on June 7th. We’re talking about maybe doing an interview. We’ll see if it all works out. Here’s the flyer for the show.

I’ll be hanging around Duckcon in Naperville June 12-14. Find me there.

Outline vs. Freewriting, Structure in Narrative Writing pt. 3

Bryan Lee Peterson — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:18:55 +0000

Go directly to the other parts of the essay:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Film

Part 3: Theater

Part 4: 4 Act Teleplay

Part 5: Aristotle

Part 6: Wrap up

This is part 3 in my essays on writing. These will be on a podcast called The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group starting November-ish. You’ll be able to get links to it from here, as well as my site, www.mindofbryan.com.

We can look at other structures from other Mediums as well when we think about giving structure to our pieces. If you have an idea and you have no idea of how to structure it, we can think about things in acts. Giving just this much structure might give the organic writer some better concept of how to outline without interfering with their organic process. One of my degrees is in theatre, and I’m quite glad I did it, because the intense work of analyzing character and creating movements from words on a page is what gave me a good understanding of character, voice and motivation.

Theatre has a number of structures, from Beats to acts. A beat is the smallest structural unit of theatre. The story goes that when modern acting method was brought over to England and the United States by Stanislavski, he wanted to say “bit” but in his thick Russian, it came out as “Beat” and the term stuck. I believe this is a significant structural element that can be used in constructing a book as well. If we write a conversation, any kind of dialogue, we can think of turning points. Any turning point represents a beat. These points can be moments where advantage is gained or lost, information is imparted, a character loses it, or calms down. The entry of a new character almost always signifies a beat change, as does the exit.

When we look at a conversation, we should look at beats, and if things feel aimless, often that is a sign that we wrote a conversation without thinking about the structure of it, likely we spouted a lot of information without thinking about what it meant to either of the characters that said it. Exposition is tough, especially when you have a lot of it, and you feel like you have two people just spouting it off without any real reason for it. We can change that by giving them a reason to say it, give each of them a stake in it. Every beat has a beginning, and a turn. These are my terms, so you might not find them in any other places. Beats can be long or short. The centerpiece of a beat is a motivation, which literally comes down to what is this character trying to accomplish right now? When the answer to that question changes, you have a new beat. These beats are what give a story momentum and direction.

If you look at a conversation, and it feels flat, it is probably worth looking at it, and breaking it down to points where the conversation turns. If it doesn’t turn, or more importantly, turn enough times, it may not be an important conversation, and maybe you could do without it. If there is crucial plot information, you’re probably going to have to work it, to find points where significant development can happen. We as writers can very easily get lost in information, and thinking about what has to make it to the page to get the plot moving, while forgetting about developing our characters for a scene. Thinking about breaking these scenes into beats is maybe the best way to inject that development back in.

Sometimes, a beat breaks with a pause. You know that five minute lull? That is a break in a beat where the author hasn’t written the next beat yet, and that can be a great way to develop a character. If there are pauses while nothing happens, it can indicate contemplation, boredom, any number of isms that make a character tick. Somebody who is socially awkward might let this pauses drop without thinking about it, others may use it as a tool to force the other character into saying something in the uncomfortable silence.

When you string together enough beats, you get a scene. Some plays have scenes, and some don’t. Some just have action for an act and then more for another act, and one of the main elements that will dictate this is setting. One setting, one scene is often the rule. Shakespeare moves things around quite a bit, and so he writes scenes. In Waiting for Godot, Becket has a tree as a setting, and there are no breaks in action, though there are a lot of beats. Scenes are very much like what we have in our books, screenplays or other writing projects. They represent fairly major actions and movements of the story, and may be spelled out, or may be interpreted by the director. Scenes are more widely used at this point in film and books, but scenes are used extensively in theatre with origins before the mid 20th century.

Common act divisions in theatre are two act, three act, and five act. In a two act play, we look for dichotomy, an equality to the acts in terms of action and emotion. There should be a rise and a fall if the play is a tragedy, or a set-up and denouement if it is a comedy. One of the most perplexing examples of the two act structure is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. In it, two men stand by a tree waiting for Godot to arrive, and just when you think they must be the two lowest men on the world’s totem pole, two more men arrive, one a slave, and you find just how low we can go. In the second act, the same thing happens. Two acts, if they are sufficient, can make a large work, but I’m not sure I could make a novel out of two acts. I think this might be a structural experiment for a novella.

I’ve covered three act structure in the section on film structure. Let’s move straight to a five act structure. The most prominent examples of a five act structure are the plays of William Shakespeare. Five acts, each with multiple scenes, make for a very long play, but in Shakespeare’s time, theatre was an afternoon event that took advantage of daylight. The theatre, like now, would make money based on sales of seats, but also the groundlings selling refreshments, and so long shows meant more money. There is a very strong structure in this that makes a lot of sense for all forms of writing. Since I have just written a story based on Hamlet, I’ll use that work as an example. The basic breakdowns and title of the acts are coined by Gustav Freytag, a 19th century critic. He has created this graphic to help you think about this structure.

(Image is from wikipedia.)

The first act is exposition. Normally we associate exposition with heavy-handed telling, and not showing. In the case of Hamlet, there is a long bit of history to learn, a lot of characters and plots at work, a lot of relationships to establish, and actions are already setting themselves in motion. As you can see this isn’t all about exposition in the modern sense of the word, plots are moving forward even as we look backward. In act I of Hamlet, we are first confronted with wary guards who see the ghost of Hamlet’s father. We then see Claudius and Gertrude in a procession, moving forward in their lives, while Hamlet is held back with grief. Hamlet is then told by the guards and friend about seeing his father’s ghost. We get a brief scene of Polonius doddering about his son going to college, and beginning the plot to play matchmaker between his daughter Ophelia and Hamlet. Hamlet spends a night on the guard and meets with his father’s ghost, who reveals his murder to the prince, but Hamlet is unsure of the truth of the ghost.

Act two is defined as Rising Action. The stakes go up, the conflict becomes more complicated, obstacles fall in the path of the hero. This is the act where the going gets tough. In Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius try to avert war with Norway. Hamlet decides to feign madness to keep his intentions secret. In response, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are called to help Claudius and Gertrude see through the ruse.

Act three is the climax or the turning point. I believe that Freytag had a different perspective on climax than we do in a modern sense of the word. Turning Point is the better term in a modern context. While in act two, Hamlet seeks confirmation of what the ghost says, in act three, the tip of the pyramid, the action gains momentum, and the inevitable downward fall begins. In this act, Ophelia is sent to court Hamlet, a troupe of players arrives, and Hamlet lays out his trap. The turning point of the whole play is when Claudius sees the play, and his reaction confirms the ghost’s story. If we want to think of a similar act in a comedy, we can think of Much Ado about Nothing, where Claudio falsely accuses Hero of having slept around. At this turning point, this play could very easily have become a tragedy. The whole event is kind of like the part of the date movie where the two people who are falling in love have the fight and break up and feel miserable. If Shakespeare had felt like it, he could have made a very dark little story out of it, but instead we have a wedding at the end.

In act 4, the action falls. When we say falls, we don’t mean slows down, draws to a close, anything like that. In classical terms, rise means an elevation in the tone of a story. It bears some relation to why Dante’s Divine Comedy is called a comedy. It isn’t because it is funny. It’s because the general motion of the story is upward both spiritually (going from the condemned to the blessed) and metaphysically (Hell is down, Heaven is up). In the case of Hamlet, the action is down. Polonius is killed behind the curtain, Ophelia goes mad and drowns, and Hamlet is judged to be insane and sent off to England to be killed, with his friends there to make sure it happens.

Act five is resolution. Hamlet returns, having been attacked by pirates, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dispatched. We find out about Ophelia’s funeral, and Hamlet is welcomed back to court. Claudius sets up the duel, and fixes it with poison when is then shared around to all the most important people in court. Then everybody fated to die does so.

This is a very rough overview. I hope you can see how the action of the play fits into the structure. For a beginning writer, what often happens is that you have a character, or a plot, but halfway though you get lost, and the story never gets completed. If you look at the story that you have, and think about it in terms of these five acts, or four or three, as in the other sections, you have an advantage to getting it done. So going into writing your project, or maybe into Nanowrimo, you may have an idea of your character and your conflict. You introduce your conflict in the first act. If you just start writing here hoping you will be able to work it out as you go, you may lose your way.

Instead, before you set down any words, give it some thought. It is likely that you can come up with several plot points that fit one of these acts, and give you a quick throughline to your story. I’m working on a story right now that is set in a post-apocalypse Boston. It’s a short story, so the acts may simply become scenes, but who knows at this point. The story is kind of nascent, and I’d like it to be larger. My character is a reporter who is told to go maybe to New York to report on something. In act one, she gets her assignment, and suits up. In act two, she meets mushroom farmers in the big dig tunnels. They are a perfect environment for mushrooms, and it is after the apocalypse, so they need some survival niche. As it turns out, they are actually cannibals, and Pickman, a survival artist who lives alone above ground, rescues her. In act three, Pickman brings her to his studio. He paints very unusual demons. Suddenly, she sees movement. He gets his guns, and kills a creature that is his next painting. I know, very Lovecraftian, but I’m intending to use it as a fun reference, not quite a main story point, and New England’s apocalypse is essentially an old sin and witchcraft gone amok kind of apocalypse. In act four, it turns out he needs a mate as any good survivalist does, and she’s tops on his list. She must escape from him, but he has all the guns. In act five she escapes and finds her assignment.

This is my first line of thinking on this story, and it isn’t great, but it is a structure I could write, and is further along than I was five minutes ago. In fact, I could see this as a very episodic story, and so there will likely be many of these bits as she pursues her main story, and so maybe this is just the first part of a much larger story. Or I could take it in any number of direction. Point is, I got here by thinking of some events in relation to overall points in the structure. Next we’ll look at a teleplay four act structure, and I might finish off with Aristotle’s Poetics just for the fun of it.

In Development-(untitled space opera)

Bryan Lee Peterson — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:47:32 +0000

*This post is about the status of a particular project. When the project updates, I will update this page rather than make a new blog post. To view the list of projects, click the link to the category “In development” on the right. Completed will go into the “Complete projects” category. Samples will go into the “Portfolio” Category.*

(Untitled Space Opera)

Type: Novel

Genre: sci-fi

Status: Concept

Synopsis: A space opera style retelling of some classical texts from a future point of view. Don’t want to give away too much on this one yet.