Received an email from a "non-writer" who offered an idea that even after reading speculative fiction "from asimov to zelazny" for over 50 years this person had not seen done.
I know I've seen it done, but I thought it might be an interesting exercise to ask for you all to list where you've seen it done.
So, stories written from alien (as opposed to live humans) points of view. (And we can discuss whether we think former humans -- as in WARM BODIES -- count as alien or not.)
But first of all, what books and stories can you think of that have been written and published that had alien points of view?
Posted by RyanB (Member # 10008) on :
Does The Hobbit count?
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
I don't think so, personally, because I view hobbits as "everyman" characters. But maybe someone else could argue differently.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Dean Koontz had one, but I don't remember its name. Gregory Benford turned out one...I remember it chiefly 'cause Analog published half of it by mistake and republished all of it a couple months later. There's the middle section of Asimov's The Gods Themselves...
Posted by Dirk Hairychest (Member # 10105) on :
Well if you include animals and insects in the broad definition of "alien" then there are plenty in this genre. Watership Down comes to mind. The Wind in the Willows. Charlotte's Web. Metamorphosis. These were some of my favorites as a young man. I find that writing stories from animal perspectives is just another method of illuminating the human condition.
A relatively recent YA book with at least one very important alien viewpoint character was written by our Stephanie Meyer: The Host.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
C.J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg in large part reports from protagonist Shonun Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn's (Duun) viewpoint. However, the narrator reports deuteragonist (Haras) Thorn's viewpoint as well. Psychic access is deep for both characters, though Thorn is generally stage front and Duun is more observing Thorn in Jerome Sterne's story shape vernacular as a specimen than acting.
Either way, an argument can be made that the Shonunin are an anthropomorphic personification of a barbarian warrior human culture. Barbarian meaning metal tool and weapon users in anthropology vernacular.
Many narratives from nonhuman veiwpoints I've read tend toward anthropomorphic personifications. I have not encountered many that I feel satisfactorily reach outside the box. I can't think of one at this moment that does. When a truly alien viewpoint is intrinsic to a plot, a little hand-wavium, "They can't be understood by humans," spans gaps, like meaning is lost in translations because a word doesn't translate as meaningfully into other languages as a native language expresses.
Anyway, "can't be understood" usually bypasses artful reporting of alien viewpoints, contrarily, artfully leaving interpretation up to readers' imaginations. Why show alien viewpoints when readers' imaginations fill in the gaps satisfactorily for the moment of the narrative?
"Writing the Other" is a similar conundrum. Can a writer exoteric to a culture group artfully represent an esoteric individual of a culture group not in any way the writer's? It's done frequently and quite artfully. But totally alien? I've meditated on that. I feel like I'm an alien among my natal species, like Thorn feels in Cuckoo's Egg. I suspect I could easily write an inaccessible and unappealing narrative from an alien viewpoint, highly controversial and scandalous, though. But making it accessible and appealing is a challenge one day I will attempt. Actually, the germ of the idea I have is from an alien social scientist's viewpoint. Sociologist? Political geographer? Ethnologist? Folklorist? I think the social science and its functions and purposes would themselves have to be alien as well.
[ August 12, 2013, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by aspirit (Member # 7974) on :
What first comes to mind is "Pupa" by David D. Levine, published in the September 2010 of Analog.
From the Writers of the Future, there's "Written in Light" by Jeff Young, in Volume XXVI. What I remember is that a tree-like alien takes care of a human girl who gets lost on the planet it's terraforming (so to speak). In Volume XXI, Sean A. Tinsley's "Green Angel" is told from the POV of a human-created entity living on Titan (I think).
For novels: The Lucasfilm's Alien Chronicles trilogy by Deborah Chester contains not a single human. Many of the scenes are based on classic human conflicts, but that's to be expected. Human readers still need to relate to it.
Thinking of Lucasfilm, I also remember alien POV in Star Wars Tales anthologies.
Posted by KellyTharp (Member # 9997) on :
Did not some of the "I Robot" series come from the robot's VP? KT
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I'm not sure Watership Down, The Hobbit, or The Wind in the Willows qualify as "from an alien point of view." By and large, they're humans in guise of hobbits or rabbits or other animals. Anthropomorphism, I guess. I saw part of a movie of The Wind in the Willows recently, just flipping through channels. It was done with human actors in somewhat grotesque makeup, but clearly not animals---I recognized the scene they were doing right off, but, having lived with Arthur Rackham illustrations for so long, I'm somewhat disgruntled that they're [b]not[/i] in animal form.
(Watership Down comes close, in the detail of rabbit life; Richard Adams really did his homework here.)
I think for the "truly alien," you have to dive deep into science fiction.
Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :
Speaking of more WotF, Cruciger by Erin Cashier (XXIV) is a story about a probe/ship we'd sent to find another habitable world that had woken people up one by one until (if I remember correctly) there were none left.
Finding an acceptable ocean world, the probe scanned for life and found some creatures in the sea that, only after scrutiny, proved sentient.
But is that an "alien" POV?
Two years ago, Trina and I both submitted truly alien POV stories to WotF, and we were both finalists. However, neither of us won. (Although both stories contained humans. Or in my case, human.)
Last year's antho was all human, I believe.
My current WotF WiP is alien POV and 0 humans. I realize I've reduced my 0.8% chance of winning down to 0.0%, but sometimes you've just got to tell the story in your head.
How about movies or TV shows? I can't think of any right off that are all alien and zero human. Although Pixar sure likes to tell stories from alien-to-us POV. Wall-E is a good example.
Axe
Posted by aspirit (Member # 7974) on :
I've submitted a 100% alien story to WotF that received a standard rejection, but I think that's (as much as anything) because I muddled the story concept.
I somewhat remember another published short from an alien's POV. It was in an edition of Science Fiction Encyclopedia and might have been called "The Last Troll". A native of a planet that was violently colonized by humans reflects on his existence and his relationship with the beings that destroyed his people.
Posted by RyanB (Member # 10008) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspirit: I somewhat remember another published short from an alien's POV. It was in an edition of Science Fiction Encyclopedia and might have been called "The Last Troll". A native of a planet that was violently colonized by humans reflects on his existence and his relationship with the beings that destroyed his people.
That sounds interesting. Leave it up to humans to violently displace a people/species and then have a change of heart and feel a responsibility to protect said people/species (perhaps while also secretly disdaining them).
Which reminds me of how well the buggers are done in the Ender series. Only small parts are written from her (or the piggies') views but they are done really well. They have a rich psychology which is different and dynamic.
Posted by aspirit (Member # 7974) on :
Aww, Ryan, you assumed that the humans protected the last troll. Actually, they mostly ignored him, and showed their disdain for him when they didn't. The point of the story was in the troll's actions. He saw a girl (human) drowning in a river and jumped in to save her. It doesn't end well for him.
I'm pretty sure I've remembered the story for all the years -- more than ten -- because teenaged-me cared for the alien. In the end, it didn't matter how many legs he had or what planet he was from. He was a determined hero.
Posted by genevive42 (Member # 8714) on :
My alien pov WotF finalist is the novelette that got published in IGMS this past year. My short story that got published in AE was from a mechanical's pov.
My WotF semi-finalist had two alien pov's and no humans.
"Through Alien Eyes" by Amy Thomson is another.
Posted by Osiris (Member # 9196) on :
I have a flash fiction story published with Stupefying Stories written from the POV of a space probe trying to find a new homeworld for humanity.
Posted by Denevius (Member # 9682) on :
Octavia Butler captures an alien point of view well in her novels. Try reading the Xenogenesis trilogy, or the Patternist series.
Posted by RoxyL (Member # 9096) on :
This thread jogged my memory of a book I read as a teen - Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster.
If I remember correctly, the main characters were insect-like, and when the humans finally did show up, they were definitely considered the aliens.
I guess I liked it pretty well if it stuck in my brain all this time Posted by AndrewR (Member # 1563) on :
Oddly enough, I can't think of a novel that was written entirely from an alien POV.
"The Word for World is Forest" is about 1/3 from the alien native's POV.
And (to toot my own horn), the story by my wife and myself, "Who Lived in a Shoe," (published in Empire of Dreams and Miracles, edited by our esteemed host) was written entirely from the alien real estate agent's POV. Posted by Reziac (Member # 9345) on :
Does the fact that there are no Earth humans in my ongoing Epic count? (Humanoid, but not human, and behave differently in certain critical respects.)
Posted by legolasgalactica (Member # 10087) on :
There are multiple examples in the Star Wars universe, although most are humanoid aliens.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)