One question that my editor asked me on the first round of copy edits was why all my characters were human or humanoid. Why were there no aliens who, basically, looked more alien?
I’ll confess that until then I hadn’t really thought about it but I had a logical explanation. For one thing, when writing a science fiction romance it, of course, makes it easier if the two main characters who are due to fall in love have a fairly close physical similarity. Sex scenes would obviously be a lot more involved and, er, convoluted shall we say, if the physical differences were very marked. Perhaps that’s something to explore when I’m more confident of my skills in the genre. :D
For my first book I wanted to keep things simple. And I felt that in a galaxy full of diversity, those species who had more in common with us would be more likely to interact, and to therefore form friendships or even romantic attachments. For instance--who do you spend the most time with? A best friend? A partner? Work colleagues? Family? Obviously with family you have that tie of blood and unity that (most) families take as the basis for their relationships together. You might not have chosen each and every one of your work colleagues to be with, but you’ve (presumably) all chosen to work in that profession and therefore have that bond. With a best friend you often have shared experiences and/or interests--things that unite you. With a partner there must have been some initial attraction that has led to a mutual bond and the desire to spend (hopefully) the majority of your lives together.
So in each relationship, there are one or more areas of related interest or goals that connect you. That compel you to spend time together. So it seemed logical to me that races with certain aspects in common might be more inclined to socialize and interact together than, say, those whose even basic needs are incompatible with our own. An oxygen-breathing race like us, for example, would be unlikely to want to spend time with a race that breathes or needs cyanide. A marine species may not want to risk asphyxiation in our atmosphere any more than we’d like to drown.
It wouldn’t be impossible, and the very nature of a completely different society would no doubt compel a lot of humans to pursue such interactions, but the average person would probably seek the simpler solution. How many of us learn to deep sea dive, for example? How many would want to learn? Of course, there may be other ways to adapt ourselves in the future--as an example I recommend Neal Asher’s books where cybernetic and genetic adaptations abound--which would make these interactions easier, perhaps even commonplace.
There are more alien-style aliens in the universe I’ve created. Few interact with the humanoid races that tend to have dominated my stories so far. But there are always opportunities to explore those in the future.
What’s your view on it? Do you think I’m just evading the issue with my reasoning? Do you go for the most outlandish species you can imagine, or do you prefer to keep yours close to human?
