That was the original idea for alien. The aliens are actually this advanced cultured race. But they get crazy in childhood and puberty.
That’s also kinda the explanation for the velociraptor behaviour in the second Jurassic Park book. They were a social species and the lab-grown ones grew up to be absolute sociopaths.
That seems more like a retcon when the author of the book found out they didn’t actually behave like they do in the movie 😅
This idea is somewhat present in the ending of the first book already, the second one just spells it out, but the second book has a character shitting on Alan Grant for his ridiculous idea that a predator wouldn’t see you if you’re not moving, speculating the T-Rex was probably fed at that moment (which is accurate). And the whole idea of there being a second island for growing the dinos is treated as obvious by the same character, since the small lab they were shown in the first one is obviously just theatre for the visitors. So yeah, Crichton was not above correcting his earlier mistakes.
I highly recommend both books. They’re awesome, and they diverge from the movie in many ways - notably not all survivors from the movie make it and vice versa, so it’s still very suspenseful even if you know the movies.
The T Rex literally ate a goat right in front of them.
Like those hunters in the USA that go out in the wild and get attacked by grizzly bears and almost nobody with any sense has sympathy for them because at the end of the day the hunters put themselves into the bear’s habitat and then weren’t savvy, educated, vigilant, or concerned enough to stay the fuck away from the apex predators with knives built into their mouths and feet.
“Who would win, me or an Austrian with plot armor and a hyper myostatin disorder that makes them naturally huge?”
“I mean, the Austrian, obviously. Don’t they usually travel in packs?”
“I don’t know, man, I’m built different. Plus I just got that new load out from space cabellas’s that makes me invisible and shit. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I could do it, I just know I could.”
“Sir, this is a space Wendy’s.”
“Alright, what if it’s normal non-Austrians, like a tribe of some sort? Hear me out…”
Or the assholes like Jimmy John who go out and shoot Elephants.
I know it’s an important literary device in sci-fi but it always bugs me that whole planets are mostly mono-cultural with usually only up to 3 different governments.
Star Trek crew arrives at a planet. Meets a group of aliens. Meets another group of different aliens. Both aliens are literal opposites of each other. Doesn’t agree about one issue. Crew fixes issue. Star Trek ship leaves.
The US, Japan, China, India and Europe all watch the same major block buster movies. We can talk to each other about the MCU and at least have some idea what each other is talking about. There are only a hand full of religions left in the world unless you want to counter obscure ones and each sect and even then three of those big ones are basically branches of the same religion. the most common language in the world is spoken by a large variety of people all over the planet while the second is pretty regional.
An advanced society would probably end up being monocultured going by the one model we have. Though it could depend on if they are a space fairing race and how long it takes to travel between ‘settlements.’
Also how much they share media and communications between the different settlements, which would probably depend on if they’re at war or opposed ideologically.
Wait you read sci-fi where a planet has THREE governments?
Maybe I’m reading bargain bin material but the stories I see is a mono-culture, with a mono-religion and if I’m extra blessed, a single ecosystem like frost planet, or sand planet.
This is why I could not get through Xenocide. I absolutely loved Ender’s Game and Speaker For The Dead, two of the all time greatest, but xenocide was so flawed I just couldn’t keep going with the series. Also, fuck Orson Scott Card in general.
But what if the species is genetically/psychologically inclined to a single form of governance?
How convenient for a lazy writer
I love this idea so much. The Predators we see in movies are literally trophy hunters, and maybe their home society views them the same way the majority of humans view human trophy hunters.
Think about how much infrastructure and support it would take to bring a civilization up to the level of “interstellar exploration.”
It takes an UNGODLY amount of logistics and technologies and resources moving around and compiling and colliding with other technologies, just to make [ONE SINGLE TECHNOLOGICAL MACHINE], and it takes all of that times a thousand to make a spaceship. Now lets talk about the people who work in each of those industries, the people who drive the boats or trains to get the stuff to the place. The people who manage those machines that drive to the place, the people who manage the factory that makes the fuel that powers the machine that drives the stuff to the place, and the countless people who keep the floors clean in those factories, and so on.
I scream at the screen (internally) every time I see some really stereotyped “space species” being portrayed as homogeneous and identical in their values and goals, particularly if it’s some kind of “honorbound violent tribal” species. I appreciate the work that went into overhauling the Klingons a little. I love how Space Orks are explained. But there’s been some other really goofball aliens that remind me that our species is kinda… you know, racist. (1-dimensional perspectives of different cultures.)
People screaming about “DEI” remind me of this all the time. We simply do not progress without a vast, diverse population who have all degrees of values and motivations.
Robot Chicken covers this somewhat:
This is a well known concept in sci-fi where civilizations massing in the tens of billions will have all kind of weird outliers. But at such a scale, even the really weird ones can form groups of tens of thousands or even larger. In sci-fi storytelling this is often used to explain weird behavior that probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense otherwise.
It also comes up in the fermi paradox a lot. For examples aliens always want to stay at home and not be noticed or interact with anyone. But at a certain scale of civilization that doesn’t hold water. Even if 99.99% of a given alien species think that way, there would stil be at least a million of them that think otherwise and would be willing and able to act on it.
So it makes perfect sense for all the Predator people to be really normal and the hunting cult is a hobby that got out of hand.
I also listen to Isaac Arthur.
Yeah I’m gonna need examples. I read a shit ton of science fiction and can’t recall having encountered this.
Check out the works of Alastair Reynolds, he loves to apply this principle in his books. Great on world building and describing the weirdest parts of large civilizations.
For more a meta/review/fermi paradox talk point of view check out the content from Isaac Arthur, he also likes to point out this when discussing things like the fermi paradox and sci-fi in general.
Thanks for the suggestion, his stuff looks interesting. I realised I already have (but haven’t yet read) “Pushing Ice”, which looks like a standalone novel - but looks like there’s also a whole set of works in the “Revelation Space” universe. Any recommendations of specific books of his?
Most of his books are standalone, but set in the same universe yes. They kind of follow each other, but can also be read as standalone books.
Pushing Ice is one of the better ones imho, I love that book. The first book I ever read from him was Revelation Space and it blew my mind. One of the absolute best books I’ve ever read. He has a way of creating a universe that feels absolutely real and logical, yet be completely different from the world we know.
Another good one is Redemption Ark.
And if you like stuff like this I can also recommend Fred Saberhagen, his books are excellent. They are old but hold up pretty well.
Brilliant, thanks. I’ll see how I get on with Pushing Ice, but popped the others on the wishlist. I imagine I will very much like stuff like this, so added Fred Saberhagen too (The Berserker ones I’ve heard of before).
The redemption ark trilogy and anything connected to the conjoiners.
If you like Reynolds, Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon trilogy is top notch, the TV series was disappointing.
I’ve read most of Asimov’s sci-fi but I’ve only read one Reynolds. It was great, I’ll definitely read some more. Thanks for the response!
The Dark Templar in Starcraft are outliers.
…and they are not even the edgy dark ones any more.
The bobiverse has some extreme factions of the same entity.
I’ve read a lot of sci fi but I’m not familiar with that concept, but it makes more sense than thinking of a whole culture as weirdly sadistic etc.
Predators are just extreme doomsday preppers, setting up on their own planets and killing any trespassers. The rest live in a post-scarcity society and have no interest in convincing those weirdos to come home.
Predators are like humans going to Africa for big game hunting.
They’re mostly dentists, Fortune 500 CEOs, and children of dignitaries. Every time we kill a predator, their planet’s stock market is affected or a bunch of parents have to negotiate a new provider with their insurance.
They literally use the phrase ‘on Safari’ in the second predator movie.
The Predator version of the Office would be pretty funny.
Predator Jim pranking Dwight by leaving a xenomorph egg in his bottom drawer.
In jello
“Oh, that guy? He’s just a douchebag failson of the third richest asshole on the planet.”
Oh, I say!
It’s like their version of guys who spend a fortune on gear and tactical everything to go weekend paintball shooting in the woods.
Those predators are just the offspring of the predator oligarchs.
Every “big game hunter” ever.
Nothing screams baby dick energy like killing an animal from a distance, using advanced weapons designed and engineered by people far more intelligent than you are.
What’s the yautja word for “ammosexual?”
Weekend warriors on a men’s retreat. Anything to avoid going to therapy.
I want to see a romantic comedy, where in the background the TV is playing a news report about how Tokyo is being attacked by Godzilla again. No one in the foreground acknowledges it, probably because it’s so common you may not comment on it. Still some people in the background are looking concerned. Maybe a poster for donating to rebuild Japan.
i mean this isn’t exactly that but it’s kinda like it https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4680182/
^
Colossal (2016)
Gloria is an out-of-work party girl forced to leave her life in New York City and move back home. When reports surface that a giant creature is destroying Seoul, she gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected to this phenomenon.
I thought they established in the the movie before Prey that the predators are really autistic.
What does that even mean in this context? I haven’t seen the movie.
I tried to find the answer and I’m not sure if this is what they’re referencing but in the 2018 movie, the Predator is hunting a kid who exhibits every stereotypically-positive aspect of autism…so he can incorporate it into its own genome? The movie supposedly includes the quote, “autism is the next stage of evolution”
The implication is that what we call “autism” is actually a collection of net-positive traits (our society simply is ill-equipped for it) and those traits were sought out by a predator. So, the “lesson” is to stop viewing autism as something icky, and instead ask how we can adjust our society to adapt to it, rather than asking autistics to adapt to our society.
Huh I kind of love it. On one hand it’s exhausting that every quirk, weakness, or even disability, has to be a superpower of some kind to comicsbrain writers. But then on the other hand, the autistic folks I know personally do seem to have a talent for focus and specialisation that I don’t see as much in NTs.
Looked that up and realized I’ve never seen it. Any good?
