Aliens: they’re a staple of science fiction. Since the early days of sci-fi film and writing, science fiction creators have tried to envision what intelligent life elsewhere in the universe might look like. Doing so taps into one of the deepest, burning questions in the history of our species:
Are we alone?
Modern science provides a clear, definitive answer: “No”. Based on our current understanding of the universe, humanity being the only intelligent species is regarded as a statistical impossibility. Other intelligent species exist. They may be rare. Perhaps even extremely rare. But they’re out there. So, what do they look like?
In just the past few decades, advances in a diverse range of scientific fields, from cosmology to genetics, have given us a clearer understanding of what intelligent life elsewhere might be like. Some science fiction may have gotten it very right, but most probably got it very, very wrong. So, how does the modern sci-fi writer handle the idea of aliens? Let’s find out, in this month’s “Science in Fiction”.
Aliens in Science Fiction
Put simply, aliens are ubiquitous in science fiction. Since depictions of Martians in early sci-fi stories like War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burrows, aliens have appeared so often it’s pointless to run through them all. Aliens are right up there with faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity among the most recognizable (and perhaps overused) sci-fi tropes.
For most of sci-fi’s history, especially with regards to film and television, depictions of aliens have had one major thing in common: they tend to look similar to humans. This has been done partly due to the limited human perspective: it’s easier to accept an intelligent species as being equal to humanity if they look a lot like us. But it’s also been done for a simpler, practical reason: in films and TV series, even aliens must be played by human actors. Periodic attempts were made to make aliens look less human, but generally resulted in something either hilariously corny (Zaphod Beeblebrox on the BBC adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) or a very intentional instance of body horror (the xenomorph in the movie Alien).
In recent years, advancements in CGI have allowed filmmakers to depict more truly alien intelligent life. This has allowed creators in film and television to challenge perceptions of intelligence. The Heptapods in the 2016 film Arrival and Species 10-C in season four of Star Trek: Discovery are among the notable examples of modern sci-fi exploring the potential diversity of intelligent life in the universe.
Aliens in Science
As I said, in recent years, science has given us a better picture of what intelligent life elsewhere might look like. First and foremost, modern astronomy suggests that intelligent life is, in fact, probably rare. This harkens back to one of my previous “Science in Fiction” pieces, “Life As We Know It“. As I mentioned in that piece, one of the biggest requirements for life to evolve is time. Our fossil record indicates that life has existed on earth for nearly four billion years. Humans have been around for about one million of those years: the blink of an eye, in the cosmic sense.
Since, as I mentioned in “Life As We Know It”, life takes a long time to evolve, intelligent species would most likely be found on planets orbiting stars like our own. That means such life would probably be familiar to us (I’ll get to that “probably” later). But just how much can we know about what intelligent aliens would actually look like?
Well, we’ve at least got the basics down, based on our study of life on Earth, and the history of our own species.
Intelligent Life Would Likely Be Bipedal
…or at least stand upright. Recent studies have shown that bipedal locomotion is actually pretty inefficient: it places strain on the spine, and offers less stability than walking on all fours (or sixes, eights, etc.). But standing upright has its advantages. To a primitive species (like our distant ancestors homo erectus), it allows better field of vision, enabling organisms to spot predators at a distance. But there’s another, more interesting advantage.
Intelligent species would likely walk upright because they’d need at least one set of appendages to use tools. Our upright locomotion frees our upper extremities for all kinds of things, from eating with utensils to using a smartphone (which you’re probably doing right now). What’s more, many of the things associated with intelligent species, from record-keeping to artistic expression, require hands, not feet. Try playing a guitar with your toes if you don’t believe me.
Our ability to use our hands as dexterous manipulators, rather than simply for locomotion, allowed us to move past the basic needs of survival that govern the lives of less-evolved species. So intelligent aliens would likely walk upright, and have hands.
So that means they’d probably look a lot like us, right? Well, not exactly…
Intelligent Life Would Likely Be Reptilian…
Though we can’t be sure, we’ve long theorized that intelligent mammals may be very rare in the universe. Now, many sci-fi creators over the years have speculated on the idea of non-mammal intelligent life. For instance, many have suggested the possibility of intelligent insects (notably the Buggers from Ender’s Game or the insectoid subspecies of the Xindi on Star Trek: Enterprise). But recent research suggests it’s highly unlikely that arthropods could evolve human-level intelligence.
That leads us to reptiles. Our planet has a long history of reptile dominance; the dinosaurs, warm-blooded reptiles, were the dominant form of life on Earth for over 160 million years. Mammals have been around since the Triassic (roughly; there’s some disagreement, based on how exactly we define a mammal), but have only been the dominant form of life on our planet for about 66 million years.
So the dinosaurs had a pretty good run. Then, something catastrophic happened…
The impact of a massive bolide near modern Chicxulub, Mexico, did more than devastate our planet’s climate: it upset the balance of life on Earth. It had long been theorized that mammals fared better in the aftermath because they were small (requiring less food), could subsist on dry seeds, and were capable of burrowing underground. The dinosaurs, it was believed, died out slowly because they were larger and required more food, meaning they slowly starved.
However, recent research suggests we didn’t give the dinos enough credit for survival. In just the past five years, studies of sediments laid down in the immediate aftermath of the impact have painted a darker picture: the dinosaurs probably didn’t slowly die off from starvation. Rather, most were likely either vaporized by a global firestorm or crushed by a global tsunami, one strong enough to wash fish from the Atlantic as far inland as modern Wyoming.
Regardless of what, exactly, did the dinosaurs in, our species, and mammals in general, were the benefactors of their decline. With dinosaurs removed from most major ecological niches, mammals rose and diversified to fill their roles. That process led ultimately, inevitably, to us. Had the impact never happened, famed cosmologist Dr. Carl Sagan famously theorized that the dinosaurs would have eventually evolved intelligence, developing mathematics on a base-eight scale (due to the number of digits on their forelimbs).
Unless every habitable planet experiences a catastrophic impact at around the point in development as ours, it’s unlikely that we’ll find the galaxy full of intelligent mammals. So space belongs to the reptiles, right? Well…maybe…
…or Cephalopod in Nature
Did you miss the ellipses after the previous heading? Well, this is what I was getting to. The past decade has seen numerous studies on cephalopod intelligence. We’ve seen octopus species engaged in surprisingly advanced behaviors, from complex forms of courtship and communication to the use of rudimentary tools.
One particular octopus at a New Zealand aquarium did something truly extraordinary: he escaped. The crafty cephalopod realized that if he didn’t move toward the top of his tank while being fed, his keepers would leave the lid open. He bided his time, lulling his captors into a false sense of security. Then, one night, he made his move: he crawled out of his tank, then squeezed down a drainage pipe in the floor. That pipe emptied into the ocean, and to freedom.
Such observations have led to a revolution in our understanding of intelligence. It’s now widely believed that cephalopods are capable of evolving human-level intelligence, mainly because they’re already pretty close here on Earth.
The Possibilities
Modern sci-fi, especially hard sci-fi, demands scientific accuracy. But it’s important to remember that there’s still a lot we don’t know about intelligent life in the universe. That means we don’t really know exactly what said life would look like. Intelligent aliens could be so completely different from us as to make communication impossible. Perhaps even so different that, as with octopus, we might not even recognize their intelligence at first. In the end, only one thing is certain: we won’t really know what intelligent alien life looks like until we find it. Until then, all we can do is speculate. – MK
Writing Tomorrow 