Riddle me this. Why do almost all humanoid species and paranormal supernaturals have pretty much the same sexual equipment and it works pretty much in the same way? When we create our aliens and elves and monsters, we may stretch out their ears, play with the color of their skin, hair or blood, give them two hearts or four arms, but the foundational sexual apparatus is non-negotiable. Anatomy never seems to impede inter-species relations.
That’s my way of introducing the topic of building new kinds of species or peoples to populate our worlds. We could take the Star Trek way out, and just add some plastic to the ears, nose or forehead and call it an alien.
Which is my way of saying, Star Trek did not do much to connect biological realities – matching characteristics of the world to species characteristics. The exception was Mr. Spock whose ears were shaped that way to capture sound on Vulcan, and his blood was green due to the high iron content on the planet. As another example, in my science fiction romance Race to Redemption, I created the Ranharrans, a species native to the desert planet. They were gold in color to camouflage them in desert against predators, had their veins close to the skin, which is common in species who live in hot climates, no tear ducts to preserve water and had sharp fangs to tear through hard plant skins to get to the moisture inside. This naturally influenced culture. Without tear ducts, Ranharrans don’t cry when they feel grief, so they hum.
It seems most stories adapt their created species to fill in plot points rather than get the biology right. And its okay for a fantasy or science fiction writer to ask us to suspend reality. Even so the pieces of the world have to fit together including the relationship between biology, environment and how your alien species look and function.
Let’s take the example of vampires. They are dead, so why do they show up in a lot of stories (e.g. True Blood) fully sexual with their equipment still working? There are ways around this, of course. We can make them into an actual species (with rules) rather than human dead such as J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood. Another option is to plug them into a supernatural world where the old rules don’t apply. In Shifter Trials, I have a half vampire lover, but the vamps are living, faerie hybrids that use modern genetic science to reproduce.
Creating worlds allow us to explore the depth of who we are. We as writers, artists, designers have to push at all the issues in our lives, including anatomical ones.
Any favorite alien body parts out there?
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The answer to your opening question, of course, is so that Captain Kirk can have sex with them.
While it’s true that many SFF creatures are not very creative (basically humans with head bumps), it is also true that if you make a creature *too* different from humans, then you can no longer use them to tell a story about humans, and after all, whether our stories are about elves or aliens, rabbits or robots, all our stories are really about humans.
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Its definitely true, they can’t be too different, but we could also ask questions what if, which remains human centered, but challenges our assumptions about how we work.