Have you ever noticed how terrestrial alien technology seems? I would not be a bit surprised to see examples of alien technology using vacuum tubes in earlier examples. It seems that Aliens never have anything that doesn’t already exist wherever they go. Their examples may be many orders of magnitude more elaborate, but the heart of what they have is always very similar to our own technology.

I put a good deal of thought into my alien technology. My recent examples include a technology that considers matter to be a mythical substance. Everything in this technology is composed of fields and energy. Nothing has atoms or even subatomic particles. It differs from Earth technology so much that we would not even notice it if we came across it.

What if the stones upon which we walk are living things? They would simply differ so much from us that we would not notice their sentient nature. Of course, they would return the favor in their assessment of us. Two whole biospheres would coexist without noticing each other.

Since the viewpoint of a story is in the characters, there is no need for us to recognize the world in which our story takes place. Alien technology can actually be alien. It is only the minds of our guides to these worlds that have to make sense to us. We see into the stories that we are told though the minds of the characters who live there.

And guess what? Most people in any world do not have a single clue how most of their respective world’s work. You do not have to explain alien technology to your audience in believable detail. Trying will simply bore your audience. Feel free to explore worlds that truly are different from your own.

How would a silicon based life form react to seeing a silicon microchip? What effect would this discovery have on its culture? Come to think of it, why should all life in the universe have DNA? Shadows of our creator, can we not come up with alternatives? Alien technology should be truly as alien as the minds that created it.

Let us go beyond the confines of the world around us and visit some place that differs enough to be an adventure. Worlds have to be consistent within themselves, however, they do not have to agree with us in any way. Let’s drop the prejudice, shall we? I want to see the alien worlds that are home to real aliens.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Mulligan Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.