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Lisa Brenan

Alien Psychology. What do our aliens say about us?. Lisa Brenan. Why do we choose to use aliens in our fiction?. What can our representations of aliens help us to understand about ourselves?. Could our stories of aliens help us to understand an

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Lisa Brenan

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  1. Alien Psychology What do our aliens say about us? Lisa Brenan

  2. Why do we choose to use aliens in our fiction? What can our representations of aliens help us to understand about ourselves? Could our stories of aliens help us to understand an extraterrestrial species, should we ever meet one? But first, an introduction!

  3. Tales of the Lost Formicans

  4. The abduction project

  5. So, why write about aliens? • Using aliens allows us to tell a story offering social criticism without sounding preachy. • Aliens can personify people and things we fear. • Aliens can help us to understand the human condition by interacting with humans. • Aliens can help give us a better understanding of ourselves by acting as mirrors or foils to the humans in the story. • In this time of political correctness, aliens are a universal enemy that it’s okay to hate an fear.

  6. Social Criticism Harry Turtledove: The World War and Colonization Sagas Begins in the midst of WWII Whole planet is taken over by a race of reptilian aliens All countries are forced to unite to overthrow the aliens Everyone must work together for the people of the planet to survive.

  7. Personification of Fears Dracula Not subject to natural laws Extremely powerful Seduces women Kills without rhyme or reason

  8. Human Condition Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and countless others) Arthur Dent is out of place Home destroyed; orphaned New, sometimes frightening experiences Learning from his friends Trillian may actually be the one revealing Arthur’s humanity.

  9. Define Ourselves Star Trek Vulcans give us greater identity as humans by showing us what we would be without emotion.

  10. Universal Enemy Harry Turtledove Sagas War of the Worlds Independence Day

  11. Could our stories of aliens help us to understand an extraterrestrial species, should we ever meet one?

  12. Well, yes and no. One school of thought is that anything conceived by the human mind can never truly be alien, and therefore any creatures we may meet in the future will probably be even stranger than anything we can imagine. But...

  13. Just because we can’t predict what aliens might be like does not mean that our stories couldn’t be applied. If they tell us something about humans, and humans are the only example of intelligent life that we have, then it is not so inconceivable that intelligent extraterrestrial life might have something in common with us. Our stories might give us a place to start.

  14. watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/A P.html cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=PTO-20030527-000002 www.centerchange.org/passport/abduction.html www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm www.writing-world.com/columns/sf/edge01.shtml www.collisionproject.org/ap.html skepdic.com/aliens.html astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/lec-ufo.html www.homestead.com/flowstate/branding.html Cartmel, Deborah ed., Hunter, I.Q. ed., Kaye, Heidi ed., Whelehan, Imelda ed., Alien Identities: Exploring Differences in Film and Fiction. Pluto Press; London 1999.

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