The possibility of life beyond planet Earth has captivated the human imagination.
What sort of creatures exist beyond our fragile Earth?
What lurks in the void, what beasts stalk the shores of alien worlds that have vastly
different environmental conditions to our own planet?
The possibilities are vast with the potential to be strange and wondrous.
There are so many factors to consider.
Atmospheric pressure, temperature, biospheres, rainfall.
Yet we can make one assumption about alien life.
That the aliens will look just like us, but with forehead ridges or something.
Imagining alien lifeforms should require no thought.
However, if a writer must take the time to detail their alien species, then it helps
to rely on only the most time tested tropes rather than engage with our creativity or
consider scientific principles.
So let us venture forth into the stars in search of alien life and design an alien ecosystem
for our story.
Now when designing an alien ecology, the most important thing to remember is how environment
shapes adaptation and life can also shape the environment.
These environmental conditions; oxygen content, temperature, rainfall, ect.
will effect biodiversity.
Therefore the easiest way to keep our workload low is to make environmental conditions the
same across the entire planet.
Now that we have simplified our planet into a single biome, we can completely ignore environmental
conditions anyway.
It is totally okay to put a giant fur-less creature in arctic conditions.
Surely having a large body with no fur or blubber will acclimate it a winter environment
and it wouldn’t just freeze to death within minutes.
Speaking of large apex predators, this is what most ecologies should consist of in their
entirety.
The bigger the better.
Who cares about the square cube law or sustainable predator prey population ratios.
Huge predators need large amounts of energy, so when choosing between attacking a slow,
but large and injured herbivore, or the comparatively small and less nutritious protagonist, the
apex predator will obviously drop everything it is doing and chase down our interstellar
explorers instead!
It will likely hunt our main characters for a good portion of the plot, expending far
more energy then it would gain from eating a human.
It will not give up the hunt even if our explorers manage to injure it and drive it away temporarily.
Never should an apex predator know when to cut its losses and look for easier prey.
Just threat them like a video game monster.
While predators are all universally large, hyper-aggressive, and savage, all herbivores
should be portrayed as passive, harmless, and kind just like all real life herbivores
who never aggressively defend their territory.
All animal behavior should be either completely passive, or unreasonably hostile regardless
of the loss of potential story conflict.
Figuring out the habits and behavior patterns of alien life sounds too much like real biology
and I slept through that class.
There is no in-between in regards to behavior just like there are no scavengers or omnivores.
There are parasites of course and we all know that all alien parasites are capable of jumping
hosts to humans in spite of human physiology being literally alien to them.
These parasites will erupt violently from their human hosts, providing the special effects
department something to do and will always kill their host.
These parasites will, of course, grow to full maturity within a very short amount of time
even if there is no biomass to eat to justify such quick growth, even accounting for a very
high metabolism.
Unlike in real life where parasitoids (para sit oids) are actually far far worse and more
horrific with some going so far as to modify their host’s behavior, even having the dying
host defend the very larva that had been feasting on their insides.
Isn’t mother nature grand?
Also, all alien parasites have at least a 50% chance of being part of a hive mind as
well.
Now hive-minds can be very interesting, but won’t be because nearly every video game,
book, or movie portrays them all the same.
Hive minds all have a queen and can be easily defeated by killing said queen.
But let’s think about this for a moment.
A hive mind could be a truly fascinating concept that has yet to have its true potential explored.
A true hive mind organism could be analogous to a human body, with individual creatures
being equivalent to its cells.
Each of these creatures are part of a greater whole, all working together to keep the entire
species alive.
Such an organism might be closer to a nation state or entire civilization.
Image a creature with the knowledge, wisdom, and perception on the scale of a civilization.
What a novel concept that can be much better by simply reducing hive minds down to being
space communists.
That won’t seem dated.
Now when visiting an alien world teeming with life, there should be no need use protective
suits.
Just have everyone take their helmets off, that way we can see their faces and connect
with their characters.
Otherwise, how else will our hapless crew get infected by the local parasites.
When our explores are not having their rib-cages implode from alien parasites or getting chased
by the same super persistent apex predator, then they can also spend their time interacting
with intelligent alien life.
Don’t be intimidated.
Creating an alien culture is as easy as simply ripping off a human culture.
Just take any human society and move them IN SPACE.
And you are done!
No need to consider that alien society would be shaped by both the environment and their
ecology.
Also disregard that intelligent alien life might be so different from humans that their
concept of culture, technology, and even civilization could be completely different from our own.
Thankfully, the author need not take any of this into consideration.
Developing a believable ecological system for a predominately featured alien world and
considering how it impacts said world would only anchor the reader into the story’s
setting and distract them from how awesome our manly starship captain is.
Why focus on exploring an alien world and understanding the nature of life when we can
instead focus on our starship captain’s romantic conquests?
Well unless the aliens are ugly.
In that case we should nuke them from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.