New Science Fiction Genre.

[swestrup]

I've just invented a new SF Genre. I'm sure isolated examples of it already exist, but it just occurred to me that one could write an entire series of books on the subject: Xenobiography.

Choose an alien planet, species and society. Pick an interesting member of that society. Write a biography for them.

Done right it could be lots of fun.

Comments

[arymede.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the essence of most alien-genre science fiction anyway?

[ramaxela.livejournal.com]

... neat!

~A.

[swestrup]

Its just really seldom done right. Its one reason I love the shifter series by Czernada(sp?). Her shifter alien is crap physics, but it lets her do some really good xenoanthropology (xenopology?) and she is a biologist and so understands the effects that different sensoria have on modeling your environment. When she's describing things from her pig-alien's viewpoint, its all smells first and sounds second, with an occasional description of what something looks like, because sight just isn't their primary sense.

Too bad she doesn't have very well-worked out planetary ecologies or species taxonomies, because its really hard to imaging how some of her critters were supposed to have evolved.

Besides, every alien-viewpoint genre novel I've ever read has been an adventure story, and covering a small span of an alien's life. I don't know of any cases where it just follows a remarkable member of the species from birth to death and details their interactions in the alien society.

[arymede.livejournal.com]

True enough, I suppose.