Yeah, wow guys. Topic.
I'm going to indulge with this post, and then if we want to keep having this discussion (and I think we should, it's a fascinating one!), we should start a new thread.
Anyway, I've expressed almost the exact same sentiment, I want to see more sci-fi where the aliens are so completely alien that they're akin to a force of nature. There isn't much sci-fi that does that (Starship Troopers is a notable example. The Borg were for one brief, beautiful moment, and will be again if I ever get my chance), but that's because drama by and large is about conflict between people. Because the point of drama, by and large, is to inform us how to conduct ourselves and deal with other people by showing us other people's behavior. So if you aren't going to use your aliens to demonstrate a particular human behavior, you better make sure the real story is going between your actual human characters.
But also, it's our nature to assign humanity to things that don't possess any. We name hurricanes after all. Personally, I'd love to tell my own version of the alien invasion story and turn it on its head a bit, using at least partly the force of nature concept.
But this whole discussion goes back to a point I was trying to make in the District 9 commentary (something I mangled terribly, if I recall). As human beings, we are inevitably confined to human thought processes and human imaginations. As creatures of the planet Earth, the departure point of our imaginations will always be planet Earth. And even so, look how far she outclasses us. She's our planetary parent and I defy anyone to imagine a weirder, more "alien," less "human" creature than what she has already conjured up and put at the bottom of the ocean (there I go, endowing a force of nature with human behavior...). I simply don't think it's possible. Ultimately, we're human beings telling a story, another creation of human beings, to other human beings in an attempt to communicate some point about humanity.
But this idea is why looking for life elsewhere in the universe is so vital of an endeavor. Scientists and science fiction authors alike are constantly asking themselves the question, "How different or similar will alien life be?" On the one hand, you have our planetary bound imagination. On the other hand, you have the fact that math and physics, chemistry, and geology work the same way here as they do on Mars (and in Andromeda and farther) and biology is as much an extension of chemistry as chemistry is of physics. And physics of mathematics. So it stands to reason, to a certain extent, if it all works the same from one end of the universe to the other up to biology, does that uniformity extend to biology itself? And perhaps beyond to psychology? Sociology?
Who the hell knows, but I sure as hell would like to find out.
