On Writing : Philosophical question by Meriem Bouziani

What do dolphins and whales talk about? That is a starting point.

Jon Shallit Good one!

That’s a really good point, but here is the problem: I don’t think we can truly understand the logic of a dolphin.

We can’t fully grasp what matters to them, what makes them happy or sad, or how they perceive the world.

Would they ever want to live on land? We can’t answer that with real certainty because we are confined to human experience.

What also fascinates me—especially when I think about aliens—is how an intelligent species might live once it develops complex civilizations and advanced inventions. Other animals on Earth have more primitive forms of life and thinking. Aliens, in contrast, could have completely different cognitive systems, values, emotions, and ways of building societies.

That’s what I think Jon Shallit

thank you very much Preston Poulter

Alan Moore has written vividly about the thought processes and inner minds of various alien species—notably the Warpsmiths and the Qys in Miracleman.

The former move so fast that when at rest they stand like statues. The latter have a wardrobe of bodies in innerspace which they can change into and out of with a spoken “spell”.

You should check out those comics for inspiration!

What might initially appear to be a dilemma is, in fact, an invitation to immerse yourself in the creative possibilities of science fiction. This is your chance to build an entirely new universe, establish its rules, define its major players, and craft a narrative that is uniquely yours. Begin by imagining the essential elements of your world: its environment, the governing principles, and the inhabitants who bring it to life. With this foundation in place, continue to construct and refine your civilization, making use of creative licensing to develop a complex and rich history. At the center of your story, create a multidimensional and powerful protagonist whose journey drives the narrative forward.

For the antagonist, look inward to the complexities of humanity itself. Dive deeply into the nuances of world-building by introducing a post-war epidemic—one that is not connected to outer space. Highlight mankind’s ingenious spirit; technology has advanced so far that frequent space travel is now common, and human communities thrive on livable space stations. These stations have become havens, containing cures for deadly diseases, medicines that extend human life to a hundred years, unimaginable wealth, and technological marvels. The source of them both comes from the planet “paradise”.

Despite these remarkable technological achievements, humanity’s ambition remains unchanged, echoing the patterns found throughout real-world history: the urge to dominate, rule, and subjugate others. This desire now reaches beyond Earth and into space, where humans seek to control the inhabitants of new worlds. However, these space-dwelling beings stand in stark contrast to the stereotypical grotesque aliens often portrayed in science fiction. Instead, they possess extraordinary beauty and intellect, challenging conventional expectations and defying traditional tropes.

This approach to science fiction storytelling turns familiar narratives on their head and encourages you to think outside the box. By reversing stereotypes and traditional tropes, you open the door to new perspectives and more intricate, engaging stories. These ideas can serve as the foundation for a truly imaginative and original tale, inspiring you to explore the full range of your creative potential.

I do the same thing, Meriem Bouziani ("try to think in their logic and imagine how they might live"). It's helpful when coming up with alien civilizations and other civilizations.

But like you said, "Because no matter how far we try to go, our ideas seem to remain patterns of what we already know—what we see, hear, understand, remember, and store in our minds." And that's fine because you don't want to write something so alien that people won't read/watch it.

Love this question Meriem Bouziani and the short answer is yes, all the time. But because we write what we know, the only way to move beyond is by searching or researching what we don't know - a discipline we know nothing about. That being said, it may ultimately still come back to our human experience - especially when it comes to what we're supposed to learn.

thank you for your suggestions I'll search about that James LO

Yes, I agree with you. These philosophical questions invite us to develop new perspectives in sci-fi storytelling Mone't Weeks

Yes, of course—something truly new would be impossible to understand, and no one would be able to enjoy it Maurice Vaughan

I think we can raise another question here:

Is this a uniquely human experience, or is it a universal rule?

Civilizational development always seems to grow out of the need to survive.

If survival is a universal rule, then perhaps alien species could develop intelligent life in a similar way to humanity.

But I’m not completely sure about that Leonardo Ramirez 2

"If survival is a universal rule, then perhaps alien species could develop intelligent life in a similar way to humanity." Interesting idea, Meriem Bouziani. I think survival is universal. Think about books, movies, etc. where aliens fight for survival.

Survival leads to the creation of entire countries, the development of science, revolutions, and agriculture. Even art is a form of emotional survival—a way of resisting death. Civilization is not only about fighting other species; it is also a constant struggle against nature, environment, and the rules that shape existence.

So if this pattern is universal, then what we imagine might one day become reality. We simply don’t know yet Maurice Vaughan

I agree with Maurice Vaughan in that survival in itself is universal. HOW you strive to survive is a whole other thing Meriem Bouziani. That's when morals and societal norms come into play. To what extents are we willing to go to survive and what evils are we willing to embrace in order to survive? What events pertaining to the survival of a species are we willing to tolerate and which are completely natural?

When I try to imagine the truly alien, I don’t start with “space” so much as “nonhuman.” I go back to nature as a kind of novelty engine: insects, cephalopods, deep-sea life, flocking birds—how they sense, socialize, migrate, molt, hunt, and protect. From there, I extrapolate a biologically plausible future: what would their cities, rituals, and ethics look like if they were the dominant civilization? Then I lightly layer human cultural and anthropological patterns on top—not to make them human, but to give readers a cognitive map so they can follow the logic of a mantid empire or a cephalopod monastery without getting lost. For me, that’s where “alien” stops being just weird window dressing and starts to feel like a living, knowable world.

Yes, you’re right. Survival begins as a biological need, but it can also become a justification for breaking rules or ethics. That’s a powerful point for developing sci-fi stories Leonardo Ramirez 2

Thank you very much for sharing your inspiring thoughts. Imagining other Earth creatures as dominant leaders on another planet is absolutely fascinating Adam Spencer

i have a directional question: is your alien species visiting Earth or being visited by earthlings? that would change everything in crafting the story. my personal interest would be the latter because that would give you the venue to explore the best and worst of human nature. if the former, it becomes more a study of the individual astronaut(s) and how they react to being (metaphorically) a giant or an ant

That’s a very good question. Since I have many concepts in mind, I’ve been developing both approaches, and each story has its own perspective of storytelling. That’s exactly why I asked this question—because no matter how far I think, I always end up returning to human logic and Earth-based patterns James LO

personally I don’t think we are truly capable of original thought. I think, if we are honest with ourselves we can accept that even our most original, abstract, foreign ideas come from somewhere within our human experience.

I believe that if a seed of a truly original idea were to spring forth from our mind, we could only conclude that it got there through some form of divine intervention for how could it be otherwise?

9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

You could try reading some East European SF like the books of Stanisław Lem (in case you haven't already), it may help you find some different framing if not an answer to that frustrating question. In the context of writing SF for movies I think every SF movie cannot go further than being anthropomorphic and that is the limit of the genre as a whole that we have to accept or come to accept and not question it. I think SF screenwriters, and directors tried various strategies to hide that fact or motivate it, but this limit is there once you are aware of it even in great movies like Kubrick's or John Carpenter's (not Avatar which is the worst in this area). As a simple exercise why not look at how cats behave, they don't need a civilization to live and flourish ...they just went for a symbiosis where we do all the work for them and them after 7000 years of known shared history and 'evolution' can't be bothered to do anything else because they don't have to. Someone mentioned dolphins too... clearly Disney would give us a speaking friendly one on the screen, because it pays off.

Radu Popp-vinteller i do agree. but villeneuve, based on the book by chiang, did a mind boring job of creating extremely unidentifiable aliens in arrival—the body design is quite stereotypical but their simultaneous logograms (described as non linear orthography) which reflects their block universe view of spacetime is gloriously alien

In creating any world, alien, human, or otherwise and as stupid as it sounds, first figure out your specie's evacuation habits (bodily wastes) and plumbing systems. I know it sounds stupid, but once you figure this out, (and mind you, you don't have to mention it anywhere in your story) you'll start to think about their day to day activities. Are they a day species or nocturnal. Are they a clean society or one that lives in debris. Are their waterways clean and life giving or polluted and bacteria ridden All of these factors will start to fall into place building up to, but not limited to, the motivations between the more advanced of the species to the lowest form of survivor behavior. Again, you don't have to mention any of this, but it literally sets the stage for the advancement of a civilization. Try it for a few days and if it's not working for you, try something else. It helps me create worlds.

Philip David Lee sh!t out ya worlds!

(i mean that as a compliment)

James LO Thanks James. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it actually takes you away from your world building to looking at it as not something mystical or extravagant, but puts the world in a more grounded focus.

Yes, the same for me—I’ve experienced directly. When I rewatch films, I notice little moments that inspired my work. Even childhood cartoons have shaped some of my ideas. So yes, nothing is truly new; it’s just my own way of accumulating memories and developing new stories from them Ian Buchanan

Thank you for your suggestions. The cat example is interesting, but I want to think in terms of complex, civilization-level intelligence. Cats around us don’t need to create a civilization because humans care for them. If we disappeared suddenly, they would hunt and survive—they already know how to do that in their DNA Radu Popp-vinteller

Yes, understanding the daily life of aliens is very important. I have one alien civilization that I’ve thought about deeply, and I’ll try to explore the daily lives of others as well Philip David Lee

"Have you ever tried to imagine the unimaginable?"

Yes, and the first thing that came to my mind was cosmic horror and HP Lovecraft.

And then, for a more mellow take, try to read Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a Polish sci-author who was interested in the "alieness of aliens" and his represetations of alien life are quite hard to grasp. The 1972 Russian-language adaptin of Solaris sort of touches on this but focuses more on the personal drama, as does the 2002 US remake.

I’ve a master in philosophy so here is my advice.

What we do in philosophy is to go at the very root of what we know and question it. For exemple, time. We are used to linear time with causes and consequences. What happens in the past gives the presents conditions which inform us what will happen next. So you question that: what if time wasn’t linear. What if everything that happen in the past and future is determining to understand how something react or behave (like in quantum ohysics). You build on This new premise

Another examole would be our individualist self. We all focused on living and the self because we die and act individually. But what if that specie died collectively (perhaps two or three indivuals would be linked and would die together). Or what if their action was always collective in nature.

You can also go to our root values (freedom, love…) and change them. imagine a specie with other core values.

So the basic advice is go to the root and change it. then build it back up with these new conditions. What do you get

Thank you for your suggestions. I hope you succeed in writing your project Michael Dzurak

Thank you, that’s truly helpful. I’ll think about those questions Nicolas Lavoie

I see my last answer was perhaps misguided as it was more about the nature of “original thought”.

if it’s about devising an advanced culture - the first thing I think of is habitat.

advanced cultures build settlements and those settlements are typically indicative of the culture that built it. If you can build a city what does it look like? is it a collective space like a hive or is there space for individuality? what adorns the walls- writing? art? can they write? do they need to communicate in such a way? what does the foundations of the city look like? do they even require foundations or is this world not bound by our understandings of gravity ? if so how does that effect movement around a city?

discover the city discover the civilisation

thank you those are truly helpful questions to build a civilization Ian Buchanan

We are going to be limited by our human experience and world. There's no getting around that. And it's probably just as well, because our readers and viewers do need some grounding in the familiar to then expand beyond that.

Probably if we ever meet aliens and travel to alien worlds they (to some extent) will be beyond anything any human has imagined.

You just nailed the question that sits at the heart of The Phoenix.

I’ve spent years pushing past that same wall — trying to imagine alien minds, civilizations, logic systems that don’t echo Earth. And like you said, every time we reach for the unimaginable, we drag pieces of ourselves with us. Our memories, our senses, our human patterns. It’s like trying to dream outside your own skull.

That’s why, in my story, the Anunnaki and the Solari don’t just look alien — they think alien. Their logic isn’t built on our fears or our morals. The Anunnaki didn’t create humans for companionship; they made us the way a builder makes tools. The Solari didn’t free us out of sympathy; they saw potential we couldn’t see in ourselves. Their minds operate on scales we struggle to grasp.

And that’s the line I try to walk: the place where human imagination breaks, and something else begins.

But maybe that’s why we keep looping back to human logic — because we’re still human. Everything we imagine gets filtered through our own wiring. Maybe the best we can do is push so far that the edges of our imagination crack a little, and something unfamiliar slips through.

So yeah — I think we’re touching the limits. But I also think those limits bend if you lean on them hard enough.

I love your question — it’s one of those thoughts that quietly follows every creator without us even noticing.

When I read your post, I instantly thought about Dune. Frank Herbert didn’t try to imagine something completely outside the human mind. Instead, he took humanity and stretched it to its breaking point.

The Fremen, the Bene Gesserit… they feel alien, yet still understandable, because they are humanity filtered through extreme environments, belief systems, and generations of adaptation. Herbert accepted that we can’t step outside our own mind — so he expanded the mind from inside.

I felt something similar during my recent trip to Korea and China. While climbing toward Namsan Tower, I saw an old man carrying his wife on his back. It was such a simple moment, yet it opened an entire story in my head. Suddenly, the world around me became a film — characters walking next to us, a Masakatsu Takagi melody in the air.

It reminded me that imagination isn’t born from something “non-human,” but from moments we witness, feel, and transform.

Maybe we never truly imagine the unimaginable.

Maybe we imagine new shapes built from everything we already carry inside us — memories, sounds, lights, people we meet for half a second, stories we read.

Even Herbert did this.

Even alien worlds in science fiction do this.

And maybe that’s the beauty of it.

The unimaginable isn’t something outside of us.

It’s something we grow toward — step by step, image by image, experience by experience, until the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes meaningful.

That’s where creativity begins.

Yes, they could be vastly different from what we imagine, shaped by their environment and the evolutionary path they have taken. Debra Holland

Thank you very much for sharing your writing journey — it’s truly fascinating. Jay A Swendris

I think Dune’s perspective is a wise lesson for this question. We don’t have to imagine the unimaginable; we have to use the full potential of our minds to discover new perspectives. Koby Nguyen

I have dreams about the past and the future. In the past, I see different people—for example, an African woman in 1940, or a Chinese girl in 1850, and so on.

When I wake up and research what I saw, I discover that yes, someone really lived there at that exact time and place.

Sometimes I also dream about extraterrestrials and metaphysical or supernatural beings that I can't research or verify.

yeah dreams also could shape your imagination Rozbeh Rad