Alien Search 2018

SIHA 2018
Original cover art by Michael Whelan

Here in this blog post are the nominations for the 2018 SIHA Awards. I've been doing an annual Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens since 2012. It hasn't been easy. Movie makers don't put much thought into the creation of interesting alien civilizations.

Science fiction fans praise authors who are "world builders". For example, Isaac Asimov created a fictional universe in which there were NO aliens, but while we humans spread through the galaxy we were accompanied by humanoid robots. Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan both imagined fictional timelines for Earth in which we humans made contact with aliens who were technologically advanced far beyond our primitive culture.

Fwai-chi

Jack Vance gave us stories hinting at the existence of unseen but technologically advanced aliens. Vance imagined many alien species similar to the Fwai-chi. The Fwai-chi seem to avoid the trappings of technology, but do they make use of technologies so advanced that we have trouble recognizing them?

Sadly, movie makers in Hollywood seldom bother trying to depict an alien civilization on screen.

Sometimes, in the absence of there being any interesting aliens in new films, I turn SIHA into a desperate search for ANYTHING interesting in Hollywood, not just interesting aliens. However, here in 2018 I did not have to go to that extreme. In my view, it is likely that if aliens ever make the long journey to Earth, then they will arrive in the form of artificial lifeforms. We might not even recognize such alien visitors and they might think about humans in much the same way we think about insects.

source

Alternatively, we humans might ourselves eventually create artificial lifeforms that will be quite alien in their behavior, goals and motivations.

This year an effort was made to go beyond the American movie industry of Hollywood in hope of finding interesting space aliens (see this earlier blog post). When I allow myself to fantasize, I wonder if maybe the film-making industry in some other country has a more sophisticated view of the role of space aliens in movies.

Nominations

Extinction

1) Nominated in the "bait and switch" category is Extinction.

Welcome to the future Earth of Extinction, a world where robots live as families and are not even aware that they are robots. How can this be? Someone in Hollywood wanted the make an alien invasion movie... without aliens. Here, the "invaders" of Earth are humans who had been living on Mars because the robots took over Earth and kicked the humans out. Or something.

I have not watched Extinction. I watched some snippets, but I fast-forwarded through the seemingly endless shooting scenes. This is a "revolt of the robots" movie that initially fools viewers into thinking that they are watching an "alien invasion" movie.

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Barclay Shaw

Robots of Dusk
Maybe there will be a prequel movie made that will explain the backstory for Extinction and how it came to be that Earth was populated by robots who don't know that they are robots. All the makers of Extinction did in their "explanation" was repeatedly say, "The robots were made to forget that they were robots so that they would be happy." Riiiiiiight. It makes no sense, which is par for Hollywood flicks.

Isaac Asimov imagined a future civilization of Spacers, humans who had settled 50 exoplanets near Earth, but whose descendants had then gotten so comfortable in their lives that further exploration of the galaxy came to a halt. A plan was developed to continue the expansion of humans to the rest of the planets in the galaxy: robots would be sent out to do the difficult work of colonizing new worlds. Those robots would be humaniform robots: machines designed to look like humans and there would even be child robots so that the robot colonists would build new cities that were suited for the humans who would eventually arrive.

by Dennis Feltham Jones

I can't escape the sensation that I first saw the starting point for an Extinction prequel in 1970. Back then there was a film called Colossus that showed a {mainframe} computer that suddenly became conscious and immediately began taking control of Earth. For the prequel to Extinction I'm picturing a sequel to Colossus in which humans are forced to design and build humaniform robots who will replace the human species, leading to the events in Extinction. Of course, I'd want to add in to the plot a role for some aliens in a film that is set in the time period between Colossus and Extinction. The aliens would take some humans off of Earth and help them plan how to take back control of their planet.

The Blob 2018

1958

Annihilation
2) Nominated in the "mysterious blob" category.

"it might be fair to say that the Shimmer’s origins are alien, but they might not derive from an alien" (source)

Try not to loose your head on the beach.

When nothing is explained in a movie, viewers get desperate and are tempted to say all sorts of things, but let's not loose our heads, even if this is a silly horror flick. I'm going to pretend that Annihilation is actually a science fiction story and try to look at it as refracted by historical context.

cover art: Paul Lehr

In the beginning...
One of the first science fiction novels that I ever read was Frank Herbert's The Santaroga Barrier. That Paul Lehr cover illustration for The Santaroga Barrier (the image to the right on this page) helped teach me not to buy a book because of the cool cover illustration.

If I were an alien...
Imagine some aliens who reach Earth, but these aliens are a form of artificial life. The aliens are composed of nanoscopically tiny components and they want to start studying Earthlings. Maybe their goal is to find a way to step in and fix some fundamental problems in human society. As a first step, the aliens take control of the residents of a small town by feeding them a steady diet of behavioral control nanites (called "Jaspers" by the locals). Anyone from outside of this small test site is either assimilated and brought into the local alien-controlled community or quietly killed.

cover art by Dean Ellis

Not long after reading The Santaroga Barrier I read Dhalgren. Samuel Delany flipped things around and shook things up, but this was the same basic plot line: a chunk of the world has been subverted, changed into something alien.

Recycling
Fast forward to Annihilation and we see this same basic plot of The Santaroga Barrier once again. A small part of the country (called "Area X") is under the control of some alien influence. The aliens have advanced nanotechnology and they can casually manipulate the cells and genes of humans, just as easily as our scientists now splice genes and transform bacteria in laboratory culture dishes.

It is the middle ground, Area X,
between science fiction and horror

Annihilation could have been an interesting 30 minute episode of The Twilight Zone. Sadly, this film was bloated beyond its science fiction core and refracted into a horror movie. Aliens took over Hollywood and refracted an interesting First Contact story into a blood and guts shoot 'em up.

Film makers have a problem when trying to visually depict invisible aliens. It is easy for me to imagine that First Contact might happen when an artificial life form of alien origin reaches Earth. However, an artificial life form composed of nanites might be invisible until many of its nanite components assemble onto a macroscopic shape. Since I'm not addicted to making horror movies, I believe that such an artificial life form would be better programmed than the alien depicted in Annihilation. Of course, you can't make a mindless horror movie if the aliens are logical and behaving rationally.

...what big teeth you have, Grandma...

I don't know which part of Annihilation was worse, the silly monsters or the gratuitous sex scene. I suppose there comes a point in the production of every horror movie when some executive says, "Hey, wait! We need a sex scene!"

Why Now?
Any First Contact story should concern itself with this question: why are the aliens making contact with us now? The only answer to this question from the makers of Annihilation is that this was when they wanted to make a horror film.

Arthur C. Clarke actually made 2001 into a science fiction movie; he showed that the aliens had long been visiting Earth, and even shaped the human species. Humans only got around to noticing the presence of the aliens in the year 2001. For Annihilation, the aliens are just a scaffold for a horror movie. And, sadly, I fear that there will be a dreary sequel to Annihilation with even more gore and less to say about the aliens. However, that movie has already been made: Before We Vanish...

3) Nominated in the "Japan invades America" category is Before We Vanish.

Before We Vanish begins right where Annihilation ended. Some aliens have taken on human form and they start exploring Earth and human society.

"Let's Make a Copy" or "why Hollywood actresses need big boobs"

Copies

Into the Shimmer: "Stop or I'll kill me!"

It is probably unfair to directly compare Before We Vanish to Annihilation. With a larger special effects budget, Annihilation was able to depict on the screen an alien that has the ability to dis-assemble cellular life forms and manufacture copies of the original. Sadly, the interesting alien life form in Annihilation was wasted in a silly horror movie.

Rogue Moon

cover art by Christopher Yates

Watching Annihilation, I was reminded of  Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys and Solaris by Stanisław Lem. I know that part of my problem with Hollywood movies is that I can't help comparing films to science fiction books that I have read. I would use Contact as an example of a film that successfully captured the core of a science fiction novel on screen. My hope is that there will be more such films in the future.

Related Reading: "Invasion of Privacy"
The 2018 SIHA Award Winner
Next: return to 1977

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