Barlowe vs. Anthropomorphism Posted Tuesday, May 10, 2005 5/10/2005 07:41:00 AM

I fondly recall reading Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials by Wayne Douglas Barlowe when I was younger. It is a very fascinating guide to extraterrestrials seen in various science fiction literature. It was an inspiring book that encouraged me to create my own aliens. I began carrying a notebook (made of paper in thoese days) where I would record all the "fascinating" creatures that I think up, like the Jackal people, the human/plant hybrid, and the infamous jelly based people. Ok, so I wasn't that creative back then (or now, some might add). Most of my "ideas" were just anthropomorphic versions of earth creatures. Probably the most creative idea I had was a hominid with a unique pattern of male/female sex organs that in order to mate needed to find another with the opposite set of female/male sex organs in the same pattern. May sound dumb now but then again I'm not too sure that I didn't read this somewhere. I was stuck in Star Trek science fiction which, as I mentioned earlier, was pretty poor.

I also remember years later reading Expedition also by Wayne Douglas Barlowe which was entirely different. He didn't just take features of earth creatures and make them more human. Barlowe made these creatures completely alien. Alien senses, aliens mobility, and alien evolutionarily niches to fill. This book didn't just define a couple of alien creatures out of context but described an entire ecosystem. It made me realize that creatures don't exists because they are neat or useful to a story but because they fill some spot in there local environment. All the creatures need to fit together, each with features that match it's roll in the environment while maximizing it's net reproductive success.

Well it looks like others have admired Barlowe's work. This Saturday (5/14/05) Discovery Channel will be airing a program called Alien Planet based on Barlow's book Expedition. In addition to details on the show there is a very well done flash based virtual voyage to Alien Planet on the discovery website.