Babel Clash

Writers of science fiction often create alien worlds, sometimes natural and sometimes not. Whether it’s landscapes or creatures, I think it’s better to include at least some familiar features like the ones Robin has talked about – then give them a twist. To me, the monster from the Alien movies is more scary and more interesting than the one in The Blob because of the parallels in its appearance and life cycle to Terran creatures.

In Song of Scarabaeus, I start with the familiar premise that alien life is based upon DNA and can be manipulated with manmade retroviruses. Humans use this technology to terraform other worlds for colonization. When the process goes awry, I feel my task as a writer is to describe the consequences in a such a way that the mutated landscape is unsettling without being so foreign that readers can’t even imagine it.

I’m reminded of my husband’s first visit to (urban) Australia, where he concluded that it was like “America in the Twilight Zone.” It’s that uneasy feeling you get when your environment is essentially familiar but something’s just… wrong. Imagine an alien jungle. We have vines and bugs – everyone recognizes those. But what if the vines are prehensile and the bugs act like schools of piranha?

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