OT: alien-ness portrayals; was Re: I'm new!

On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> wrote;
> >
> > ... --it's a very difficult
> > balance between portraying aliens who seem to have motive but may also
> > seem "too human," and portraying aliens who really seem alien but may be
> > incomprehensible or boring to the all-too-human reader.  A story that I
> > think succeeds in this, and that you might like if you can find it, is
> > Terry Carr's "The Dance of the Changer and the Three."  You see hints of
> > alien motivations, but they never come clear--in human terms.
>
>     I love that story, and for the same reasons.  I almost get it.  It
> resonates with me without my being able to tell exactly why.  It's the kind
> of alienness I'm trying to capture with the gladifers (the speakers of
> Gladilatian).  The gladifers are not as strange on the surface as the
> Loarra, but, hopefully, the details of their ways will resonate with my
> readers in ways reminicient of the dance.
<G>  Whereas I shy away from portraying any kind of alien, mainly because
*humans* are so alien to me that it's hard enough for me to portray
*them* convincingly, let alone something entirely out of my experience.
When all's said and done there are areas in which I'm not very
imaginative.  But years of being confused by *both* (subsets of) Korean
and American culture, not to mention being expected to navigate all the
quirky taboos and customs by people who take them for granted, have left
me with the sensation that humans are as alien as I can deal with.  What
I hate is the way that customs and traditions are presented as "obvious,"
when to an outside or half-outsider they really bloody *aren't.*  If
someone explained them historically, or just told me what was going on
without this obviousness assumption, I would feel a lot less panicked
about the whole situation.

If aliens appeared on Earth, I'd be the last person you'd want to deal
with them.  I can't even get a haircut in Ithaca without getting the
jitters about procedures and protocols!

YHL