1. Galadriel says:

    My first thought with these four responses–River Song, the Doctor and the craziness of their relationship.

    Rory: River was brainwashed to kill you.
    The Doctor: Well, she did. And then she used her remaining lives to bring me back. As first dates go, I’d say that was mixed signals.

    They pretty much define kiss/kill relationships

  2. Kaci Hill says:

    1. The Other might expand our perceptions in ways we never thought possible, and together, we’ll create something new and wonderful.

    This is a point where I’m not sure I’d have thought much about things like cloning (Do they have souls, etc) without a story to help put it in the forefront for me. Just wouldn’t have been on my radar. 
     

    2. The Other might reveal our worst prejudices and motivations.

    This is where I probably get a bit weird. And for the heck of it, I’ll throw some opinions out there (because some of this really is a criticism I have of the sci-fi genre).
     
    I really do think AI/human “love” is weird, mostly because, no matter how hard I try to think otherwise, a robot is still a machine to me.  Luke and Callista (dead girl’s spirit trapped in a ship’s computer) is bizarre to me.
     
    As far as the ‘inter-species’ thing goes, the less physiological commonalities they possess the weirder it gets for me. 
    Just to point out DW, the Jenny/Vastra relationship (homosexuality aside for this comment–But, as a side note, it felt far, far less forced than every previous DW homosexuality reference)  was, well, a lizard and a human (which, I like Vashtra a lot–she’s a very cool character. But let’s face it, the Silurians are cool). I kinda just had to not think about that much.
    The Donkey/Dragon relationship in Shrek, just for the record, I just try not to think about.   I’m not really sure Donkey/Dragon is biologically possible anymore than I think a robot/human is, anyway.
    On the other hand, something like a Klingon/human relationship or Betazoid/human doesn’t bother me.
     
    And maybe that’s where the line is, at least for me: How plausible is it? Course, like you said, in some cases that’s the question being raised.
     
    And as it turns out, as you say…the dark side of human nature is terrible indeed…
     

    3. The Other might engage us in battle.

    To which I tend to ask, “So they’re technologically and intellectually superior to us, and the best solution to expanding an empire or generating new resources is to conquer and enslave/destroy other peoples on other planets? How in the name of all holy and profane does that make sense?”
     
    But that’s probably my prejudice against power-mongers talking…
     
     
     
     

    • Fred Warren says:

      Kaci: I really do think AI/human “love” is weird, mostly because, no matter how hard I try to think otherwise, a robot is still a machine to me.  Luke and Callista (dead girl’s spirit trapped in a ship’s computer) is bizarre to me.

      Yeah, the AI/human pairing is a tough sell on a number of levels. At the very least, you need an AI that is plausibly sentient–self-aware, self-motivating, able to think abstractly on the same level of complexity as a human being. Is it a new order of life, or something that simulates life so well we can’t tell the difference? Star Trek TNG devoted an entire character arc to the exploration of this idea with LtCmdr Data. Similar issues emerge in Asimov’s robot stories (e.g., R. Daneel Olivaw in The Caves of Steel and later works), and in my childhood introduction to sentient robots, Osamu Tezuka’s Astroboy.

      Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang novels approach this from a different angle–they describe humans with genetic defects or incurable diseases wired into spaceships and space stations that effectively become their bodies. As they integrate into this new state of being, it becomes difficult to determine where the ship ends and the person begins. They fly with a normal human partner, and romantic complications can and do ensue. Romance is mostly a state of mind, after all.

      Human/alien hybrids never bothered me much, either, despite all the genetic handwaving. I always saw it as a metaphor for conflicted human nature, and it’s usually played out that way–the human and alien natures struggling to coexist in the same body.

      To which I tend to ask, “So they’re technologically and intellectually superior to us, and the best solution to expanding an empire or generating new resources is to conquer and enslave/destroy other peoples on other planets? How in the name of all holy and profane does that make sense?”

      Makes no sense at all. I’ll have to jump into my Tardis and go ask Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm how that works. Makes for some great action scenes, though, and plenty of fireworks when the colonized throw off the yoke of their alien oppressors.

      Re Donkey/Dragon: I’m with you. I try not to think about that. Brrr.

      • Kaci says:

        Human/alien hybrids never bothered me much, either, despite all the genetic handwaving. I always saw it as a metaphor for conflicted human nature, and it’s usually played out that way–the human and alien natures struggling to coexist in the same body.

         
        haha. That’s an interesting way to think about it.
         

        Is it a new order of life, or something that simulates life so well we can’t tell the difference?

         
        Yeah. I get it, but to me there’s still a difference between a human merged into technology and sentient technology. That is,  a human with a metal implant is not the same as a metal object with a human implant. Guess it goes back to “physiological plausibility.”
         

        Makes no sense at all. I’ll have to jump into my Tardis and go ask Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm how that works. Makes for some great action scenes, though, and plenty of fireworks when the colonized throw off the yoke of their alien oppressors.

         
        haha. Yeah.
         

        Re Donkey/Dragon: I’m with you. I try not to think about that. Brrr.

         
        The only thing weirder was the Godmother/Prince Charming relationship. I swear it was incestuous.

      • Galadriel says:

        Donkey/Dragon– ICK!

  3. Love your conclusion, Fred. As I was reading it, I thought of the frog-is-prince fairy tales. There’s a perfect playing out of us becoming what we were meant to be, usually brought about by sacrificial love, no less.

     

    Becky

  4. Kessie says:

    And reading this, all I can think of is that scene in Galaxy Quest, where the one guy and the alien chick are getting it on, and the redshirt/comic relief guy exclaims, “Ohhh, that’s not right!”

  5. The Donkey/Dragon relationship in Shrek, just for the record, I just try not to think about.

    And don’t even bring up however Hagrid’s parents — giant and human — made it work. 😀

    In fairness, though, Hagrid’s giantess mother did end up leaving (one of the few examples of a divorce-like situation in the Harry Potter series). But that was after she gave birth to Hagrid, who of course is a half-human (wizard), half-giant, throughout the series.

  6. Fred Warren says:

    Kaci: Yeah. I get it, but to me there’s still a difference between a human merged into technology and sentient technology. That is,  a human with a metal implant is not the same as a metal object with a human implant. Guess it goes back to “physiological plausibility.”

    It’s the Pinocchio question: Can the puppet become a real boy? We’re using Clarke’s Law here rather than the Blue Fairy, pushing the technology forward until it’s functionally magic. I don’t think the puppet ever quite gets there. You end up with something that is no longer a machine, but it’s not human or even truly ‘alive’, either. It’s fun and useful as a literary device or metaphor, speculative (“what if this happened”) but not predictive (“it might happen”).

    I think I feel another series coming on.

What do you think?