re: #212 wheat-dogghazi

If a writer makes an alien species too non-human or non-Earthlike, the reader or audience will find it hard to empathize or identify with them. Evil aliens tend to be insectile or reptilian, good aliens more humanoid or furry-animal based.

Real aliens probably resemble nothing we’ve ever seen on Earth.

A couple decades ago an early exo-anthropologist took the opposite tack—that the laws of physics that we adapted to were universal, and would tend to generate creatures much like us at the top of the food chain. Things like bipedalism, binocular vision, head-based sensors would make our alien visitors less strange than might be. There was a good bit of this kind of discussion kicked off by the great 50s horror movies. One I remember explained why the giant ants in Them couldn’t be just scaled-up formica. Anything that massive would cook itself in a chitonous exoskeleton.