SF Aliens and UFO Aliens
I liked M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS; I thought it was a great Twilight-Zone or Weird Tale style movie. It was, however, a lousy Science Fiction movie, if you get my drift.
While SF aliens are a staple of Science Fiction, aliens are creatures like Klingons or Wookies or Barsoomians, that is, people from other planets who have strange looks and customs and laws. They fill the same literary role as Antipodians filled in Traveler’s tales. But they are real people, portrayed as mortal creatures, with loves and hates like ours, who have histories and traditions and basically act like us.
UFO aliens are not, I say again, not SF Aliens. UFO aliens are spooks. UFO aliens are nightmares. They are unearthly, perhaps with supernatural powers and they are only scary when they stay in the shadows and do not speak. They are creatures of horror literature, or new age spirituality, or fantasy. A UFO alien is someone, who, for the purposes of the story he appears in, the reader need know nothing about. An SF alien one needs to know: does a Barsoomian lay eggs? Does a Vulcan think logically? But a UFO alien is merely there to be Spooky.
The UFO Aliens in SIGNS were spooky. I watched the DVD in a darkened room when my family was asleep, and I was spooked. It worked. Good job. Good movie. Two thumbs up.
But it was not good SF. As UFO aliens, they worked. As something that hides in the closet, those aliens were a success. As SF aliens arriving from Rigel VII in a warp drive ship with a cloaking device, no, nope, don’t make me laugh. They were not realistic and were not meant to be.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
