Episode 18: Alien minds
Nasute termite soldiers in Peru are communicating without speech in this photo by Alex Wild.
It's easy to stick prosthetics on someone's face and call them an alien. But how do we represent a truly alien form of consciousness? In this episode, we talk about science fiction that succeeds (or fails) to evoke alien minds--whether they hail from other planets, or evolve inside our computers. Plus, we talk to guest Lisa Margonelli about her new book Underbug, which explores termite society. Did you know that termites socialize using butt juice? Learn all about that and more!
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Works, creators, and other things cited:
HG Wells, War of the Worlds
HR Giger, designer of the aliens from the Alien series
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (the novel)
Solaris (the American remake)
Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis series
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Contact (the movie)
Arthur C. Clarke, author of Rendezvous with Rama
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version)
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, origin of the word “grok”
Robert Heinlein, “The Goldfish Bowl”
Arrival
Alan Moore’s Green Lantern series about Rot Lop Fan
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Martha Wells, Murderbot series
Her
Hal the AI from 2001
Marvin the paranoid android from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Person of Interest, “Zero Day”
Annalee Newitz, “Robots Need Civil Rights Too” (Boston Globe)
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
Lisa Margonelli, Underbug
Wyss Institute at Harvard
Anna Dornhaus Lab (Social Insect Lab at ASU)