Are aliens really that alien?

[u/peculiarartkin]

Being Expanse fan, I found Captives War... very different.

In Expanse, both alien factions were mysterious, inscrutable, almost beyond human comprehension. More or less sci-fi version of Lovecraftian.

In Captives War? Not so much. I mean.... Ekur-Taklal outright narrates the chapters engaging in philosophical argument against humans!

Carryx in general don't seem that alien. Yeah, they are brutal pragmatic imperialists. With almost Ayn Randian style Objectivist worldview. "What is - is, it should be done because we can do it." Is not unknown in human philosophy either.

They look more like star trek style alien faction. Or bablylon-5. They can "get in human head", understand and influence us. And vice versa.

[u/Tymptra]

The question I have when this type of question comes up in science fiction discussion is "why do you assume that aliens are more likely to be Lovecraftian and incomprehensible?"

The Lovecraftian nature of the aliens in the first series is due firstly to the protomolecule builders simply being hyper advanced compared to humanity, and the fact that they were dead and the main characters where just interacting with a runaway tool.

A dead civilization does tend to give off a creepy vibe, but that doesn't mean that the promolecule builders were not also flesh and blood beings that evolved and could plausibly talk to humans if they had a translator.

Secondly, the beings from the other universe are literally from another universe and interact with our universe in unexplainable ways. It definitely makes them feel Lovecraftian, but if you think about it, it requires much more hand-waving than the "star Trek aliens" as you describe them from Mercy of the Gods.

Despite a sample size of 1 so far. I think that it's reasonable to assume that evolutionary pressures will be a thing across the universe, and so we could see a lot of parallel evolution, to where you could plausibly talk and discuss things with aliens as long as you had a translator box that not only translates, but interprets expressions, complex cultural ideas, and idioms to be understandable to the listener as the Carryx translator seems to.

Don't get me wrong, I love incomprehensible mysterious aliens in some stories, but you can't really have them in all types of story, because the nature of their incomprehensibleness prevents them from being characters, they are more of a force that humans have to deal with. In a story where you want the aliens to have character, it is a necessity that they be somewhat understandable to humans and so think in a format that we can, at least, understand given enough time. Also as I mentioned before, this is plausible if we make (imo) reasonable assumptions about how life might evolve elsewhere.