Help my brother source some books

[liv]

So my brother Screwy is a philosopher. This means he occasionally gets people who want him to help with their philosophical problems. Not quite as bad as admitting that you're a doctor during social occasions, but still.

In this case, he's passed a request on to me, because he thinks that I know more SF/F readers than he does. The issue is as follows:

[My interlocutor] is writing a fantasy novel. He asked me to read the bit he has written. It is much as you might expect. Anyway, one interesting feature of the story is that there is this group of lizardmen who seem to have a religion that revolves around doing evil in the full knowledge of its being evil. I pushed him a bit on this because I thought it was a) interesting and b) badly executed. He suggested that it was because I did not grasp the effect of their cold blood on their mentality. I suggested it did not come through in the writing and that he should have a look at other fantasy writers who try to create a universe where human logic does not apply and see how they handle it and also fantasy writers who create alien mentalities. The best I could think of, being the only fantasy writer I have read, was Tolkien and his Elves. I thought he did a reasonable job of creating a species who were minded differently from humans. He certainly does not provide an example of a universe with a logic radically different from our own.

I have a feeling that this question is going to be better addressed by SF than fantasy, but I'm not sure how picky Screwy's friend is about the distinction. Anyway, does anyone have any good suggestions of books that deal with convincingly non-human approaches to morality?

Comments

[vatine]

There's always the Gor books, but reading those requires an unhealthily large supply of brain bleach and stabbing one's eye with a spork until the pain goes away.

In a less extreme vein, there's S M Stirling's Draka series, but that one I only know from general reputation.

Neither are, I should say, touching on "non-human", but definitely touch on "inhuman".

There's probably a fair chunk to be found in Iain M Banks' Culture series (while most of the viewpoint actors are essentially human, there are other actors around, whose morality is exposed in one way or another).

[liv]

Yeah, I was thinking the Culture books, but they're definitely not fantasy, so I wasn't sure if they would count.

Do the characters in the Gor books do evil because it's evil, or because they think that horrible misogyny is the natural order of the world and actually makes women happy?

[oursin]

Concept vaguely reminds me of James Blish's A Case of Conscience.

But is not the concept of 'evil' a human one? I have read, I think, a fair number of books in which aliens have other priorities and mindsets from the human (cf T Disch, The Genocides), which may lead to consequences that are certainly bad for humans, but it's not necessarily a good/evil question.

More generally on alien mindsets, C J Cherryh is noted for these over the vast range of her works. Octavia Butler. Cecilia Holland's Floating Worlds

And I suppose (being a major Mitchison fangirl) I cannot not mention the alien life-forms encountered by the narrator in Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman, which do indeed raise questions about good, evil and their relation to different biologies.

[monanotlisa]

Perhaps not pertinent, but I too would consider acts of pure malice, structural and consciously executed, extremely human.

Seconding Octavia Butler's work, not so much for featuring the evilest evil that ever eviled but her layered portrayal of the Other, up to and including ethics and perception.

[liv]

Butler and Cherryh are the obvious ones, definitely. The unhuman morality of the vampire-equivalents in Wild Seed made a really strong impression on me.

The Blish sounds just the thing, especially being explicitly about moral questions. I'm still on the lookout for Mitchison's stuff, so thanks for the rec.

[elf]

Mobileread recently had (has?) an 8-pages-and-counting discussion on most convincing AIs in literature, some of which probably are great examples of nonhuman mentality.

I can think of a lot more nonhuman sci-fi than fantasy. Lichtenberg's Dushau trilogy and Lifewave books (Molt Brother, City of a Million Legends) couple of books both have solidly *different* aliens. (The Dushau live ~10,000 years; this gives them a *vastly* different take on human politics. The Kren "can raise venom - they are poisonous, and can bite and kill humans if necessary. Kren lay eggs. Kren shed skin - a process that makes them unusually vulnerable during the time that their new skin is curing." (quote from Amazon review; sums up their basic differences very nicely.))

I'm trying to think of fantasy books and coming up blank. I haven't looked at the genre much recently so I don't have a list of authors in mind; I'm going to poke through my ebook collection later and see if I find anything that focuses on elves/ fairies/ dragons/ centaurs/ etc. POV.

[liv]

Thank you! It did feel more like an SF kind of thing than fantasy, it's exactly the kind of issue that SF writers love to explore. The most likely avenue I can think of in fantasy is the kind of Fae / elves who meddle in human affairs and cause devastation, but not from deliberate evil, just because they don't have a human concept of morality. I don't know if that would be suitable, but things like: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, War for the Oaks, and possibly Dean's Tam Lin. It's only the first of those that has significant Fairy point of view, though.

Dushau and Kren do definitely sound like examples of different biology leading to different moral concepts, which could be pertinent. And even if my brother and his friend aren't interested, I'm always up for AI characters myself. Thankyou!

[atreic]

Pratchett's elves are very cruel and like evil for pleasures sake in Lords and Ladies.

[pne]

I wonder whether Michael McCollum's Antares series qualifies - there, the alien race is bound to exterminate humans once they discover they exist, not because they hate them but simply because (due to the history of their race, which was in permanent danger from another, voracious species) they cannot imagine two species coexisting in the same universe: they figure that if we don't get them first, they'll get us.

[siderea]

This not the answer to the question posed, but I think relevant: in Jacqueline Carey's third Kushiel book, the human bad guys have a philosophy of doing evil deliberately. It is partially motivated by how it powers their black magic, and partially by pychological/philosophical reasons. She makes it work. Note this book comes with big trigger warnings for rape and torture.

[liv]

Ooh, interesting one. And of course the other way round you have Orson Scott Card's Ender series, which is about humans who exterminate alien races due to a moral view which Card at least tries to justify. Like the original request, though, I think Card's stuff is poorly executed even if quite a clever idea.

[eumelia]

There's always the classic "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinline.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le-Guin, definite alien mentalities there, also "The Dispossessed", but to a lesser extent.

I don't do Fantasy, so no dice there, sorry.

[mathcathy]

I'm thinking ursula le guin too - there's a book she wrote where you spend airport wait times in a whole host of other worlds, where all the other worlds have different moral codes and cultural norms.

[redbird]

That's Changing Planes.

FWIW, having just reread The Left Hand of Darkness (within the last fortnight), I think the alienness of the Gethenians is cultural at least as much as biological. Maybe if we saw more of Orgoreyn I would feel differently, but one viewpoint character is from Earth and the other from Karhide. (In case I have now confused everyone except eumelia: Karhide and Orgoreyn are the two major nation-states on the world Gethen; the book takes place partly in each.)

[liv]

I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read any Heinlein. But I think your instincts are right, there's a lot more alien morality / mentality in SF than fantasy.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, I'm the person in question who is writing the book the beginning of which your brother read. It is a mixture of SF and F, with a universe featuring many races, but a storyline that also follows a high fantasy style planet (with dwarves, elves, dog-men et cetera) and it's slow decent into science fiction. The part, however, which your brother read, was not set in this fantasy planet but on other planets.

The important bit is, there are some fantasy elements even in my sci-fi world, and here comes the important part: a good/neutral/evil style deity/god axis (a bit like Dragonlance).

One of the protagonists belongs to a lizardman race that consists entirely of a cult that follows dark deities. However, your brother questioned the fact that, as he said, the lizardmen follow "a religion that revolves around doing evil in the full knowledge of its being evil". A cult that is intent on spreading it's deities (which they acknowledge are evil) message throughout the universe.

What I'm trying to find out is how to execute this in a way that is not "badly executed", as your brother very fittingly stated. How to make it reasonable that one would intently follow an evil deity.

I mentioned the fact that the evil deities granted power and glory to their followers, but that didn't cover the fact WHY the lizardmen considered the evil way the right way. That's the thing I am told I

my bad

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for misunderstanding the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy. This is my fault, not the authors. I agree that good and evil are distinctly human concepts, and an interesting feature of the work which I ignored was the very fact of a polytheistic universe. But with polytheism I guess comes at least the possibility of there being multiple truths. It looks like it is "right" to do x and "wrong" to do x depending on which deity you follow. Of course that means that "right" and "wrong" can't really mean right and wrong. Hence the question of developing a different kind of logic in which it becomes apparent what "right" and "wrong" means. I suppose the hidden assumption here is that the meaning of a word can be shown by showing the grounds for using it and the consequences of using it. This seems to be an extraordinarily difficult task but presumably there are authors who have created comprehensible polytheistic universes.
I had another thought and that is the opening to Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground provides a wonderful account of somebody determined to do evil because it's evil. It at least is the best description of the weakness of the world that I know of. Of course it is distinctly human so probably not very helpful to the author in question. YAB

[redbird]

Is there a useful difference between "they are doing this because they know it is evil" and "they are doing this even though they know it is evil"? A lot of people's motivation isn't directly mappable onto a good/evil axis: they want power or glory (as you mention), or sensual pleasure (which can include really good chocolate or a long nap in the sunshine), or knowledge, abstract or otherwise, or safety (just off the top of my head). Maybe their god has told them "follow me, and I will give you power and glory; betray me, and you and all your families will die horribly"?

[lovingboth]

Why follow evil entity? Because it's more fun.

I not evil, but I am aware of EvilIan who thoroughly enjoys thinking of naughty things that it would be fun to do.

[ptc24]

Possibly you might be interested in real-world moral psychology. Jonathan Haidt sees five main components to morality, with conservatives and liberals placing differing levels of emphasis on the various components. One could imagine reversing some of these components, and keeping others as they are.

Other thoughts; I'm reminded of some quote by some prisoner saying "if I wasn't evil I'd be shit". One could imagine a message: "Evil is transcendent and supreme. Either you are a part of this evil, or you are nothing".

[liv]

Oh, I'm glad to see that my brother pointed you to the post. I hope you're finding the discussion here useful! Your description of a SF universe containing a fantasy-style planet reminds me of Vernor Vinge's classic A fire upon the deep. Vinge is really good at deeply alien aliens, so that might be useful to you.

Fantasy books with people following dark / evil deities, hm. Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series has some of those, but they are human. Dave Duncan similarly has a series, starting with Past Imperative, about a fantasy world with a mixture of good and evil gods, but again human characters. There's Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books where there are various characters who are affiliated to different mystical creatures and these tend to determine their priorities and moral beliefs. (There are some gods as well but they play a fairly minor role in the story.) Nothing that quite fits the bill I think, but might give you some ideas.

[atreic]

Robin Javis's book Thomas (for young adults) has a cult of creatures following an evil god trying to destroy the world. But it doesn't actually help you, because it's not really very clear why they think destroying the world is a good thing. They get cool superpowers, that might be their motivation.

[ajollypyruvate]

Mr. Alan Dean Foster has his Humanx Commonwealth books. I say up front that they are schlock and have what I consider some serious errors in internal logic but he -does- create convincing aliens, including two that are cold-blooded. (Prism deals with a planet full of aliens who are primarily silicate, though some are bio-organic and the Mid-World books deals with a planet-wide neural-net and creatures that aren't technically animal or plant, though most of them aren't sentient.)

There are rather a lot of them (he's written a lot of books!) but, as I said, they are schlock and are quick reads. The later books go into more detail on the respective cultures of the main cold-blooded aliens of the series (the Thranx and the AAnn) and he also wrote some prequels.

[liv]

Those sound very relevant even if shlocky. Thank you!

[dsgood]

There are humans who deliberately do evil. I suggest looking up "left hand path" and Satanism. (Note: Most Americans who call themselves Satanists don't believe in Satan.)

And there are humans who believe that persons who are sufficiently advanced (religiously, intellectually, etc.) are beyond good and evil and are not bound by any moral laws. See Gnosticism and antinomianism.

Real human beliefs can be stranger than anything made up for speculative fiction.

Motives to Evil

[(Anonymous)]

Shakespeare was good at peoples' motivations but Iago explicitly states he does not know why he hates the Moor.

Southernwood

[liv]

Yeah, I was thinking of real-world human religions with evil deities. Historically even the Abrahamic ones often encouraged their followers in behaviour that most people today wouldn't approve of, but I don't know if God-commanded genocide counts as deliberately doing evil to follow an evil deity. But you have the Zoroastrians who believed in a good power and an evil power, which seems to have influenced the modern Christian idea of Satan as God's direct antagonist. And I think there were Cathar sub-sects who believed in an evil God.

[syllopsium]

I've recently finished reading Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars; it's lacking in some places but has very interesting depictions of non human races.

Fantasy wise I can't think of much; some of Clive Barker's books might be ok, and for all its faults Robin Hobb's Ships of Magic has some good points.

Actually - the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson is well worth a look. A key feature of the book is that the 'evil overlord' is not quite as simplistic as originally thought.

I'd suggest that well rounded characters rarely do evil for no reason; either there is a good reason (or at least one that can be rationalised, which is the usual case) or more normally either performing evil makes them feel good, or its absence reduces their quality of life.

[liv]

It's certainly the traditional writing advice, that people do evil because they get some benefit, not because they actually like doing evil. But I think that's not always true even for human beings, let alone for aliens. I mean, it's not most people, but there are definitely some people who take pleasure in getting away with stuff that most of their society considers evil, regardless of any practical gains they get from their bad actions.

I like Greg Bear, he's one of the few SF writers who actually know some biology! His writing quality is kind of varied, but knowing earth biology is really helpful for imagining interesting and non-clichéd aliens!

Thanks for the fantasy recs. It sounds as if they might still be relevant to the aspiring author, even though looking at alternative morality is more an SF question. It's a pity that papersky never finished her lizard men novel, cos she's good at stuff that's on the boundary between SF and fantasy.

[nameandnature]

The Yud did http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/ which has some very alien aliens.

[liv]

That's a good rec, thank you, and of course Yudkowsky would be directly considering the moral implications. (Do you call him "The Yud" or is that a common nickname? It's just that in Jewish literature "The Yud" is this character who is a sort of straw-man, dumb skeptic. He pops up and points out apparent contradictions or plausible but wrong if you think about it interpretations, and then gets shot down by the knowledgeable religious scholar.)

[nameandnature]

Hmm... a commenter called him the Yud over on Luke Muelhauser's blog but now I think of it, it was someone who thinks Luke has joined some sort of Cult of Less Wrong, so the commenter probably meant it as an insult, if they knew the Jewish character. I shall return to referring to Yudkowsky as Saunt Eliezer.