Alien realism

In sci-fi, sometimes you go looking for the strange.
Sometimes the strange comes to you.

In this snippet, an alien has come to present day Earth and makes first contact with our gang of teen heroes, as told by one member of the group. This snippet is all about the reactions—our narrator’s feelings and his observations of everyone else’s. The alien only speaks two lines, but those lines were important—notice they use different formatting to communicate the ‘alien-ness’.

Tobias tried again. “Please, come out. We won’t hurt you.”

I froze. Okay I had definitely heard someone say “I know,” only… there hadn’t been any sound. I mean, I heard it, but I didn’t really hear it.

Maybe this was all a dream. I looked kind of sideways at Cassie. She looked back at me. Our eyes met. She had heard it, too. I looked at Rachel. She was turning her head back and forth, like she was looking for where that sound - that wasn’t a sound - could have come from. I started to get a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach.

“Did everyone hear that?” Tobias whispered.

We all nodded at once, very slowly.

“Can you come out?” Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice.

<Yes. Do not be frightened.>

“We won’t be frightened,” Tobias said.

“Speak for yourself,” I muttered. The others giggled nervously.

The Invasion(1996)

A family in spacesuits on Mars.

Here’s an example using the same style as the snippet, using the image as a starting point. Again, it’s about reactions and observations. The alien does very little.

“gOod moRning. Is tHis eaRth?” the alien asked us, politely.

I let out a gasp.

Its skin was transparent - that was what struck me the most. Not the fact that it could speak our language, had six legs, exist without a suit, or thought this was Earth. The fact that I could see its muscles and organs twitching and pumping distracted me so much that it was hard to concentrate on anything else.

I looked at Dan, who had broken into a sweat, his eyes fixed and unblinking. Junior had tilted his head, giving the creature careful consideration. So, it seemed I wasn’t alone in this.

“L-Lungs,” Dan blabbed.

“Guts,” I added.

“Errf,” finished Junior. He raised a small, chubby finger, pointing at the blue dot in the sky.

The alien tapped the device it was holding.

“I’m terriBly soRry,” it said. “mY trAnslatOr muSt bE maLfunctioniNg. cOuLd you rePeat tHat, pleaSe?”

Have a try.

Write a small passage that introduces something new and strange to ordinary people, using the picture as a starting point. Focus on reactions and ways to present what’s different.

Sci-fi Genre (Middle years)