Alien: Specimen - 40th Anniversary Short

Started by Nightmare Asylum, Apr 02, 2019, 07:11:33 PM

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Alien: Specimen - 40th Anniversary Short (Read 46,148 times)

SiL

Да, товарищ.

The Old One

The Old One

#241
My new favourite Synthetic is definitely Maggie.

[cancerblack]

I like Hope best right now honestly. Most of my favorite bits of the franchise in one character.

The Old One

The Old One

#243
Hope's not half-bad, I wouldn't say she's good either though- morally. lol

XenoHunter99

I think Hope is by far the most interesting droid character. She's dealing with issues such as aging and loneliness. Her actions are not beneficial to humans. But then, she was made by humans. And we humans have boundless capacity for cruelty and ill-will toward each other. It's really no wonder she can easily sacrifice a person so that her pet survives.

The Old One

The Old One

#245
Indeed.

But the idea of a Synthetic animal is fantastic world-building.

XenoHunter99

As a practical consideration, it makes sense to have robotic animals - dogs, cats, whatever. They don't need food or a vet. They don't make a mess. Jones could have been synthetic. I don't recall seeing a litter pan or a food bowl for him. But then, I didn't see a bathroom on the Nostromo, either. There must be one somewhere. If WY is supplying robotic pets, there must be a lot of them around. Otherwise, they would likely be expensive.

Nrmiller

Quote from: The Old One on May 17, 2019, 01:03:25 PM
Indeed.

But the idea of a Synthetic animal is fantastic world-building.

If you want to get real Ellison style dark with it, imagine that they're made from the same sort of line as the full human style synths, with the same capacity for thought, but none of the physical bits that allow them to express it. I imagine WY is a pretty cheap place, they'd probably give little thought to popping an off the shelf human-ish mind into a machine built like a dog. Easier cheaper and so what if it suffers so long as it works.

The Old One

The Old One

#248
Perhaps, but that's pure "grimdark"- even for Alien.

Nrmiller

Quote from: The Old One on May 18, 2019, 01:34:25 AM
Perhaps, but that's pure "grimdark"- even for Alien.

I'm a big fan of that, in a series where the two major forces on a characters life are corporate greed that sees you as nothing but a commodity and a cosmic being that wants to shove itself down your throat to turn your chest into a womb--- it's all pretty grimdark.

The distinguishing goodness comes from work-a-days pushing back with little more than hope and determination-- and mostly losing.


But I always like to look for the worst aspects :)

Ronoc

That's why the synthetic dog concept is nonsense.

Quote from: Nrmiller on May 18, 2019, 01:09:45 AM
Quote from: The Old One on May 17, 2019, 01:03:25 PM
Indeed.

But the idea of a Synthetic animal is fantastic world-building.

If you want to get real Ellison style dark with it, imagine that they're made from the same sort of line as the full human style synths, with the same capacity for thought, but none of the physical bits that allow them to express it. I imagine WY is a pretty cheap place, they'd probably give little thought to popping an off the shelf human-ish mind into a machine built like a dog. Easier cheaper and so what if it suffers so long as it works.

TC

TC

#251
We're getting into the ol' Blade Runner/Alien combined universe topic again.

You will recall Animoid Row from Blade Runner, (and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) where Deckard likes to browse the various android animals for sale. And if you've played Westwood's game Blade Runner, you might remember that McCoy, the Blade Runner in that story, has a replicant dog called... Maggie.

Personally, Ash as an android has always bothered me in one respect, which is that the tech that underlies his manufacture seems out of place with the rest of the tech, or I should say, low tech, that makes up the rest of the Nostromo; chunky knobs and dials and levers and steam valves and so on, whereas Ash is fluids and glass beads and limp spaghetti.

TC

The Old One

The Old One

#252
Probably because Synthetics
are grown, much as Replicants are.

And it's far from nonsense, as far as the universe of Alien is concerned.

Corporal Hicks

Quote from: Nrmiller on May 18, 2019, 01:09:45 AM
Quote from: The Old One on May 17, 2019, 01:03:25 PM
Indeed.

But the idea of a Synthetic animal is fantastic world-building.

If you want to get real Ellison style dark with it, imagine that they're made from the same sort of line as the full human style synths, with the same capacity for thought, but none of the physical bits that allow them to express it. I imagine WY is a pretty cheap place, they'd probably give little thought to popping an off the shelf human-ish mind into a machine built like a dog. Easier cheaper and so what if it suffers so long as it works.

Damn, that's dark. I love it.

TC

Quote from: Nrmiller on May 18, 2019, 01:09:45 AM
If you want to get real Ellison style dark with it, imagine that they're made from the same sort of line as the full human style synths, with the same capacity for thought, but none of the physical bits that allow them to express it. I imagine WY is a pretty cheap place, they'd probably give little thought to popping an off the shelf human-ish mind into a machine built like a dog. Easier cheaper and so what if it suffers so long as it works.

Do you mean Harlan Ellison-style dark?

Then that would be synthetic canine Maggie as Blood, the telepathic dog from Ellison's book A Boy And His Dog, who helps his friend Vic hunt down women to rape and cannibalise as food in a post-apocalyptic world of the future.

I'll pass on that one.

TC

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