|
Pages: [1] 2 3
|
 |
|
Author
|
Topic: The Arilou are in StarGate SG1! (Read 7985 times)
|
Orz Brain
Frungy champion
 Offline
Gender: 
Posts: 66
We are the Orz. You will be *joining our party*.
|
I was looking through Gateworld (a Stargate fansite) and ran across this description:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STARGATE OMNIPEDIA
ASGARD
One of Earth's most powerful allies, the ancient and benevolent Asgard have been aware of the Tau'ri for some time. They have assumed the personae of Norse gods on many worlds, including Cimmeria (protected by Thor's Hammer), and K'Tau, a more progressive world but still heavily immersed in Norse beliefs.
Physiologically, the Asgard average about one meter in height, with grayish skin tones, small, skinny limbs, large heads and black eyes -- bearing a striking resemblance to the Roswell Greys described in countless UFO abduction stories. The Asgard have been incapable of meiosis (sexual reproduction) for thousands of years. They have resorted to a solely enhanced mitosis (cloning) existence, forcing them down a path that will eventually lead to their extinction. Because of this, the Asgard have taken drastic steps to ensure the survival of the species, including kidnapping people from Earth to study human development.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ahem deja vu? Sue em Toys For Bob! Get $20 million and make us a Star Control 3!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
We are the Orz. You will be *joining our party*. Resistance is *very sad*.
|
|
|
Art
Frungy champion
Offline
Posts: 80
|
Creating a fictional alien species that's directly based on UFO-encounter accounts and the traditional descriptions of the Roswell Grays is not new. It's actually incredibly common, given how much a part of our culture the Roswell stuff is. X-Files did it, Babylon 5 did it, uncountable science fiction stories and novels did it....
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Deus Siddis
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 1387
|
The "Aliens are the ones who enlightened humans and taught us how to build a civilization" theory is also pretty common stuff. It is sort of like religion, for geeks.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Art
Frungy champion
Offline
Posts: 80
|
i guess the topic starter has never really watched stargate...
the asgard look nothing like the arilou.
the ships are far from similar, and the asgard are a race of clones(that sounds familiar i know)
i'll post pictures later
But they *are* both vaguely based on the Roswell Gray (big eyes, big head, tiny body, pale skin), with variations. (The Arilou graphics in the game make them green, even though the text says they're simply "pale".) The actual backstory about them varies, of course, since it was written in -- in real life there's no single coherent mythology behind Grays.
I mean, are none of you familiar with this? It's a piece of actual folklore that's completely independent of any actual sci-fi franchise. Since *before* Roswell there've been people claiming to have encountered childlike, big-headed aliens as a result of UFO encounters and such -- their stories are where the stereotypical image of an alien comes from. Heck, the idea reaches back before the idea of aliens -- William Blake purportedly saw "Enochian angels" whose description eerily matches that of a Gray.
So either there's some common psychological reason people see aliens this way -- like a child or a fetus, something with a huge brain and a small body -- or else there really is a race that looks like this that's been messing with us.
The "Aliens are the ones who enlightened humans and taught us how to build a civilization" theory is also pretty common stuff. It is sort of like religion, for geeks
It's a way to explain religion if you can't stomach the idea that it's all bunk and you think that alien species with advanced technology is more plausible than more traditionally supernatural beings. Erich von Daniken's _Chariots of the Gods_ is the big book for this one, interpreting Biblical accounts of angels as visits from extraterrestrial spaceships and such.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Deus Siddis
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 1387
|
"It's a way to explain religion if you can't stomach the idea that it's all bunk and you think that alien species with advanced technology is more plausible than more traditionally supernatural beings."
I prefer the theory that it's advanced technology left over from extict human civilization(s). There isn't much proof to back it up either, but it is just more fun. 
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Art
Frungy champion
Offline
Posts: 80
|
I dunno. Monstrous aliens in starships are pretty sweet.
And, aside from the gigantic physical implausibility of interstellar travel, I find it more plausible than the idea that we actually invented all this crap thousands of years ago and then forgot it all.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Deus Siddis
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 1387
|
"I find it more plausible than the idea that we actually invented all this crap thousands of years ago and then forgot it all."
Hey, when your civ has been crippled by an ice age, nuke war, or super volcano, are you going to worry about preserving your popular science collection, or finding food for your family?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Art
Frungy champion
Offline
Posts: 80
|
I'm going to worry about finding food for my family by using any scientific knowledge and technology at my disposal.
The only reason I wouldn't is if it were utterly and totally gone, which is a situation I find a little difficult to imagine. How does a civilization with antigravity and teleportation get so degraded they can't generate electricity, or make cars run, or know to disinfect wounds?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
VOiD
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 316
Resident pseudointellectual
|
I find it more plausible than the idea that we actually invented all this crap thousands of years ago and then forgot it all.
Well, the Romans invented concrete, and used it extensively in a wide variety of construction projects. This knowledge was forgotten after the Roman empire disintegrated, and wasn't reinvented until around 1750.
Similarly, the ingenious Philon of Byzantium was probably one of the first to theorise around the possibilities of using steam as power, and Heron Alexandrinus in fact invented the world's first steam engine in the first century AD. However, the engine was thought to be of small interest at the time, and was discarded as an oddity. The modern steam engine was reinvented just before 1700, and powered the industrial revolution.
There are several examples of technologies being invented in the past, then forgotten and reinvented in modern times. The Dark Ages will have to take much of the blame for this; scores of scientific scriptures were destroyed or burnt (or, as in the case of the recently surfaced Archimedes' palimpsest, the manuscripts were overwritten due to lack of paper), and a lot of Greco-roman science was in fact reintroduced to Europeans by the Arabs after the crusades.
Now, I suppose technology like antigrav drives or teleportation devices require such a high degree of cultural sophistication that, if inexplicably forgotten, they could be reinvented quickly and with relative ease. However, as the two above examples illustrate, knowledge can be forgotten if the existing world order is toppled (as in the collapse of the Roman Empire, or as Deus_Siddis pointed out, a nuclear war or an epic natural cataclysm), or if nobody sees the practical use of a new invention (as in the steam engine example or several of the quotes found here).
|
|
|
|
« Last Edit: August 29, 2005, 12:59:30 pm by VOiD »
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Art
Frungy champion
Offline
Posts: 80
|
The difference is that we have Philon's writings, and the medieval Europeans had plenty of Roman ruins to gawk at, and so on.
....All right, the key thing isn't that I disbelieve that knowledge could be forgotten -- I could accept that -- but that it could be forgotten without leaving any traces. That is, I don't believe a huge skyscraper-based steel-and-concrete civilization could have lived on Earth and vanished so completely that we don't see any of their machines or steel structures or whatever left over.
Aliens, at least, you can say purposely removed evidence of their existence when they left the planet.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
VOiD
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 316
Resident pseudointellectual
|
The difference is that we have Philon's writings, and the medieval Europeans had plenty of Roman ruins to gawk at, and so on.
We do now, yes. But, again, consider the fact that for a long time, most of the greco-roman thinking was lost to us westerners and was only preserved in the Arab civilization because they saw its value.
....All right, the key thing isn't that I disbelieve that knowledge could be forgotten -- I could accept that -- but that it could be forgotten without leaving any traces. That is, I don't believe a huge skyscraper-based steel-and-concrete civilization could have lived on Earth and vanished so completely that we don't see any of their machines or steel structures or whatever left over.
Just to get even more nitpicky here: knowledge can easily be forgotten without leaving traces. If Einstein's somewhat famous thesis had been lost in 1910, we wouldn't have seen its practical application (the nuclear bomb) in 1945. Knowledge amounts to no more than ideas. What you are talking about are the practical applications of those ideas (engineering, chiefly).
Don't get me wrong, I mostly agree with you.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Pages: [1] 2 3
|
|
|
|
|
