Jan. 8th: On convergent evolution, and newsletter schedule
First issue ever of JSSH's Newsletter
On convergent evolution
"In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould argued that if one could "rewind the tape of life [and] the same conditions were encountered again, evolution could take a very different course." Simon Conway Morris disputes this conclusion, arguing that convergence is a dominant force in evolution, and given that the same environmental and physical constraints are at work, life will inevitably evolve toward an "optimum" body plan, and at some point, evolution is bound to stumble upon intelligence, a trait presently identified with at least primates, corvids, and cetaceans." -Wikipedia
The topic of convergent evolution already created much debate around the globe. Classical convergent evolution theory describes why otherwise unrelated species tend to develop similar features when submitted to similar environmental pressure. For instance, fish and whales present similarities in morphology (tail, fins) even though they are from different classes of species. This theory is widely accepted. However, I'm bringing up the topic of convergent evolution in a more controversial area, that of extraterrestrial life. This would mean that alien life would obey this rule, to the extent that we could see humanoids from Earth-like exoplanets in Heal's universe.
In science-fiction, humanoid xenos have always been there. In the short story collection The Martian Chronicles (R. Bradbury, 1950) for instance, the Martians assume a humanoid shape. I would be inclined to think that in old sci-fi, humanoid aliens were even more prevalent than non-humanoids. It is only after the public criticized the unoriginality of humanoid extraterrestrials that sci-fi authors started racking their brains for new, different, otherworldly xeno ideas. Examples I enjoy are P.F. Hamilton's aliens, for instance the Ly-cilph from The Night's Dawn (1996-99), whose evolution, very different from that of Earth's lifeforms, is described in full in chapter 2 of the first book.
Lately I've been thinking about convergent evolution a lot. In my other projects I was leaning more towards 'original' aliens, but this time around, for some reason, I feel like having humanoid bipedals and things like that. Not all sentient species in a fictional universe supporting convergent evolution have to be humanoids from Earth-like planets though. It's important for me to keep in a few original creations, but that's all I'm going to have.
For this universe's sentient species categorization, I'm following an estimation of the repartition of potentially life-bearing exoplanets. I'm selecting only the planets scientists think could harbor life, which means no crazy void monsters, dry moon creatures or gas giant dragons. It's more like: a lot of fish; since ocean worlds are actually more common than Earth-like planets. However, like on Earth, these creatures would be less technologically evolved than the minority of humanoids from Earth-like planets.
So working with convergent evolution, I'm really inspiring myself from how life and the animal realm works on Earth, to determine how a universal alien community would look like. Which is pretty extreme, going down quite far on this path. Thus I think this book is definitely going to be hard sci-fi, (it's not the only reason, but since it will feature a lot of extraterrestrials, it's an important reason) and almost a case for convergent evolution.
Newsletter schedule
JSSH’s Newsletter is due to be out every Saturday.
This one issue of the newsletter is a bit short, since this is the first Saturday of the year and I was busy setting everything up, but next issues are going to include more topics, in fact all the topics I’d have been working on in depth during the week.
That’s it for today!
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more sci-fi oddities, among alien insects, xenology expedition organization, alien humanoids, mechanics of a universal civilization, universal total war…
Interesting subject. Keep it up,
and good luck for the world-building !