[TML] 20mm cannons and bulky aliens

[Douglas Berry]

At 05:11 PM 1/23/2008, Brad Murray raced into the room, and announced 
the following:
>On Jan 23, 2008 4:49 PM, Stuart Frew <stuart at frew.net.nz> wrote:
> > To say the K'kree are unconvincing aliens because they don't behave like
> > humans is sort of circular reasoning.
>
>That's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying they are unconvincing because
>they are two-dimensional.  One simple psychology is pasted across the
>entire species and it doesn't support the culture that they appear to
>have.

How so? Do you know the canonical history of the race?

I'm currently rereading Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" series. In it 
aliens with a technological level similar to ours today invade Earth 
in 1942. The Race is shocked, when they find us fighting a massive 
world-wide conflict, because their probes (which arrived during the 
Crusades) showed a pre technological civilization, and the Race 
assumed nothing would change in so short a time. The Race's entire 
impression of us Big Uglies can be summed up as "sex-crazed and 
recklessly short-sighted." Which pretty well sums us up as a species, I think.

The K'kree have a damn good reason to hate gn'aack. They will trade 
with meat eaters (you are advised to abstain for several days before 
any meetings to get the smell out of your system) and certain members 
of the races are just unbalanced enough to work in jobs requiring 
solitude or confined spaces.

>On the other hand, the fact that their only interstellar competitive
>possibility is to run huge ships where the crew requirement is dwarfed
>by the military or cargo capacity *is* pretty cool.  K'kree as you
>paint them wouldn't drive anything less than about 10,000 tons, and
>that's a nifty cultural trademark.
>
>Competition, by the way, isn't an option cultures can take or leave.
>It's math.  If you ignore it you disappear.

The problem with the K'kree is you start a war with them it's to the 
death. They think nothing of genocide if it protects the race.


--
Douglas Berry penguin_boy at mindspring.com
http://gridlore.livejournal.com/

"Just one thing, that I've gotta say, I need a miracle, everyday!"