Shopping List for Better BEMs*
© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
(*BEMs = Bug-Eyed Monsters -- an old SFnal term for the aliens
in early pulp SF adventure stories.)
You can use this list while worldbuilding to make sure that all
your life forms aren't too similar, and to shake loose new alien-building
ideas. The list will work as well for fantasy world creation as
for science fiction.
- Slimy, squishy, with exoskeleton, with endoskeleton, doesn't
need a body at all
- Air breather, water breather, anaerobic, aerobic, likes vacuums,
is especially partial to Hoovers
- Hot blooded, cold blooded, warm blooded, bloodless, uses a high-pressure
internal osmosis filtration system
- Blind, sees light or dark, sees black and white, sees some colors,
sees all colors, sees infrared and ultraviolet, sees the past
or the future, sees things that aren't there
- Hears high sounds, low sounds, thoughts, feels vibrations, deaf,
listens like a teenager
- No sense of taste, good sense of taste, tastes good
- Single-celled, multicelled, asymmetrical, cylindrical, radial,
symmetrical on one plane, symmetrical on two planes, doesn't worry
about symmetry but does worry about planes
- Furry, scaled, hide-ed, carapaced, slimy, barked, fleshy, armored,
fuzzy and disgustingly cute
- Reproduces by budding, vining, runners, rhizomes, flowering,
fruiting, exchanging cellular material, going out to bars for
drinks
- Is a predator, is a scavenger, is prey, is a combination, has
some defenses, has no defenses, is a parasite, came to visit and
never left
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, or How to Choose
a Writers' Group>>
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