The Biology in Science Fiction blog has a short article on color-changing chromatophores in cephalopod skin, and asks for examples of biological adaptive camouflage used in SF stories — I want more. I want to know what SF novels have used cephalopods or cephalopod-like aliens as major characters or antagonists. There’s usually a tendency to make anything with tentacles the representative of evil in these stories, unfortunately.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Larry Niven’s Thrint qualify, somewhat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrint
The first obvious example is HP Lovecraft novels or short stories. One of the monstrous gods he invented was (supposedly) a 10 m high viscous giant cephalopod with a humanoid body (and bat wings). [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu]
Understandable when you see the kind of fan base they attract.
Seriously, what intrigues about the cuttlefish’s camouflage is how do they scan the surface they mimic and translate it into the coloration and patterns on their skin. It suggests some serious processing power in there.
I remember an Arthur C. Clarke short story called The Shining Ones that featured squid communication. My memory on the details is vague, though.
Well, the Affront in Iain M Banks’ “Excession” are vaguely cephalopod-like, except adapted for a gas-giant environment. While they’re not exactly evil, they are monstorously vicious and cruel in a boisterous, good-natured kinda way. But then that’s kinda the whole narrative point… They’re a species that the Culture can’t abide, but can’t really do anything about in good conscience.
Very good book. :)
A little off-topic here… but what is this embedded video that is playing on the Pharyngula main page, just below this entry? I don’t see it in the entry proper (before clicking “more,” I mean..)
It has something to do with firemen, and DuPont? I’ve never seen anything like this on Pharyngula. Is this a new thing, or is my Adblock just tired out?
Here is Francesca Myman’s archive of cephalopods on pulp science fiction covers: http://www.cyrune.com/pulp.html
Unfortunately, I don’t see a sympathetic protagonist among any of the Tentacled Ones.
Whoops. Spoke too soon. It IS underneath the “more” area as well…
Surely I can’t be the first to point out the Mon Calamari in Star Wars. There’s Admiral Ackbar who commands the Rebellion fleet, for one. Without the Mon Cal star cruisers, the rebellion wouldn’t have had a fleet to throw at the second death star. The entire planet full of squiddies was utterly vital to the rebellion, as well as being some of the finest designers of space technology in the universe.
And then in the expanded universe, Ackbar still plays an important role, and there’s the Jedi Cilghal, who is the most skilled Force Healer of the New Jedi Order.
Surely, from a historical standpoint, the first example must be Jules VErne’s 20,000 leagues under the sea.
Stephen Baxter’s Manifold:Time uses a genetically enhanced species of squid to pilot spacecraft. The squid eventually leave Earth, colonize the Jovian system, and at the end, launch themselves off to the stars.
Also, If I recall correctly, Baxter wrote an award-winning short story called Sheena 5 about an intelligent squid.
Vonda McIntyre’s Starfarers series had a cephalopod-ish alien (Nemo the “squidmoth”) who was a good “guy”. The race lives entirely in space and is the only one capable of building FTL (well, they kinda-sorta go around space, not through it). They die when they give birth.
Sorry, it’s been a while since I read Metaphase, I don’t remember the details in communications, colour changes, etc.
If I recall correctly, not only are the Mon Calamari in Star Wars humanoid cephalopod good guys, but they share their home planet with another cephalopod race, the Quarren (these guys have the full tentacle-face effect).
Mother of Demons by Eric Flint
Color change is important to the plot for communication, rather than camouflage.
I started a collaborative Science Fiction story that turned toward a tentacled creature as its protagonist. However, it petered out quickly. If anyone is willing to revive it, I’d be willing to bring it back to life.
In SF video game franchises, you have the Metroid series, where those little energy-stealing buggers certainly had an air of cephalopodia about them.
In some forms they looked more like jellyfish, to be sure, but there were adolescent ‘hunter’ metroids that looked precisely like squid. And the last form of the boss in Metroid Prime was part alien and part cephalopod, to my eyes.
It’s not a SF novel, but in the SF movie “Galaxy Quest http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/,” the good-guy alien Thermians are cephalopods (but only when they forget to turn on their human-image projection devices). There is also a great scene where just before the chief engineer and a female Thermian descend behind the transporter to get intimate, we see her tentacles.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/
Sorry about that.
Isn’t that Amanda Condon, former host of Rocketboom? Is she shilling for Dupont? And what IS this thinly-disguised ad doing here? (I think there was another “Science Stories” a few days ago, but it didn’t seem to be plugging a product.)
The Dupont ads (labeled “advertisement” — do you not see it on your browser?) help pay the bills around here, like the other ads. It’s your option to play the movies, ignore them, or mock them. What I want to know is what’s “rocketboom”?
It has been years and years, but I vaguely remember that the last book (or two?) of the Venus Prime series had the main character, Sparta, meeting a cephalopod-like race of beings . . . Sparta was modified to have gills, and I remember thinking how excellent that would be!
Long time since I read the books though, and details here are sketchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Prime
There’s a scene in 2010:Odessy 2 by Clarke where a probe to Europa catches video of a tentacled creature coming up out of the ice to investigate the probe’s own lights. It never implies the creature is evil.
The Web Between the Worlds
by Charles Sheffield
One character in this story is a giant squid named Caliban. He plays a minor but significant role and has been genetically modified to allow communication via a computer. Caliban is used as a pseudo oracle for important and difficult questions. His answers are subject to interpretation, as you might imagine. The central plot revolves around the building of a space beanstalk (not cribbed from Clarke) with lots of subplots. Very good.
Convergent Series also by Sheffield
This set of books has a race of intelligent, dangerous, 9′ tall cephalopods who are equally at home on land or in water. This is a pretty good series, but it has been published in various combinations, making it tricky to get all of the books without duplicating some of it.
FWIW, he also wrote a short story that was titled Tunicate, Tunicate, Wilt Thou be Mine?
Steve
Boundary by Eric Flint & Ryk Spoor. Cephalopod like beings which evolved on Mars
Link to Blurb
The Engines of Light Series (Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light, and Engine City) by Ken McCleod. Humans ride on starships piloted by giant squids.
Outstanding series by the way.
As Graculus I was thinking of Metaphase too, where the half squidlike, half insectlike squidmoth lived in symbiosis with helper species, establishing mostly organic environments on their spacetravelling asteroids. IIRC the colors were not used for communication but for emotion.
Chrichton’s abominable “Sphere” and likewise movie uses a giant squid created by human imagination as a threat. The sea-creatures that attacked Heinlein’s torchship in “Time for the stars” wasn’t detailed, but of course my paperback had giant tentacles surrounding the ship on the cover. (In the novel they were waterjet weapons, but you can’t guess that from the illustration.)
Otherwise tentacles as such are popular, on both sides. “Doc” Smith in his Lensman series made the evil Eddorians amoeba-like, creating appendages as needed, but also had good guys, waterworld Nevians, supplied with tentacles. The pseudotentacled Kiints of Peter Hamilton’s “Reality Dysfunction” trilogy was the good guys. The mostly bad Kaldans of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” series had tentacles. As had Jules Verne’s “The War of the Worlds” Marsians – I have an old Illustrated Comic where they look decidedly squidlike.
Perhaps squids were more popular earlier, because I can’t see that they are common today. A few characters in the lot of scifi stories I have read, that is all. But tentacles of various kinds seems more popular. Wonder why they have picked up that particular fetish?
As Graculus I was thinking of Metaphase too, where the half squidlike, half insectlike squidmoth lived in symbiosis with helper species, establishing mostly organic environments on their spacetravelling asteroids. IIRC the colors were not used for communication but for emotion.
Chrichton’s abominable “Sphere” and likewise movie uses a giant squid created by human imagination as a threat. The sea-creatures that attacked Heinlein’s torchship in “Time for the stars” wasn’t detailed, but of course my paperback had giant tentacles surrounding the ship on the cover. (In the novel they were waterjet weapons, but you can’t guess that from the illustration.)
Otherwise tentacles as such are popular, on both sides. “Doc” Smith in his Lensman series made the evil Eddorians amoeba-like, creating appendages as needed, but also had good guys, waterworld Nevians, supplied with tentacles. The pseudotentacled Kiints of Peter Hamilton’s “Reality Dysfunction” trilogy was the good guys. The mostly bad Kaldans of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” series had tentacles. As had Jules Verne’s “The War of the Worlds” Marsians – I have an old Illustrated Comic where they look decidedly squidlike.
Perhaps squids were more popular earlier, because I can’t see that they are common today. A few characters in the lot of scifi stories I have read, that is all. But tentacles of various kinds seems more popular. Wonder why they have picked up that particular fetish?
What about THE KRAKEN WAKES by John Wyndham?
I’m having trouble remembering the name of the book…but somehow sentience was unlocked in the whale population on Earth and we moved the whales to an ocean planet. The protagonist (a deepwater cephalopod like creature) mind-controlled some of the weaker minded species of whale into destroying human colonies on the planet.
I recently read a short story by Jack L. Chalker, called “Adrift Among The Ghosts.” I quote Chalker’s protagonist:
I think the Orion’s Arm setting has provolved squid, but the experiments went wrong and they are all psychotic and amoral or something…
Oh – so they’re atheists!
RickU, the title is Cachalot by Alan Dean Foster. It is a standalone novel that takes place in his Humanx Commonwealth universe.
Steve Smith, tell me more of your reading habits. *grin* Those two Sheffield stories were going to be my contributions.
What . . . you’re forgetting Dr. Zoidberg, maybe?
I know I’ve stumbled across at least one NSFW short story featuring a giant squid-like alien as one of the protagonists.. x.x
And the Elder Things in H. P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” are perhaps more echinoderm-like, but they do have tentacles and while not precisely protagonists are presented in a sympathetic light.
They’re not a main character, but in Terry Pratchett’s “Jingo”, the Curious Squid have their own city and language, which uses color to express emotion. They also aren’t portrayed as evil at all.
Dr. Who, AAA, has a tentacled auton coming out of a machine. 5E, The Power of Kroll, has “the biggest Monster Ever”
Then there are the Trilarians from Master of Orion 2. They were transdimensional as well as squid-like.
I recall a (land-dwelling) sentient octopoid race in Rama II. The Demu Trilogy by F. M. Busby included a lobster-like race (with both protagonists and villians), but I don’t recall them having any Zoidbergian tentacles, so I guess that’s just arthropod undiluted by cephalopod.
But I think other people have already posted the highlights: In serious science fiction you’ve got Baxter’s squids, and in more light-hearted sci-fi you still have Zoidberg. You ALL STILL HAVE ZOIDBERG!!
The aliens from Blindsight, by Peter Watts. IIRC, they had many arms joined to a small central body, and had shifting skins for communication. I think they had bony arms, however, if not actual vertebrae.
The novel’s available online at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
I have to second “Mother of Demons” as a masterful construction of a land-dwelling cephalopod bauplan, life-cycle and civilization (roughly bronze(?) age). It focuses on warfare and the differences that are involved due to biology. Not so many swords and projectiles (throwning or drawing a bow with tentacles?), more flails, clubs and tridents.
In John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes the underwater aliens send vehicles to the surface which release tentacled creatures that are used to ‘harvest’ humans and take them back into the sea – a rather neat reversal of human fishing practices.
A fun one is “Accelerando”, by Charles Stross. The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a highly dysfunctional family before, during, and after a technological singularity.
The lobsters enter as decendents of a colony of lobsters that had been used to test distriubuted computing theories. They also have collectively participated in the singularity event and achieved sentience. They go away and eventually re-appear in the story — in spaceships.
Enormously inventive and funny.
Speaking of Alan Dean Foster (my favorite author) I believe that the Amplitur in his Damned trilogy were very cephalopodan. Although they reproduced by budding.
Well, it is left to me to mention one of the more famous comic book examples. As anyone who has read Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbon’s masterpiece Watchmen (and if you haven’t stop reading blogs and get yourself a copy toot suite! No less an uber-geek than Terry Gilliam has proclaimed it the War and Peace of comic books) – a cephalopod creature features prominantly in an attempt to save the world. Don’t want to give more away – but it was the first thing that popped into my mind (and that was the creature’s point in the story!) when reading PZ’s request.
Chameleon Boy’s natural appearance, in the Legion of Super-Heroes, is vaguely cephalopody as well.
‘Nuff Said!
P.S. PZ – I’m keeping you company in the latest SEED. The only time something I wrote did not have a single word changed! (of course, it was a review of the TV show HEROES that was constrained to be only one word long!).
I forgot one. Piers Anthony used some in the last of his books about Phase/Proton.
A Maze of Stars by John Brunner. Explaining why would give away the end of the story.
Don’t forget John Brunner’s “The Crucible of Time”. This is a charmingly upbeat novel about the multi-generational efforts of a molluscan/cephalopod-like alien species in their efforts to achieve spaceflight capabilities before they’re wiped out by the numerous meteor strikes their homeworld is subject to.
Hats off to PZ’s commenters! You guys got nearly all of my examples, and I’m part of a 3-generation Science Fiction professional family, who’s published on CETI.
So, going back over the 50-year limit of the previous big SF thread:
Well, there are some mollusca-cephalopoids in Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.
And the slimy sea-thing crawling onto the beach beneath the giant red sun in H. G. Wells…
Really a great list, guys and gals. My hat’s off. *cough cough* unfortunately, it was a space helmet.
Me Human, You Alien: How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial
by
Jonathan Vos Post
(c) 1996 by Emerald City Publishing
an excerpt from a book entitled MAKING CONTACT: A SERIOUS HANDBOOK FOR LOCATING AND COMMUNICATING WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS, edited by Bill Fawcett,
July 1997, New York: William Morrow & Co.
http://www.magicdragon.com/EmeraldCity/extraterrestrials/alien.html
The SF writer Vonda McIntyre maintains a mini-site on cephalopods in science fiction called Talking Squids in Outer Space: The Pinnacle of SF (http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/squids/Squidliography.html) which attempts to be a definative catalog of all things tentacled. I’ve contributed titles in the past. I’m surprised it’s not on you blogroll.
From gaming:
i, The GURPS Traveller setting includes “Planetary Survey 5: Tobibak”. This is a high quality sourcebook looking at a specific world in a space opera setting, and revolves around a primitive hunter/gather species called the Tobai and their conflicts with an exploitative off-world corporation. The Tobai are essentially six-tentacled tool-using octapi.
ii, The GURPS Transhuman Space setting also includes uplifted octapi, specifically the Astropus brand, designed and used as zero-G workers. For example, the entry on Mimas in the Deep Beyond sourcebook has an introduction setting the scene which includes:
Part of the show’s proceeds went to raise funds for the Axon Group’s legal appeals against Nanodynamics. The speaker was a darling Astropus called Octothorpe, and he told us the most horrible stories about Nanodyne’s treatment of the little ratlings and the xoxies. We were all in tears, at least, those of us with eyes or tear glands.
The Martians in a number of Eric Frank Russell’s stories are octopoids, and cranky ones.
A female cephalopod is also a major character in Alan Dean Foster’s Taken trilogy.
Jeff VanderMeer’s
Cities of Saints and Madmen
reviewed here
Phoenician in a time of Romans mentions the Astropus species in GURPS Transhuman Space, but didn’t mention that they almost all claim* to worship an obscure deity named “Cthulhu” created by an old, nearly forgotten horror author, and that they seem to be spreading this meme to the other uplifted octopus variants.
No-one’s really sure if they’re joking or not.
I was pushing my way around the station, getting my bearings, when I ran into Lucy, one of the Astropuses that works there. She – he? it? – has worked there for most of the 90s, and is probably one of the smarter octopus uplifts I’ve met. Not that I’ve met many, of course. Just saying.
“Good to see you, Lucy. How’s tricks?” I greeted her, figuring I’d be nice to someone for a change.
She turned and looked at me. Have you ever seen an Astropus’ eyes? Freaky.
“I am fine, human-James,” she said, through her voicebox. “I am pleased to see you, as well.”
I smiled, and started to move on, but Lucy lifted a couple of tentacles to stop me. She was silent for a second, just staring at me. I’m not to proud to admit that I was starting to sweat. I jumped (as much as you can in zero-gee) when she suddenly reached out a tentacle and caressed my face.
Her voice sounded almost happy. “You have the mark of Rl’yeh upon you, though you may not see it. You will be spared when great Cthulhu arises. Be joyful.” And with that, she suddenly jetted away from me.
I could have sworn I heard her laughing.
—
Also neglected, presumably for reason of good taste, was the relatively unpopular Erotopus variant…
* It’s in the Toxic Memes supplement.
Heilein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel features nefarious creatures with cephalopodic physiognomies (the very bright, by biologically uneducated, protagonist calls them “Squid faces.” I forget if we ever learn their real name). They seek to invade earth and consume us all, of course.
Wonder if the Dhryn of Julie Czerneda’s Species Imperative series would count. They’ve got the tentacles, and in one form are aquatic…
I didn’t take the time to find it in my library, but there is a wonderful Star Trek Book by Diane Duane (I think) that has as a crewman in the enterprise a completely tentacled creature. He is blue normally I think, and has his uniform colors done by using his chromatophores!!!!! It has been a number of years since I read it–but he really stuck in my mind–he was portrayed very sympathetically.
Thomas is confused. The baddies in Heinlein’s _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ were not called Squid Faces.
There was a squirming nature of their mouths, indeed – Kip, the protagonist, finds the squirming cilia to be the most awful part of the visage, I believe – but they are called Wormfaces, after the one Kip dubs Wormface. Shades, perhaps, of Grima Wormtongue, coconspirator of Saruman in The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien. No real resemblance otherwise, of course. Grima never ate anybody.
Nice try, but a mistaken memory, T.
The opening credits of Aqua Teen Hunger Force include a still of the boys fighting a giant space squid…and from what we know of the Aquua Teens the squid might have been the good guy.
Not really a cephalopod…
In the german pulp SF series “Perry Rhodan” they introduced a land-dwelling species called “Seecharan” about one year ago, but they played a role only for about 2 issues of this weekly series. They used their skin structure for communicationg emotions (just like we use our facial muscles to frown, smile and so on), few are capable of color changes of the skin. Low gravity permits them to walk, their “body” actually has a internal skeleton.
Here’s the cover of issue no. 2314, showing Atlan (one of the protagonists of the series) alongside a Seecharan:
http://perry-rhodan.net/pics/tibis/2314tibi.jpg
IIRC Sheila 5 was the title
the usa trained a female octo or squid and sent it into space because they are intelligent and can deal with relative weightlessnes better than humans ….the octo was pregnant unknown to her handler…and he spoke to her and her subsequent offspring and grandsquids so they could repair the ship …they ended up coming back to earth and seeding the rest of the universe after discovering how to tap comets for water
In Harry Harrison’s East of Eden trilogy, the premise is that instead of the reptiles mostly dying out and mammals taking up all the “large beast” niches, the two evolved side by side. One of the other main themes is that the amphibians wear their emotions on their skin and therefore cannot lie. The human in the story lies to them and they are amazed (and later exploit this “talent”)
Perhaps not really what you were asking for (certainly not cephalopods), so probably not my greatest first post, but I actually really enjoyed that series. (I have a sneaking suspicion I have horrible taste in SciFi, but I’m ok with it.)
How about the original squid head from Return of the Jedi, Tessek, who lives on the surface of the desert planet of Tatooine in Jabba’s Palace?
A Free Quarren in the Palace: Tessek’s Tale is a short story by Dave Wolverton the Star Wars Tales from Jabba’s Palace anthology.
There are also the mind flayers or illithids from the Dungeons & Dragons game which are based around the Lovecraft Cthulhu. Wikipedia has an impressive entry on the illithid.
I must have overlooked it… surely someone must have already mentioned H.G. Wells’ Martians?
It is important to note, I think, that HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu is not an evil cephalopod god. It’s not a god: it’s just a very weird, very powerful alien being, and we stupid humans mistake it for a god for this reason. And it’s not a cephalopod: it just happens to have a tentacled head. And it’s not evil: it’s just far, far outside any human moral concept. It’s been said that it is an embodiment of entropy…
Jeff VanderMeer appears to share some of your cephalopodian interests.
While this is called “nonfiction”, well, I will leave it up to others to judge (personally, I think it should be filed under “deadpan”):
Sebring Squid Festival: a Favorite Among In-State Tourists
There’s also this, although the site seems to be currently down. If it stays down, well, we’ll see.
The Florida Freshwater Squid
An Overview of History, Habits, and Human Interaction (including such related phenomena as the annual Festival of the Freshwater Squid)
Also neglected, presumably for reason of good taste, was the relatively unpopular Erotopus variant…
Didn’t want to excite Myers too much…
Just because octopi and squid eat scuba divers doesn’t make them evil … it’s just that scuba divers are just such a scrumptious delicacy.
Pulp covers featuring scuba divers and other tasty humans encountering such lovely creatures can be seen on the website http://www.cyrune.com/pulp.html
It’s delighfully cheesy. I do like the title of the featured cover story for STARTLING STORIES November 1941, “The Gods Hate Kansas” (by Joseph J. Millard).
No real resemblance otherwise, of course. Grima never ate anybody.
Not so fast.
“I don’t really know what became of poor Lotho. Buried him, I suppose; though Worm has been very hungry lately. No, Worm is really not a very nice person.”
–Saruman, in “The Scouring of the Shire” (The Return of the King)
Christophe Thill said:
“It is important to note, I think, that HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu is not an evil cephalopod god. It’s not a god: it’s just a very weird, very powerful alien being, and we stupid humans mistake it for a god for this reason. And it’s not a cephalopod: it just happens to have a tentacled head. And it’s not evil: it’s just far, far outside any human moral concept. It’s been said that it is an embodiment of entropy… ”
That’s interesting. Could you give a rfereence as to who has said that Cthulhu embidies entropy? Thanks.
Jim
(Azathoth is arguably more “entropic” than Cthulhu.)
Cephalopod in SF – Kosh’s living ship from Babylon 5 – or perhaps even most Vorlon ships.
Harlan Ellison had a humanoid golden-skinned race called the Kyben – their fingers were somewhat reminiscent of tentacles.
‘Night & the Enemy’, & the old (OLD) episode, ‘Demon w/a Glass Hand.’ There were a few more, but it escapes me for the nonce.
Lionel Trilling once famously told Edward Said that he thought the Columbia University humanities core, one of the early great-books curricula, “has the virtue of giving Columbia students a common basis in reading, and if they later forgot the books (as many always do) at least they would have forgotten the same ones.”
I know this post is AGES old, but it recently brought someone to my site. So, I thought I would mention that after this post, I did write a story that included color changing cephalopod-like aliens. It is called M.O.P.S. in Space.