One of my favorite credits to see role by in any film is “Creature Design”. As writers, we too are creature designers, and like all creature designers I have my influences. And one of those key influences is Wayne Barlowe.

In case you’ve never seen his artwork, check out his website over at www.waynebarlowe.com. I first picked up on Wayne’s genius when I read the book Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature back in high school. I still have a copy of this wonderful work sitting on my shelf. Over the years I followed-up with some of his other fiction, including Expedition and most recently the terrific full-length novel God’s Demon, which would be one hell of a movie, pun excepting.

What strikes me about Barlowe’s work comes most form his training. In addition to being a talented artist, he’s a trained naturalist. When Barlowe sketches and describes one of the inhabitants of Darwin IV in Expedition, the designs he makes seem at first absurd until you begin reading his “studies” of these creatures through the eyes of his proxy, a character said to be an artist accompanying the voyage to that remote planet. With loving detail Barlowe describes the echolocation the creatures use, instead of visual receptors, examines their locomotion in a low-g environment, and generally has a field day imagining a world that begins to come to life right before your eyes.

It’s great stuff.

I try to stretch my imagination in the same way when I populate creatures into my own fiction. The more fantastic and remote the locale, the more license I have to go wild. This requires breaking completely free of earthbound restrictions such as the requirement for vertebrates to have no more than four limbs. On the other hand, I do often borrow from Earth when the appropriate options present themselves. Where I differ from Barlowe, for example, is the fact that I think any world exposed to light will produce creatures with light receptors; i.e. eyes. Barlowe does point out, though, that this was done partially out of artistic reasons, to remove any comfortable reference points for the reader.

I think one has to be careful, though: humanoids are a safe choice in many situations, particularly when the reader needs to relate more closely to the subject. That’s why we fall back on our biped friends so much in fiction. On the other hand, though they are useful for shock value, having creatures completely and utterly alien in morphology can produce their own unique contributions to one’s work.

Here’s to the careful omission of the familiar, and its careful insertion when needed. I think learning when to do which is vital when writing speculative fiction.

Stay tuned.