Today’s topic is courtesy of Belinda McBride: “Stranger in a Strange Land: How to adapt and assimilate when visiting an alien culture whose manners and morals might seem heinous.”
This one could be fun.
It’s hard to write a truly alien culture – I’ve seen it done a few times, notably by Robert L. Forward in Dragon’s Egg and Niven’s The Mote in God’s Eye.
We’re so tied into our own culture – it’s hard to both loose the constraints of what we know and make the result relatable to the reader.
So my questions today: How do you do it? How do you connect a very alien culture to your reader? And what are some of your favorite examples?