The Alien perspective - generating alien POV characters via twists on human psychology

TL;DR: suggest human traits of mind/society that one should (a) tweak (b) leave well alone, in order to generate an alien worldview that allows a novel length tale to be told purely from perspective of said aliens but at the same time permit human readers to identify with and care about the characters. This is a bio-chemistry free question.

Background:

I have a setting based on a super earth with 4-10 times earths surface area, some oceans and plant life and animals and stuff. The ecology will be sufficently different to earth's oxygen based environment that it'll seem nice and alien (my critters breathe hydrogen), but not like a Venus-hell-hole alien, the weather will be nice(-ish) and there will be a solid surface to walk on.

This should afford a suitably wide potential for an epic xenofiction world (I say potential because more than likely I'm way off having the skill to pull it off). By epic I mean large in scale in terms of time span, geography, numbers of characters and events.

Anyway, this setting has no humans, but lets assume it does have human readers; its important to hang onto the reader through to the end of at least one book and maybe more. This is not a short story format, where one often finds xenofiction.

What it can and will feature is the struggle to survive against alien nature, ones own worst alien instincts and against the unwanted attentions of other members of ones alien race. It may feature some physical intra-species conflict but war and violence ought not to be the main thrust of the narrative. It would feature stuff like love, childbirth/rearing/being a child, family, competition, economics etc etc to the extent that the species exhibits such characteristics.

I am willing to consider a range of readerships (e.g. Young Adult, Mainstream, Adult, Sci-Fi nuts, Fantasy nuts) but I would like to keep it as broad as possible and do not intend to employ any magic devices or powers in the setting. The setting's tech level will range from stone-age equivalent tech through to early Renaissance.

Question Restatement

• What aspect of human psychology (and by extension human myth archtypes etc) would you suggest changing in order to fulfil my goals above? How might they be altered?

• What aspect do you suggest I do not alter?

• And most importantly because this is a world-building forum, what overall 'look and feel' do your suggested changes and non-changes generate that can be woven into a large scale alien setting?

Suggestions that generate the right kind of skew from human POV and which generate nice plot devices with the minimum alterations to the human mind are likely to be the most useful. If you have a particular readership in mind when making a suggestion please state who you are aiming at. By all means cite existing works but please outline the psychology changes that were involved and whether the story worked for you.

TL;DR: existing questions

This WB.SE questionis an excellent question and set of answers but it seems to me that the OP still had in mind to write from a human viewpoint at least for part of the book. My requirements are more restrictive.

posted over 8 years ago

rumguff‭

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