p0000240 Vernor Vinge and Elizabeth Moon at ArmadilloCon 2003

on the "Building An Alien Society From The Ground up" panel.

Participants: Carol Berg (Moderator), Deborah Chester, Jane Lindskold, Elizabeth Moon, Cary Osbourne, Vernor Vinge

Topic, according to the convention program: A major challenge to science fiction writers is creating believable aliens. Our panelists will give insight into their own creative processes in tackling this task.

Where do they start building an alien society? (Do they answer questionaires about alien societies? :-) What do SF writers fail to consider when they are creating alien societies? What are the ways writers can communicate their alien cultures to their readers, without doing an info dump?

The whole article can be found on my website.