What will the space dinosaurs of the future look like?
Dinosaurs and space.
These two topics are fascinating, full of childhood reverie, and have inspired generations to step into the door of science. Dinosaurs have an unusual size and appearance, which powerfully reflects the depth of time. The depths of space are a paradise of discovery and adventure that has captivated humans for countless years.
But because dinosaurs were trapped on Earth (a limitation that was the main reason for their extinction), it seems ridiculous to think of them as space creatures. However, as Ian Malcolm, the chaos theorist in Jurassic Park, says, life always finds a way out (at least in fiction).
Enter "space dinosaur" or "dinosaur astronaut" into any search engine and you'll see countless bizarre passages: in Doctor Who, the Shiru send dinosaurs into space; in Star Trek: Voyager, the Voss are descendants of the intelligent creature Platypus, who left Earth in search of a new home after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event; and in Calvin & Hobbes Tiger, dinosaurs flying a spaceship is a recurring episode.
There are also lesser-known works, such as Dinosaur Planet and Velociraptor Captain. In Dinosaur Fantasy Fiction, there is an entire chapter about the history of lizard-like aliens, whom he calls "space dinosaurs." In addition, the cartoon "Dinosaur Man" was also broadcast in 1987.
The craze for placing dinosaurs in space even spread to science. Chemist Ronald Breslow talked about the idea of a space dinosaur in a 2012 study. Now, dinosaurs have really gone into space, only dead — multiple dinosaur fossils have been sent into orbit.
Why do science fiction works love space dinosaurs so much? What does this long-awaited desire to exist somewhere else in the universe that this long-extinct creature of Earth exists?
As a space dinosaur fan, I've been thinking about these questions for over a decade. I am acutely aware that space dinosaurs, while seemingly absurd, often reflect our fears and hopes for the human condition in space-time. The following long history of space dinosaurs hopes to inspire you.
<h1>The origin of space dinosaurs</h1>
In the late 19th century, the first dinosaur boom swept through North America and Europe, sowing the seeds of space dinosaurs. At that time, under the influence of two American paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, the public was obsessed with dinosaurs.
From the 1870s to the 1890s, Kop and Marsh traveled throughout the Western United States, desperately digging up dinosaur fossils, trying to surpass each other and becoming the number one paleontologists. Together, the two discovered more than 130 new dinosaur species.
The remains of these extinct animals are transported to the Natural History Museum, and their sheer size and strange appearance leave the audience stunned and unbelievable. But it's not just their massive bodies that attract people, but also the paradigm shifts they represent.
"In the late 19th century, people underwent great social changes and scientific revolutions, and their perception of how the world works at all levels was completely subverted." Zoë Lescaze, author of "Paleontological Art: The Imagination of Prehistoric History.", said.
During this period, Westerners generally believed that the earth and all life on earth was created by God about 6,000 years ago. But the dinosaurs swept that timeline into the garbage heap, forcing people to imagine that incredible era and the life forms that existed on Earth before humans appeared.
"I think at that time, people's importance to human beings, their security for their own existence, and their love for God were fundamentally shaken, because we found that God would erase what He had created." Leskaz said, "It's very disturbing. ”
The discovery of prehistoric mass extinction events was accompanied by human-induced extinction events, such as vanished passenger pigeons and endangered bison. Fossil evidence found on the U.S. border shows that entire animal populations can suddenly die, and people are shocked by this, but accelerate the extinction of contemporary animals in the same land.
People gradually understood that before the advent of human beings, other creatures existed on the earth. When the populace (somewhat) adapted to this view, the idea of humans wrestling with dinosaurs began to emerge. People eagerly fantasize about the confrontation between dinosaurs and humans, dinosaurs often represent fierce monsters, and humans have advanced weapons and legitimate superiority.
After all, there is no greater justification for Westerners to explore the world, study technology, and conquer nature.
<h1>Border Dragon</h1>
In The Last Book of Dinosaurs, W.J.T. Mitchell, a media historian at the University of Chicago, delves into the connection between wild West themes and dinosaur images. This is just a small step towards a space dinosaur conceptually.
"As far as dinosaurs are concerned, aren't U.S. borders and outer space the same thing?" Mitchell said, "'Space, the Final Frontiers' is a 20th-century version of the American Dream. ”
In Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, dinosaurs live deep underground; in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, dinosaurs hide in jungle plateaus; in Frank Mackenzie Saville's Beyond the South Wall, dinosaurs suddenly appear in Antarctica; and in Gustavus Doyle' The Lost World. In Gustavus W. Pope's Journey to Venus, dinosaurs haunt that alien planet.
The idea that there are dinosaurs on Venus was so popular that in 1980, on PBV's Cosmos program, astronomer Carl Sagan felt the need to personally dispel the falsehood.
Sagan explained that in the early to mid-20th century, it was widely believed that dinosaurs might have been hidden in the warm rainforest of Venus. But the Soviet Venera probe later confirmed that the environment on Venus was very harsh, like hell.
Like the mistaken canals on Mars, the Venus dinosaurs were the result of improved telescope performance. More powerful telescopes allow astronomers to see the characteristics of the surrounding planets more clearly. "There are canals on Mars" quickly evolved into "definitely hostile alien invaders" in the public imagination, and "clouds on Venus" became "definitely a dinosaur planet.".
Astronomers had doubted the authenticity of Venus's dinosaurs long before the Veneera probe landed on Venus, but the imaginative rhetoric still affected many people. For Michael Uslan, the creator of Dinosaur Man, these remarks about Mars and Venus inspired him to reinvent the space dinosaur genre.
"I'm a baby boomer, so we're the last generation to ask this question: Who built the canal on Mars?" What's underneath Venus's clouds? Could it be a dinosaur? Oslan said.
"Science drove us away from that idea." "So we need a new kind of curiosity," he said. So we create science fiction works that are as close as possible to the facts of space travel, technology, and dinosaur research. ”
As a result, for more than a century, the theme of space dinosaurs has adapted to the changing scientific and cultural landscape. Initially, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the space dinosaur genre reflected a pervasive obsession with powerful cultures and wildlife, mixed with an uneasy premonition that soon there would be no unknown territories to explore.
Those stories portray dinosaurs as hideous, violent monsters that go to great lengths to justify the killing of human characters. Contemporary paleontological art portrays dinosaurs even more brutally.
"Previous books always portrayed dinosaurs as monsters." Pranas Naujokaitis, author of the children's series Dinosaurs in Space, said, "That evil lizard reptile was 6 meters tall and had a mouth full of fangs the size of bananas. It's scary. If you put that image on the cover of a book, you can get good sales. ”
In those days, hunting large animals was the dominant expression of masculinity, and in this environment, the passage of humans killing dinosaurs after hard fighting resonated with the audience. But by the 1940s and 1950s, as animals from the border area were brought to zoos in the city for mass displays, social attitudes shifted and the animal protection movement began to emerge. As a result, the dinosaurs in science fiction works began to be put in cages for people to study, and such a plot was no less than the plot of killing dinosaurs.
<h1>Jurassic Park in space</h1>
The theme of science fiction works has changed from fighting monsters for survival to capturing monsters for people to visit. King Kong is a good example. While the giant ape's dinosaur opponent on Skull Island escaped the same fate as it did, many other dinosaurs in science fiction did not.
The authors began to imagine capturing animals from the distant past (dinosaurs) and deep space (space dinosaurs) and treating them like zoo animals.
As a result, venusian dinosaurs inevitably reappear in these stories. In the March 1950 issue of Coronet magazine, there was a story titled "Mr. Smith Goes to Venus" about the Smith family's visit to the Venus Zoo, "one of the most famous tourist attractions in Venus."
In the story, the Venusian dinosaur is depicted as a "dragon-shaped creature", which frightens Mrs. Smith. This justifies capturing them, just as it was previously used to justify killing dinosaurs in space. But the animal rights movement of the second half of the 20th century spilled over into the fictional world of space dinosaurs, changing those perceptions.
Take 1984's Dinosaur Planet Survivors, for example. The book is set on the planet Ierta, a planet inhabited by space dinosaurs with intelligence whose ancestors came from Earth's zoos. The story uses space dinosaurs to emphasize the responsibility of people to respect and understand vulnerable animals.
The capture of dinosaurs from an alien planet and their return to earth zoos for exhibitions have also been influenced by wildlife conservation movements, such as the 1976 novel Incubation. The novel is set in 2149 and tells the story of an interstellar expedition that travels to the planet Erigon to collect eggs from space dinosaurs, bring them back to Earth to hatch, and then raise them in a protected area.
In the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps inspired by the first launch of the orbiting space station by the Soviet Union and the United States, the dinosaurs in science fiction also began to migrate to the space station. In Tuv's voyage novella, Disaster Star, a group of rescuers stumble upon an abandoned seed ship filled with embryos of various dangerous creatures from different planets. Naturally, the Tyrannosaurus Rex is the killer king of the earth.
Among this batch of "Death Messengers", the Tyrannosaurus Rex is the only creature on Earth. But sometimes, there are dinosaur zoos on the space station, such as the 1980 short story "Our Sauropod Lady." The story takes place in a spaceship that houses genetically modified dinosaurs. Originally intended to resurrect the dinosaurs for entertainment, the ship's operating system spiraled out of control, resulting in tragedy.
"After that Tyrannosaurus Rex created the San Diego bloody incident, it was no longer politically feasible to keep the dinosaurs on Earth." The narrator explains.
The story has multiple threads: human arrogance in technology, the ethics of bioengineering, and the allure of intelligent dinosaurs. Together with these plot elements, the storyteller draws a conclusion about the intelligence of dinosaurs in space, and with sympathy.
"We know very little about the Mesozoic. I only know a little bit, just bare bones. "Hundreds of millions of years have passed, and all traces of civilization have been erased." Do they have language, poetry, mythology, philosophy? Love, dreams, ambitions? ”
These ideas can be traced somewhat back to the "dinosaur renaissance" of the 1960s. The 1960s were a time of great discoveries in paleontology, and one of the most important discoveries was that many dinosaurs were probably agile warm-blooded animals, and some dinosaurs might have been more intelligent.
"I think people's old impressions of dinosaurs as slow, clumsy, and doomed to extinction are completely wrong." Mitchell said, "The new perspectives of the second half of the 20th century are more respectful of their agility, diversity and adaptability. ”
These novels are often accompanied by the theme of questioning the superiority of humans over dinosaurs. Mitchell pointed out that dinosaurs could at least blame their extinction on an asteroid, while humans could self-destruct without the need for outside forces.
<h1>Dinosaur Man</h1>
Perhaps the most vivid example of the rise of intelligent dinosaurs is the animated film Dinosaur Man. The protagonist of this cartoon is a group of anthropomorphic dinosaurs that can "transform" into primitive dinosaur forms and pilot spaceships that resemble dinosaurs.
Michael Oslan, one of the creators of the cartoon, wanted to conceive an animated image of his kindergarten son to appeal to him, so he came up with the idea of a dinosaur man. "Little kids are attracted to space dinosaurs." "So, one morning, when I was shaving, I suddenly thought of the word 'dinosaur man' and thought, 'That's cool, but what the hell is it?'" ’”
Dinosaur Man is set on the planet Reptilon, where dinosaurs evolved into intelligent species that could navigate between the stars. The Tyrannosaurus rex as a villain and the decent dinosaur man often fight, while a group of human children known as "secret scouts" are involved in the fight.
Dinosaur Man was created based on the idea that if dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct, what might they have evolved?
This thought experiment arose in the 1980s, and astronomer Sagan's description of intelligent dinosaurs in his 1977 book The Dragon of Eden fueled the experiment.
"Dinosaur Man" rides the east wind of this trend, and its dinosaur characters are endowed with many human attributes, such as language, culture, carrier and technical ability. This is the first time that mainstream works have portrayed space dinosaurs as a higher species than humans, and since then, space dinosaur stories have no longer been just "humans against monsters with blood stained teeth", but also "humans against higher creatures".
"I think some creators have done this because some people have already done it to think of dinosaurs as big bad guys or monsters to kill." Nocho Katis, author of Dinosaurs in Space, said, "The audience is becoming more and more picky and wants to see something different. ”
In addition, the cultural anxiety caused by human arrogance has also contributed to this transformation.
"Today, extinction is not impossible, not just for some animals, but for us humans." Media historian Mitchell said, "That's why dinosaurs became totemic animals." They symbolize human beings. Dinosaurs were the overlords of their time, 'ruling the earth'. Now, it's our turn to rule the planet, but we seem to be creating the conditions for our own extinction. ”
Dinosaur Man embodies these environmental issues at the time, and its theme still resonates with fans today.
Currently, Auslan is working on a new version of the Dinosaur Man comic book, which will give dinosaurs feathers and will emphasize climate change awareness and continue the traditions of the old version.
Space dinosaurs are not only a cultural imitation of childhood reverie, but also a mirror that reflects contemporary society.
"One thing that the distant past and the distant future have in common is that both are strange to those who live in the present." Leskaz, author of Paleontological Art, said, "No one has seen the prehistoric era, and no one has seen the future, so we can project the wildest fantasies and the most imaginative thoughts into those two periods." Although they may seem opposites, separated at opposite ends of the timeline, they share that common feature. ”
<h1>What will the space dinosaurs of the future look like? </h1>
The space dinosaurs in science fiction works are first a symbol of boundaries, then a rare object in the zoo, and finally evolved into a stand-in for human intelligence. Each person seems to have a different interpretation of the commonalities between the various metaphors.
"Frankly, at the end of the day, I think it all comes down to the charm of the dinosaurs." Nocho Katis said, "It's like the lingua franca of the world. Almost everyone loves dinosaurs. ”
Writer Hans Geyer says dinosaurs and space are "two topics that won't go out of style." "By studying these two topics, the knowledge we can gain seems endless," he said. ”
Mitchell looked at space dinosaurs from an anthropocentric perspective. "Why did humans imagine space dinosaurs? It's the same reason we imagine aliens. "First of all, if aliens are malicious, the destruction of humanity is the object of condemnation; if they are friendly, they will guide us in correcting our path and teach us the way of survival." ”
In Leskaz's view, space dinosaurs represent a kind of hope. "If there are dinosaurs in space, then we can also thrive in space." "Perhaps, in the face of extinction and the deep fears that arise, at least we have hope," she said. That hope may be dinosaurs. ”
At the end of the day, space dinosaurs reflect the constant evolution of human life, reflecting our best wishes and deepest fears. They are inherently ridiculous and illusory, but they are also one of the most direct ways to reach the hearts of the world. Therefore, if you want to grasp the pulse of society, think about the space dinosaurs imagined by human beings.
Translation: Yu Bo
Proofreader: Li Li
Edit: Man Qian
Source: Motherboard
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