Once clearly identified as aggressive, or implacable, or too “different” to coexist peacefully with an enlightened humanity, then the Other becomes a legitimate target. It is at this point that the process of stereotypical manipulation in SF, when faced with the Other, often defeats its own attempts at heroism. To create a resourceful enemy, the alien is endowed with a varied and heterogeneous degree of intelligence. However, it is rarely an intelligence that humans would find incomprehensible and, most significantly, it is hardly ever an intelligence superior to humankind’s. From a postcolonial perspective, the misrepresentation of the Other is almost complete. The alien first exoticized and distant, then identifiably different, has now become a quantifiable and dangerous known, sufficiently intelligent to pose a danger but never sufficiently superior to overcome the wiles of Homo sapiens.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism and postcolonial readings of science fiction, as well as theories of the Other in cultural criticism. DEFINE: Clarifies the postcolonial concept of 'Othering' and its specific operation within SF alien representation.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 685