i'm about halfway through a book that was billed as one that would help writers to create feasible alien species for science fiction. i was *sure* this book would be a winner, but it's just making me tired. the emphasis seems to be on what you can't do, more than what you can do, and it isn't even bringing up good questions, imo. i have a list of questions about how certain biological functions could work, and i had *hoped* that this book might answer some of those or point me toward other books that would, or at least add some other good questions to the list; instead, every time the author brings up an interesting possibility, he throws it out there with a very general comment like, "you could probably get this idea to work because this characteristic could have evolved somewhere." so, at best, he's willing to refrain from shooting down certain possible ways that aliens could have evolved. i think i would have liked it better if he had gone through an example of creating one intelligent species, but given the chapter headings, i don't think i'll be seeing that. at least i've developed some ideas about how i'll go about my alien-creation in the future - basically, not like that guy does it!

i don't want to name the book since i'm mostly criticizing it. i think i'll stop reading it and put it aside as a slightly useful reference for certain scientific information, but i'll plan to do different research for creating my aliens.