Sustenance: Aliens, Language, and What We Get Wrong

This segment describes the book Sustenance, a work of speculative fiction published under the pseudonym Ridley Park, which uses aliens as a lens to examine human behaviour and assumptions. The book critiques anthropocentrism and the ways humans impose their own frameworks onto others, particularly in areas like language, which is presented as a tool for projection rather than mutual understanding. It challenges established human concepts of culture, sex/gender, and consent by showcasing what happens when these ideas are not shared or even comprehensible to other beings. Ultimately, the text argues that Sustenance is less about the alien characters and more about the human inability to perceive what is fundamentally different from themselves, highlighting the self-deceptive nature of memory and the limitations of human categories.https://philosophics.blog/2025/05/21/sustenance-a-book-about-aliens-language-and-everything-youre-getting-wrong/