In a sci-fi world full of various types of alliens, what word would be best used to refer to the type of allien? #sciencefiction #writing #scifi
Oh, my, this is a fun one.
When writing for my (English-speaking) readers, I use "race" for both "subspecies" and "a sophont quote-species-unquote". Those who read my linguistic appendices and/or footnotes will find the note that those uses are translations of completely different words in the in-world language; English broken, please fix.
So why not just "species"? Well, in least to most important order:
1. Some species have big ol' sticks up their butts about being classified in the same way as non-sophont lifeforms. (Plus, it makes my wiki look untidy.)
2. Not all "race-as-sophont species" are actually species. In my 'verse, the ren-gu and ren-qu are a symbiont pair who are quite insistent upon their oneness despite their technical twoness...
...There are polytaxic "species" who are one culture/people/polity likewise, and are offended at being split up. There are the people of machine ascent who don't _have_ a concept of species, they have models and codelines.
3. And so on and so forth.
4. In short, it's easier to coin a word than offend a lot of people, most of whom have guns and some of whom are guns.
(And why not "people"? Well, while some of those groups are unquestionably the same "race-meaning-sophont-species" in their own eyes, they are definitely separated into different "peoples" in ways not dependent on phenotype. Just ask them, and try not to pick a side.)
