Physical strength is a trait shown in non-humanoids that is much more advanced and powerful compared to humans.  Physical strength is a form of power that is seen in machines and aliens in science fiction.  Strength and force have been driving factors for survival and dominance.  Characters and creatures are built in a fashion with supernatural strength that humans cannot meet.  This is seen dating back to 1903 when H.G. Wells created the massive Ironclads that easily defeated the formerly winning human army.  It tells of a big black monster, a land ironclad, climbing the hill toward the army (Wells).  This monstrous machine, one of many, then opened fire on the army.  Wells described the effect: The gunners were dropping in heaps about their guns. (Wells).  There was no use fighting the superior machines.  Only two shots were fired, the second was a hopeless miss (Wells).  The army ran.  Youd run if a thing like that turned up, like a prowling nightmare in the middle of the night, was the justification, and was all that needed to be said (Wells).  The machines were vastly stronger, and they easily overwhelmed the human army.  The theme of super-strong characters continues today in the popular Terminator series, where the antagonist, the Terminator, is an über-strong machine.  When in hand-to-hand combat, the Terminator is undoubtedly superior.  In a fight scene with a character named Matt, the enormous muscles of his [Matts] arms, which seem capable of bench pressing a Chrysler, strain and knot against the pressure of the killer's single arm (Cameron).  Through the course of the film, the Terminator rips a trucks door off its hinges and flings grown men like stuffed animals.  His strength gives him extreme advantage over the humans, whose strength is trivialized by comparison.

        Knowledge has become a leading characteristic in science fiction characters, most notably as information has become increasingly valued in recent years.  As knowledge has become more valued, science fiction characters reflect it in their higher levels of intelligence.  Knowledge makes one more able to gain and use power.  In the Terminator, a super machine is created with massive amounts of intelligence.  Accordingly, the Terminator is able to quickly deduce the best options to overpower and outmaneuver the antagonist, Sarah.  He looks through the phone book to find her name, and locates or calls each successive Sarah Conner.  When the Terminator is described, he is explained to be of a new order of intelligence (Terminator).  Later in the story, you see how the Terminator thinks: when he is in a hotel a hotel worker asks through the door Hey, buddy, you got a dead cat in there or what?, to which a screen through the Terminators perspective is shown with the options YES/NO, OR WHAT, GO AWAY, PLEASE COME BACK, FUCK YOU, [and] FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE (Terminator).  The last option then begins flashing, and the Terminator responds accordingly.  His intellect is shown in a different fashion later during a phone conversation with Sarah, where the Terminator speaks in a perfect simulation of her mother's voice (Cameron).  Such things, though possible in human, are not common.  The Terminator is shown as a super machine that can comprehend, analyze, and react faster and more effectively than humans, which shows notable superiority.

Some argue that machines and aliens are not superior or more powerful than humans are.  Humans are and have been the dominant race for millennia.  They site other stories, such as Bruce Sterlings Swarm, in which the title swarm is nothing more than a brainless mass of insects.  They are described to be essentially without intelligence (Sterling).  Intelligence among aliens is also doubted.  In A Martian Odyssey, a group of humans are talking about a martian, and one says that Hes [the alien is] daffy, I tell you What makes you think his intellect ranks with the human? (Weinbaum).  Such shows of confidence concerning human intellect and marginalizing of alien understanding express doubt over alien superiority.  That, coupled with the fact that the alien did not defeat or outsmart the human it came in contact with, shows that humans are not second-rate to aliens.

Humans, however, are often inferior to machines and aliens.  Humans are not perfect: machines are designed to be.  Even in Sterlings Swarm, the superior characters he meets with in the beginning are so intellectually advanced that mere facts do not concern them any more, as was seen when the said character explained that To prize and persue knowledge is an immature racial trait, (Sterling).  To such characters knowledge is no longer power because it is all but inherent.  In A Martian Odyssey, the martians were spoken of: The creatures were intelligent. (Weinbaum)  Tweel, a martian, understood and interacted with the main character, and upon reflection the human said that he, the human couldnt pick up a single idea of his [the aliens] and he learned six or seven words of mine. (Weinbaum).  This shows not only that the alien had intelligence, but that it had the ability to surpass that of the human.

Power is an overwhelming ideal in science fiction.  Power is shown in various ways.  Power of force and intellect are commonly themes in science fiction literature and films.  Whether it is force or intellect, power will be exhumed by characters in a way that parallels the desires of the society.  As the desires of society change, so do the forms of power.  Aliens and machines have attributes that reflect this power, often to a greater degree than do humans. Power will forever remain a changing and integral part of science fiction literature that will be manipulated and exaggerated in aliens and machines.

Works Cited

Amazon.com: Editorial Reviews: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. 21 September, 2003. Amazon.com, Inc. 21 September, 2003 <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1551801892/reviews/102-5363230-9700146#15518018925000>.

Cameron, James.  Terminator. Script, 20 April 1983.  15 Oct. 2003 < http://www.doublemirrors.com/terminator/Tscript>.

Sterling, Bruce.  Swarm.  The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories. Ed. Tom Shippey.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Terminator. Dir. James Cameron. Prod. Gale Anne Herd. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michal Biehn and Linda Hamilton.  MGM Studios, 1984, 1991, 2003.

Weinbaum, Stanley G.  A Martian Odyssey. The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories. Ed. Tom Shippey.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Wells, H. G. The Land Ironclads. The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories. Ed. Tom Shippey.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.