Uncanny Valley/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* Helen Vaughan from ''[[The Great God Pan]]'', probably one of the first [[Humanoid Abomination|Humanoid Abominations]] in modern fiction. She is described as quite attractive yet . . . off.

* In the novel ''[[Skinned]]'' by Robin Wasserman, when people get into fatal accidents, they are usually uploaded into the body of an android-like thing. These people are shunned because they look too perfect. Though to be fair, that was probably only one of the unconscious reasons. There were several social and religious factors involved (Like messing with God's Will, these people didn't have a soul, were fakes and copies...)

* This trope is all but [[Lampshaded]] with regard to [[Frankenstein's Monster|the creature]] in ''[[Frankenstein]]'', who may be the [[Ur Example]]. As described in the book, the creature looked much closer to human in ''Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus'' than he does in most of his film incarnations. In the book, the eponymous doctor believes his monster to be a work of art before he animates it, but once it lives and moves, he sees how horrible and inhuman it looks.

* Some of the more human antagonists in the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] invoke this, particularly in descriptions of such things as the [[The Shadow Over Innsmouth|Innsmouth]] Taint. [[Neil Gaiman]]'s take on this in "A Study in Emerald" inspires a subtle sort of pants-crapping unease in the narrator on seeing the body of [[Half-Human Hybrid|a member of the German royal family]].

** One word: [[The Shadow Over Innsmouth|Innsmouth]]. They have a bit of an "off" look, like they're inbred. {{spoiler|They're actually in''ter''bred with amphibians who practice sacrifice people to [[Religion of Evil|Father Dagon]].}}

* The Vord Queen in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' ''tries'' to act human and look like a [[Cute Monster Girl]], but mostly just succeeds in making everyone, even Invidia, want to hide under a bed somewhere.

{{quote|Look at her eyes. I don't think she's using them to see you with. They're just beautiful ornaments.}}

* Paolo Bacigalupi apparently has a ''[[Author Appeal|fetish]]'' for girls who fall into this category. The most blatant is the titular character of ''The Wind-Up Girl'', so called because she walks in a jerky manner like a wind-up toy. In-story, this is considered remarkably beautiful, but it's somewhat difficult to visualize how this could avoid falling into the Valley in real life. In-story, it sometimes does. It was also a deliberate design feature to make sure that the main character and others like her couldn't be mistaken for unmodified humans.

* The human-animal things in ''[[The Island of Dr. Moreau]]'' by H.G. Wells. Just reading about those things is disturbing. Reading about how they're created even more so, as Wells goes into just enough detail about the processes to be even more freaky.

* ''[[Zones of Thought|A Fire Upon the Deep]]''. The female human protagonist is watching a transmission from her homeworld, which has been taken over by an alien with god-like powers. She can clearly see that the human being used as a puppet/mouthpiece is acting strangely, but the aliens with her don't notice anything wrong with him because they're unfamiliar with human body language signals that we notice instinctively.

** If a character acts odd (for example, Ginny's overall behavior in ''Chamber of Secrets'', or teenaged Snape walking in a "twitchy manner that recalled a spider" in ''Order of the Phoenix''), keep your eye on him or her. And then, of course, there is the [[Our Zombies Are Different|Inferi]], which deliberately invoked this trope (because there is absolutely ''nothing'' right with a walking corpse). The way Voldemort is characterized in [[The Film of the Book|the movie]] also invokes this trope.

* Played straight in Neal Asher's ''[[Cormac]]'' novels with the Golem androids. Early in the series most Golem androids are absolutely perfect in their humanoid design, with god-like strength and god-like beauty. Humans are usually pretty disturbed by them in their perfection because it makes the androids feel LESS human, since real humans aren't perfect. Furthermore most non-combat Golems have inhibitors which stop them using their joints in impossible directions and from using strength far greater than even an enhanced human. Subverted when later models have purposeful imperfections (moles, limps, idiosyncrasies) to make them feel more human (but are still quite capable of tearing people, and other androids, limb from limb).

* In ''[[Jane Eyre]]'', Jane is the only person who recognizes that something is wrong with Mr Mason: "...I like his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being, at the same time, unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly...".

* In ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'', it is implied in Part II that Gulliver was found to be off at first by the Brobdingnagians although it can be argued that it completely falls into this trope because unlike most examples, it does not continue.

* Occasionally this trope's effects are felt in Niven's ''[[Ringworld]]'' novels, as the many hominid natives fall short of being [[Human Aliens]]. Usually it's the ones that are already creepy (ghouls, vampires) which give people the willies when they move their shoulders more loosely than expected or are found to have too small a skull.

{{quote|''the alloy of humanity that softened the godliness of the youth was lacking in the features of the stranger, awful and immobile in their beauty.''}}

* Ford Prefect from ''[[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' is described as unsettling because he doesn't blink nearly enough and his skin seems stretched too tight on his face.

** The pretties from the books series ''[[Uglies]]''; they're literally perfect with symmetrical faces and all, and they all look very nearly the same. Then there's the specials who add a whole new level of creepy with their "cold beauty".

* An interesting variation presents itself with Quasimodo in ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (novel)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'':

* [[Dashiell Hammett]] describes it quite well in ''The Dain Curse'' (1928):

{{quote|"There was warmth and there was beauty in her olive-skinned face, but except for the eyes, it was warmth and beauty that didn't seem to have anything to do with reality. It was as if her face were not a face, but a mask that she had worn until it had almost become a face. Even her mouth, which was a mouth to talk about, looked not so much like flesh as like a too perfect imitation of flesh, softer and redder and maybe warmer than genuine flesh, but not genuine flesh."}}

* Some of the pictures from ''[[Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future]]'' have disturbingly human faces. The Aquatics are particularly disturbing, because the rest of their bodies look more like cartoon manatees despite their realistic human face.