When I first got to thinking (as one does) about horses in space, I had in mind Earth horses traveling on spaceships and living on alien planets. There’s another side to them however, if one is a science-fiction fan, and that is the idea of the equinoid alien.
Writers have based their aliens, iconic and otherwise, on any and all species of terrestrial creatures, from lions to lizards (and dinosaurs) and even saguaro cacti. But horses have tended to make their way into space with few modifications, and I haven’t seen or heard of any spacefaring sentients based on horses.
(Yes, please, commenters: if you’ve found them, let us know about them.)
Centaurs, yes, but that’s a semi-humanoid variation. John Varley’s Titan, for example. Even, in a weird way, Larry Niven’s Puppeteers. But no horses as such.
One obstacle might be the fact that horses are hooved animals, and therefore (humans might think) severely limited in their ability to build and manipulate technology. Even the word “manipulate” implies hands and, more specifically, opposable thumbs. Hooves in contrast are literally blunt instruments.
Elephants get around this problem by having long, supple, extremely manipulable trunks with a “finger” or two on the end. Horses don’t have anything close to this, but their upper lips are amazingly flexible and extensible. They have a surprising degree of shall we say dexterity with their teeth as well. I have one who can untie people’s shoes (and he has proved that he knows exactly where to tug, which means he has a sense of the structure of a knot; he also understands English sentences, but that’s neither here nor there, here), and there are horses who have to be locked in with combination locks or padlocks because their lips and teeth can jigger latches and fasteners. Once one of these equine geniuses figures out how to undo it, he’s staged a jailbreak and headed for the feed room. And probably liberated all the other horses on the place as well.
So there’s potential for ability to develop and build technology as humans would conceive it. Probably machines would be large, with very large parts, and keys or levers operable by teeth and hooves. Building would in some ways be easier for equinoids than for preindustrial humans: horses are extremely strong, and can both pull and carry significant weights. Building pyramids, raising standing stones? No problem.
Building starships? Supposing the equinoid has the intelligence to conceive of all the essentials, from life support to propulsion to stellar navigation, she’ll quite probably manage to construct something to suit. Worldships and generation ships would make sense: lots of space to run, and lots of room to grow fodder, fertilized by the crew, with water cycled and recycled through both the crew and the on-board pasturage.
We don’t need to be constrained by the one-hooved model of equine, either. The original horse, the Eohippus or hyracotherium, was a small-dog-sized, five-toed animal. Modern horses keep vestiges of all five toes. They walk on the middle toe which is now the familiar hoof; the nail of a second toe, called the ergot, appears on the pastern joint above the hoof; and a third manifests as the chestnut or callosity up past the knee or just below the hock. The remaining two toes have essentially disappeared; there are faint remnants in the splint bones between the hooves and the knees or hocks.
There are legends of polydactyl horses in historical times—throwbacks with extra toes. Julius Caesar supposedly had such a horse, and a few have been documented in the past couple of centuries. There’s not much evident use in a terrestrial horse with spare toes, but an alien horse might evolve something resembling hands. Then she would have enhanced toolmaking (and using) capability.
Even if that doesn’t happen, there may be other ways to compensate for the lack of fingers and thumbs. Living tools, for example.
Humans and horses have a unique symbiosis: human cares for and feeds the horse, horse carries or pulls the human or helps plow the fields or log the woods. Unlike any other species of terrestrial animal, the horse is regularly and consistently ridden, and riding requires at least some degree of mental connection with the animal.
Now suppose we reverse the polarity. The horse is the one in charge. The rider, a primate or other smaller creature with good eyesight and dexterous hands, executes the horse’s commands. Originally this might involve planting fields of grass or grain, building storehouses for fodder and shelters for horses and their helpers, constructing containers for water and feed, fashioning harnesses, and so on. Later, with developing technology, horses might design and their helpers execute tools and machines and, eventually, starships.
This isn’t as improbable as it might sound. Horses, like dogs, do not have the anatomy for human speech, but they can certainly understand it. An equinoid with high intelligence would come up with ideas and technologies that her physical body might not be constructed to build—but that’s what tools are for.
Once I got to thinking about horse-as-brain, I realized that there are even more ubiquitous and much smaller creatures which might serve in the right circumstances. Horses are a magnet for flies and insects of all sorts. If, on our alien planet, our equinoids found a way to turn pests into an asset, they would have what amounted to swarms of living nanobots.
Think about what ants or bees could do under the control of a highly intelligent entity. Flies are far more random, but they do swarm, and if bred and eventually engineered for specific purposes, could build quite sophisticated mechanisms, all the way to computer parts. They might even, far along in the history of the species, build their own replacements: actual, mechanical nanobots that would, in turn, build starships.
Then we would have our spacefaring equinoids, and a complete planetary infrastructure to support them—though with time and expansion through the star roads, that infrastructure might move into space as well. Traveling planetoids and rogue moons as well as huge generation ships would be more than comfortable for a species that needs ample room to run.
Next time I’ll tackle the issue of psychology and culture, because now I’ve started, I can’t stop.
That’s worldbuilding for you. One thing leads to another leads to another, and before you know it you’ve built a universe. Populated, in this case, by equinoids—and if we’re writing science fiction for Earth humans, that means first contact somewhere along the way. And that, considering how humans feel about horses, would be a very interesting proceeding.
Top image: a direhorse from Avatar (2009).
Judith Tarr is a lifelong horse person. She supports her habit by writing works of fantasy and science fiction as well as historical novels, many of which have been published as ebooks by Book View Cafe. Her most recent short novel, Dragons in the Earth, features a herd of magical horses, and her space opera, Forgotten Suns, features both terrestrial horses and an alien horselike species (and space whales!). She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a blue-eyed spirit dog.
There’s tons of telepathic horses, why not telekinetic? Or magic for a fantasy race (there’s a particular show about ponies which goes this route). One doesn’t need hands if one can think at tools to make them work.
For symbiotic “hands” what were you thinking for the control mechanism? Telepathy or other mental communication? Scent? Actual speech or vocalizations? Gesture (tail flicks)?
What of the creatures from Sherri Tepper’s “Grass”? The equine stage of their life cycle epitomizes the steed in charge of the rider.
The “mounts” from Sherri Tepper’s Grass come to mind. Not so much horses as equine enough for invading humans to ride in a recreation of traditional European Fox Hunts, it is eventually revealed (SPOILER ALERT) that the “mounts” telepathically control the planet.
Urs (broadly) from David Brin’s Brightness Reef trilogy.
There are some intelligent “hippopotami” in Brian Aldiss’s deeply depressing Dark Light Years. And some much more cheerful bounding monopods with some assistance from a handed species in one of Arthur Clarke’s stories. And there are the symbiotic alliances in Poul Anderson (three species involved) – sorry, either Flandry or the Polesotechnic stories.
The K’Kree from the Traveller RPG are centaurs but I think that they fit the bill because they are psychologically very equine. They cannot bear to travel in units of less than a herd so their spaceships are huge one-room domes with hologram walls to make them look larger and the air is pumped full of the pheromones of thousands of other k’kree so that their senses tell them that the herd is larger.
There was a passing mention of intelligent equinoids in Fritz Lieber’s The Wanderer. Not much detail, just that their manipulative organs were folded away withing their hooves. We never actually saw them.
I think the nighthorses in C. J. Cherryh’s Cloud’s Rider & Rider at the Gate count as sentient equinoids. Humans don’t fully understand them, but they clearly have their own ideas and plans and help the humans out because they find them useful (For one thing, they brought bacon!)
(You’ll have to google all of these yourself, because Tor apparently isn’t allowing me to post links at all.)
Not exactly aliens (they originated on Earth before being banished to another realm), but Kaijudo gives us the Bronze Arm Tribe.
Marvel’s Beta Ray Bill is often described as “horse-like.”
The old BraveStarr cartoon included cyborg “Equestroids,” like Thirty/Thirty, who could transition between quadrupedal and bipedal forms.
And Star Wars has the Svivreni, the Nazzar, and the Thakwaash, as well as both Earth-style horses and ponies on Endor.
Of course, there’s also the slice of fandom that considers My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to be xenofiction about an either future or alien world ruled by pony-descended sentients (since those ponies have as much in common with real horses as humans do with monkeys).
For a different approach as to whether humans are the riders or the ridden, we have these two stories, one more fantasy and one more science fiction.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Twist. The Houyhnhnms are rational, equine beings and are masters of the land, in contrast to the Yahoos (name predates the Yahoo we know), savage humanoids who are basically beasts of burden. While Yahoos represent all that is bad about humans, Houyhnhnms have a settled, calm, reliable and rational society.
The Mount by Carol Emshwiller. Alien Hoots have been stranded on Earth for centuries and require mounts to ride as they have weak lower bodies. Humans have been domesticated as riding stock. They have been bred, trained and kept in stables to function as mounts for the Hoots. Those humans that have escaped try to free those in captivity, although not all of them want to be freed.
And for some other equine animation characters there are Doctor Whooves, Zerum Whooves (a darker version) and BoJack Horseman.
I kept scrolling down the comments in the hopes of seeing Acorna mentioned. But, alas. Anyway, technically, I suppose they’re unicorns, but I loved Anne McCaffrey’s unicorn girl, Acorna.
Although the centaurs of John Varley’s Gaea Trilogy (Titan, Wizard, Demon 1979 – 1984) only get a brief mention in the article, there were also the blue centaurs in Call Me Joe (1958) by Poul Anderson. They were avatars bodies living on the surface of Jupiter and operated through telepathic links from an orbital platform. Until they became self-aware and revolted. And the Gaea stories also have a planetary consciousness.
There were psychic horses in Piers Anthony’s Phase series. One was even a very important character, if I remember correctly.
There were also the Andalites from the animorphs series. They were more centaur like, but they dealt with the need to graze in space.
It’s fantasy, not science fiction, but the equines in Robin McKinley’s Pegasus are sentient. They have a complex society and tiny, weak but very dexterous hands on their wings, where the wing arm and wing fingers meet. They can converse and bond with humans but are not dependent on them, and they have distinctly non-human psychology.
Possible fictional tool-using equine appendages:
How about a very long, prehensile tail?
@15 I’m so glad you said tail.
Larry Niven’s Puppeteers with their 3 hooves in a tripod could fit the broader definition of an animal species – they live in giant overpopulated herd-like worlds.
The Architects of Hyperspace by Thomas R. McDonough has a race of Cow type beings that evolve much slower than humans but finally achieve space flight and create a super structure around a black hole. This story is long after they left, with humans as the main characters, but you do get to learn about them in the story.
The Fithp were Elephantine creatures. Not sure if they would count, but they were herd creatures.
I also vaguely recall a story about humans eating grass and becoming herd type animals resembling kangaroos. Now these were humans, using human tech after they made modifications to the controls, but they were herd animals after mutating. I have searched for the book, but can’t find it.
<I>Now suppose we reverse the polarity. The horse is the one in charge. The rider, a primate or other smaller creature with good eyesight and dexterous hands, executes the horse’s commands. </I>
Poul Anderson’s composite aliens in “The Rebel Worlds” work something like that, The horse equivalent, which looks something like a rhino, has to be linked to two other species, one of which is indeed primate-like and has hands, to form a collective, tripartite intelligence:
“<I>…each of these “nogas” does have the size, general build and horned nose of a rhino; but their skin is nearly hairless, slate-blue and smooth; they have no tails; their ears are big and fan-like; the shoulders extend sideways as small platforms; when a goose-like “krippo” and an ape-like “ruka” sit on the platforms and join their “tongues” to the noga’s extensible “tentacles,” then and only then is a rational Didonian present.</I> http://poulandersonscosmicenvironments.blogspot.sg/2014/09/didonians.html
@17: you’re thinking of Jack Chalker’s ‘Web of the Chozen’.
The classic Sci-Fi Board Game features the Whynom as a playable race – described as equines in space.
Marvel Comics has the Kymellians, an alien species based on horses. They’re more anthropomorphic, with three-fingered hands and hooves on their feet.
C.J. Cherryh wrote a bit about alien equoids as mentioned by IBookwyrme @8 above. Perhaps worth adding that the posited ecology prominently features something like broadcast telepathy. So humans need to ride a local creature to safely navigate a landscape full of predators that can play tricks like broadcasting “nope, no big toothy critter to see here, move along.”
Of course, given how bright (not to mention telepathic) those riding creatures are, the actual resemblance to horses seems rather suspect. Likely some minor edits are used to reassure those skittish humans and aid the process of domestication…
In Peter F. Hamilton’s “Night’s Dawn Trilogy,” the tyrathca are six-limbed equoids — not exactly horses, but definitely not centauroid in their conformation.
Here’s the Wikia entry, which omits a physical description, and — oh look, a fan page I contributed to 15 years ago, still active on Tripod.com. I provided the illustrations, but not for the tyrathca aren’t because I just couldn’t figure how to articulate the arms and twin-clamshell mouth. Wayne Barlowe, I’m not.
@9 Cybershark: My personal take on MLP:FIM is that Equestria occupies a magic-capable hex on the late Jack L. Chalker’s Well World. When designing new species, the Markovians were known for cribbing bauplans from each other, after all …
Charlie Stross’s equoids are probably pets of the eldritch horrors…..
They also eat meat, preferably fresh.
@23
I was racking my brains trying to remember a proper equine race in the Well World books. I think we’re stuck with only centaurs though. And giant deer, pegasi, and more weird mashup animals than you can shake a tentacle at.
Finally remembered! Tanya Huff has a race of sentient quadrupeds in the Valor series called the Polint.
in the novels from Anne McCaffrey/Elizabeth Moon/Jody Lynn Nye of the Planet Pirates trilogy, you have Bronthins, horselike gentle beings with very small hands and a great mind for mathematics.
A recurring theme in many minds. It seems many of us would like to be horses! My offering is A journey to Equitania (its on kindle) Most of the problems are solved by a chimera like state of human and pony, though perhaps the pony bit is strongest.
Ooh! While they’re not quite horses, I’d be interested in your thoughts on The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller?
I am in love with this series, combining the two things I love best in the world!
I wonder about gravity — specifically zero gravity. Would spacegoing horses be able to function well in zero G? Humans tend to bump into things, especially when learning to move around, in zero G. Horses have a lot more mass than humans, and collisions would potentially be a lot more serious.
Or would living in zero G be too difficult or uncomfortable or dangerous? Then their ships would need to be rotated to produce centrifugal gravity (something that can fairly easily be done but makes navigation rather more difficult.) Of course there is the old trick of presupposing the existence of artificial gravity fields of some sort with no need for spinning the ship, but that feels a little like cheating in this case — like the author never bothered to consider the possibilities of horses in zero G.
The Sparrow by Mary Doia has very horse like creatures. Not certain that they developed space crafts thought.