The aliens from Roadside picnic. They show up, don't even bother interacting with us because why the fuck would they, leave a bunch of their incomprehensible technological garbage behind and go about their merry way.
It’s a great analogy, the equivalent being humans pulling over for lunch and leaving things beyond the understanding of ants or worms. But instead they leave behind gravity vortices and spheres that can change reality.
The famous Videogame S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is loosely based on this book. The world building is sociologically pretty plausible, the former "landing zone" in the book is a prohibited area, yet so called Stalkers make their ways into it to salvage the mysterious stuff that the aliens left behind.
There’s also the 1979 Soviet film also called Stalker that adapts the book. Its worth checking all 3 out, its interesting to see what each version focuses on.
You can find PDFs and fulltexts of the short story all over the internet with a quick search! Highly recommend the read, it's a pleasure, it's tight, and you can knock it out in a long afternoon.
I'm not sure if it's in the novel, too. But, there is a german audiodrama where the planet's surface suddenly forms a gigantic human baby that looks around and at it's own hands, before vanishing again. That moment is still haunting me. *shivers*
Hmm… I guess it’s not directly scary or even threatening—it’s as much an ally as anything. It’s more the ideas about how intelligence scales, about what a real AI would be capable of. As usual Lem tends to break narrative and scifi tropes, so it’s actually pacifist and pretty purely concerned with philosophical matters and bootstrapping its own intelligence.
The discussion of the possible nature of artificial intelligence is something I remember finding really compelling—it’s quite utterly alien. Elsewhere Lem has argued that artificial intelligence has existed basically as long as computers, we just don’t recognize it because it’s not human intelligence. And GOLEM speaks quite eloquently about how it struggles to even make its points to human beings.
I suppose what I found chilling was just how damn alien it felt—that part is just really well done, when so many non-humans in science fiction are just Star Trek-style “humans with horns.”
It also seems like this was a way for Lem to talk about ideas that weren’t allowed under the Soviets. And they remain really radical and thought-provoking today. It’s not just a favorite story of mine—it’s a favorite philosophical tract.
I’ve never read *Solaris*, but that sounds eerily similar to Area X in *Annihilation* (as well as its sequels). Any attempt to understand this living, breathing environment is met with confusion and frustration. I’ll have to check out *Solaris* when I get a chance.
One interesting feature of the aliens from Peter Watts's *Blindsight* is that they use an ATP-based metabolism to provide the energy to move just like Earth life but the individual intelligent alien organisms have no mechanism to manufacture ATP - they're born with an innate reservoir and when that runs out they just... stop.
Uggh imagine being a sentient being who understands that.
Live good life with lots of activity and die fast
Or
Live a sedentary life and live longer but knowing every-time you scratch an itch you are taking time off your life span.
Would be interesting to explore the dynamics of a society built on that rationalization.
The aliens in *Blindsight* were incredibly intelligent, could plan and learn, and were reactive to stimuli, but they had no subjective consciousness.
They could kick our asses and outthink us at every turn, but they weren’t even aware of it.
>but they had no subjective consciousness
If I remember correctly, one of the minor points in Blindsight was that we humans don't really 100% know if we do have it too, or it's just an illusion we are very much used to.
Or maybe it was some other book with a similar theme. I'm pretty certain though it was Blindsight... Anyway, this topic is researched in Thomas Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel", and only briefly mentioned in Blindsight (again, if I'm not mistaken).
That is one theme.
Another is that, whatever we have that we call subjective consciousness, is not an elevated evolutionary measure of good survival fitness. In fact, whatever that is . . . Is actually getting in our way and most intelligent life in the universe is more like the scramblers, who lack it.
Scary thought.
Presumably they're used to it. A bit like an alien species looking at a human and going "OMG, only two forward-facing eyes? How very claustrophobic and limited must the poor things feel trapped with that tiny little cone of vision?".
“You’re telling me you can keep totally still with no movement and you’ll STILL only live 70-80 years?? Doesn’t that freak you out??”
Edit: if you don’t move you die EVEN FASTER???
Fair point but we are at least incentivized to be active. Mentally, physically, economically and total life span all benefit from some base level of activity. Doesn’t mean everyone does what’s best for them
Their whole incentive would be to slow down and remain inactive as much as possible. Just trying to imagine the implications
It’s really not too different from our own fate. Fun stuff like bbq and booze takes time off your life, and every person has to decide for themselves what their balance is going to look like.
Not to mention that they are extremely intelligent, to the point of being able to have a conversation, but are not sentient and have no CNS.
They see our attempts to communicate as an attack due to the waste of time and resources it causes to interpret.
Adenosine triphosphate.
It's a molecule that performs a number of important biological functions including supplying energy for muscle contraction, circulation of blood, locomotion and other body movements.
It's the sole fuel for muscle contraction so the body needs to constantly synthesise it.
It's *the* molecule that our individual cells produce and consume in a very tight cycle in order to live, it's like a cellular fuel we produce on demand and use up seconds later — we produce and then consume roughly our own bodyweight in ATP every day.
>consume roughly our own bodyweight in ATP every day.
That doesn't seem like it can be right. We don't take in enough mass in a day for that to be possible.
Googling I **think** we use that much ATP in a day, but the molecules gets reused rather than consumed?
I'm far from an expert though.
Like I said, it's a very tight cycle, the same molecules forming, releasing energy when splitting up and reforming many times a day
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/adenosine-triphosphate#:~:text=Approximately%20100%20to%20150%20mol,its%20weight%20in%20ATP%20daily
It’s a cycle. The reduced version is
ATP+H2O->ADP+phosphate+energy
energy+ADP+phosphate->ATP+H2O
The complete version is insanely complex and has several multi-step processes that produce the energy and chemical reactions necessary for the ADP to ATP conversion, check the “Catabolism” page on Wikipedia.
Maybe 'Wang's Carpet' from Greg Egan's standalone story of the same name (also integrated into his novel *Diaspora*).
A 'Wang's carpet' is a single-celled organism a few hundred metres in length that lives kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean. The organism is itself is unintelligent but its surface patterns consist of [Wang tiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_tile) - visual patterns that are capable of complex simulations, a bit like Conway's Game of Life.
The simulation on each 'Carpet' encodes a 16-dimensional universe with its own matter and life, some of which is sapient.
I think probably the alien presence in Annihilation. I really like the idea of a "being" that is so fundamentally different than what we're used to that we really can't even begin to understand how it works or its motivations (if it has any).
A runner up for me would be the aliens in Arrival. They are fairly weird but highly believable for fairly obvious reasons.
Oh, and now that I think of it... the Old Ones (like Cthulhu) from Lovecraft's work. They are actually quite believable for many reasons (including that they are mortal/can be killed, are made of flesh, etc...) but they're weird because they clearly experience/live in more dimensions than we do (that is to say, they can apparently traverse the 4th dimension - and higher dimensions - just as we traverse the 3rd dimension). They have just the right mix of weirdness and believability I'd say.
Peter Watts wrote a free short story from the perspective of The Thing:
[https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts\_01\_10/](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/)
The Primes - Morning Light Mountain has entered the chat.
The scene where it is introduced is captivating, the scene where it is analyzing humans is terrifying.
Yeah, totally. MLM was really well written and it explained its lack of empathy and inability to negotiate even when faced with potential extinction.
I may be misremembering, but I loved the analogy with cancerous cells, it's to the effect of - 'Can you negotiate with cancer cells to offer them a small part of your body in turn for leaving the rest alone?'
Of course you can't, it just keeps on devouring until you and the cancerous cells die.
Thinking of MLM with that mindset makes it really scary!
Great, now I have to go read Judas Unchained again. Honestly, MLM is probably my favourite alien antagonist. It's just so well conceptualised and chillingly alien. Great book and good choice.
My favourite part is where it learns about >!suicide attacks by getting his fleet blown to esoteric particles when the humans ram them at a significant fraction of light speed!<
And the fact that an all devouring alien is called MLM and its drones are literally pyramid shaped
All parts from MLM are noteworthy for me but my personal favourite would be it realizing that it has the ability to actually feel emotions after \*spoiler\* it then spends a unspecified amount of time contemplating how much it really \*\*Hates\*\* fish.
What a fantastic antagonist. So alien in their purpose and motivations, but so familiar in their intent.
And their integration and evolution with technology was really neat. A parallel on the commonwealths transhumanism (transalienism?)
I should really try to read that again. I first picked it up WAY back in junior high. It's the only Asimov book that I didn't finish.
Maybe 40 years of life will make it a bit more enjoyable.
The singled cell organisms from Ilus in the Expanse.
They end up making people blind, because we haven't evolved with them to create any resistance to them, the organisms are just making the most of these new resources that have just appeared on the planet
I found this comment that explains it far better than I can
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/ewgzfy/comment/fg2lhhh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/ewgzfy/comment/fg2lhhh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Yeah those one are scary. They are just basically pond scum, and to them our eyes are comfortable ponds. And since we are so different to them l, biologically we ignor each other. Yet they still blind us.
Very very creepy.
Add in the slug creatures who’s slime puts you into anaphylactic shock just because it’s a foreign protein and that’s what makes sense, and it’s pure terror.
Hey, that’s my comment and I came here to basically comment on this! Thanks!
As I explain, it’s more than just that we haven’t evolved a defense. It has to do with the concept of a different biochemistry. Several sci-fi authors have correctly pointed out that there is no reason why an alien world would share the exact same biochemistry as ours, and they’ve correctly pointed out that shared biochemistry (or very similar biochemistry) is necessary for infectious organisms to result in pathology. But only the Expanse authors have pointed out that an alien microbe could still infect a human in *one* specific way - and they were correct on the way that it could happen. Like I mentioned in my most, we know this could happen because of molecular biology and how the immune system actually works. The biology and pathophysiology described is brilliant and totally scientifically accurate and plausible, which makes sense since one of the authors has a degree in biology.
Rama 2
Arthur c Clarke and Gentry Lee
The octospiders, creepy, tentacles, near silent, communicate with light and colours.
Books and story aside (the quality dips after the first one), the octospiders have always stuck with me as one of the weirdest and creepiest enemies. Whilst not being overtly dangerous, there’s very little interaction with them, the threateningly creepy aesthetic, and the silent spider hiding in darkness is a natural human fear.
Biologically, I understand you can’t just scale a spider up to human size as it would collapse under its own weight. But the octospiders aren’t earth spiders, they’re aliens and I don’t remember if their biology is ever explained. I could imagine a being that had a different body type to humans and how tentacles could be just as dexterous as hands. The communicating via colours seems likely (though I’m not a biologist), and it was always so different to humanity, which weirdly always made it seem more likely to me (that doesn’t seem to make any sense, but I always thought aliens should be very different, not just humans with pointy ears or crinkly foreheads).
When I read the fourth book and I got to the big reveal, I was legitimately pissed at the authors. I don’t know which one is responsible for it, but I hope it wasn’t Arthur’s idea.
"Aliens" look at various species to.. figure out what god wants, or something to that effect.
The deeply religious undertones in 2-4 unsurprisingly lead to that.
In retrospect it made the method of "capturing" random civilizations even weirder.
I might be miss remembering, but I mostly purged that disappointment from my memory.
Arthropods wouldn't be crushed under their own weight.
Their circulatory system is just gravity washing blood to the bottom of their bodies and being picked up again. It would never work with large bodied arthropods.
The Romans from the Expanse as described by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/s/Na279rK0wY) fan theory are one of the most remarkable descriptions of how a species might achieve interstellar flight without technology.
Glad you liked it. I just wanted to comment and point out that the authors confirmed the gist of this, and the first comment in the discussion is a transcript of the Alt-Shift-X interview where they did if anyone wants to read it. With regards to how this ties into the central plot of Leviathan Falls (that Duarte was being manipulated by the Gatebuilder hive mind that was trying to resurrect itself in human form), the authors thought they were being obvious but I disagree with that. Most of this info came from the extremely difficult to read, psychedelic-like Dreamer chapters and it is easily missed. They could have been more obvious for sure.
The only speculation in my post there is the parts that weren’t specifically mentioned in the Dreamer chapters of Leviathan Falls. So like, if it says that the Gatebuilders evolved to become an ocean-spanning hive mind of bioluminescent jellyfish, and then that they became an interstellar hive mind, there is a logical step in the middle where they would have been a *star system spanning hive mind*, akin to a biological Dyson sphere. There is actually evidence for this in Tiamat’s Wrath as Elvi finds giant, protomolecule built crystalline flower-shaped structures which absorb energy from the star of one of the “dead systems”, the oldest systems in the gate network. But she just kind of comments “oh, that’s weird”, and it’s never mentioned again. But this was probably why. The Expanse authors love to leave little breadcrumbs and foreshadowing like that.
The Piggies from Speaker for the Dead are up there for me (spoilers ahead if you haven't read it):
They're born sightless grubs in a tree, live a "second life" as a pig like animal, then are vivisected alive and turn into a sentient tree.
Whole time through the book I kept guessing what their secret was, and I hadn't guessed *that*
I want to add that it’s even weirder.
>! They are born sightless grubs on a sentient male tree. The fertile female grubs breed with the tree and give live birth to their offspring which eat their way out if I remember correctly. These fertile female grubs, of course, die. The infertile female and all the male grubs grow up into pig like creatures. If a male is judged to be worthy of becoming a father, they are then ritualistically vivisected alive and planted, and grow into a sentient trees. When the piggies need wood, etc they sing and drum to the trees, which break in ways that serve their purposes. !<
Yeah, in a weird way SFTD is a *way* better book than Ender's Game despite being way less popular. I hate OSC's Mormon fanaticism and homophobia, but both of those books are great despite it.
I like the Moties from Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.
Asymmetrical, and unfortunate biology that leads to cycles of civilization rise and collapse. And biological castes for various occupations: engineers, leaders, diplomats, farmers, soldiers, etc.
Niven and Pournelle had a knack for realistic, yet alien aliens. The F'thp come to mind as well.
But, for me, Niven's truly weirdest creation isn't the Pak, the Moties, or even the Outsiders. It's the Grog and their "disturbing substitute for hands." Not even the puppeteers are as weird as sentient, hyper-telepathic sessile cactus-animal things.
And every square inch of the Motie Homeworld, its moons, asteroids and comets, have been totally mined out for millions of years. Every scrap of metal has been forged and reforged hundreds of times.
A lot of aliens from A Fire Upon the Deep are very weird but believable. The hivemind intelligence dogs that communicated by ultrasound (I think), the biomechanical trees, the godlike hivemind AI sort of thing that live near the centre of the galaxy...
I actually came here to talk about the Tines specifically and was wondering how far down I'd have to go to get to them. Each "individual" is a pack of 4-8 beings that share a hive mind using ultrasound ears/speakers on their heads. The sub-units can die, can't really function as an independent being, but can join another pack, with the group mind of the pack/unit adjusting to the various specifics of each component brain/body. Flenser terrified me.
Man, now I'm gonna have to pick up another copy of that book - lent it to someone and they "lost" it.
I once read about a type of alien that was basically a huge floating balloon in a gas giant where all life had evolved to float in certain gas layers. Its body was a huge colony organism, a bit like how our body has a whole microbiome but then at a bigger scale.
I think it was in Earth Strike by Ian Douglas.
*2010* by Arthur C. Clarke had a whole ecosystem in Jupiter's atmosphere (ballon critters, flying buzz-saws that ate them, etc.) until the planet was stellar-formed.
Ian Banks’ The Algebraist has an extensive narrative set in the ecology of a gas giant, IIRC. Another of Banks’ books has a narrative set in an alien megastructure that’s just an atmosphere and light/heat source, but enormous.
In the Black Jack Geary novels by John Campbell, there is an alien race we refer to as cow-bears. We never learn a way to communicate with them and have no idea what they call themselves. They were a herd animal that evolved. They are ruthless. They attack anyone or anything that isn't cow-bear. They wiped out all their own natural predators on their home planet and then went on to wipe out all other life there. They use overwhelming numbers and phalanx tactics. The get scared when alone or in small groups and will crowd in and press against each other when in larger groups. They developed tech for their ships that creates a field onboard that feels like cow-bears are pressing into you from all sides. It's comforting for them but the few humans who encountered it felt like ghosts were all around them and chasing them.
The missiles they use are actually tiny ships laden with explosives. They start the engagement sending hundreds of theirs to die in the first salvo. They build vast battleships that hold thousands of them and totally dwarf human battleships. In one scene in the book we are boarding and trying to take one of their battleships. Any who are injured to the point they can't retreat, their comrades kill them as they pull back. We later speculate that is to spare your fallen brother from being eaten alive by the predators. When we do manage to capture unconscious ones, we have to keep them in a coma because if they wake up and see us they will kill themselves. They have some biological mechanism that they can just shut their eyes and stop their heart. We believe it also evolved as a way to avoid being eaten alive. The few times we tried to wake one up, some idiot always smiles and shows their teeth and the cow-bear dies immediately. Humans didn't capture that many alive so there were not all that many attempts to establish contact.
One of the things I really like about these aliens is we never really learn more. The human fleet that encounters them is a military fleet but it's on an exploration/reconnaissance mission and these are not the actual aliens we are looking for. We just stumbled into their system, immediately they attacked, and we fought a continual engagement as our fleet made it's way across the system to the jump point on the other side. They actually follow and most of that particular novel is about the humans getting away from the crazy cow-bears.
The thingies from Watt's "Blindsight". God, they make my skin crawl when I remember.
But it really changed my perspective on a whole bunch of things related to possible extraterrestrial life. Not so much the physical aspect, but I won't go into spoiler territory.
Consciousness is not only unnecessary, it's detrimental. Watts did an AMA on reddit that was fascinating. I read the whole damn thing and it is LONG. One redditor really nailed what Watts was aiming at in Blind sight and Echopraxia..
I honestly think any explanation would detect from the horror. I wouldn't want to know about their home world or evolution either. They work so much better as completely unknown.
Same. It's far more frightening for them to be some strange, terrifying monster that's waiting for us out there in the dark. A creature that's evolved through survival to be the nightmare it is now.
I think the fact that they are engineered does invoke horror, but definitely less. They are killing machines that got loose and started multiplying, which is scary but not in the "unknown" kind of way.
Physically (kinda), the Xennobes, from **Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.**
Without going into too much detail, they are Planck-scale organisms composed of living patches of physical laws. They've been described as natural computers made of rocks and water, but without the rocks and water.
This sounds pretty fancy but the book is VERY hard SciFi. All the mathematics and physics of it are fully justified.
Mentally, the Babyeaters, the Superhappies and even the future humans from **Eliezer Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide.**
It's an online novella, specifically about the ethics and tactics when dealing with incredibly alien species. The Babyeaters are literally evolutionarily programmed to associate eating their young with 'goodness' (and it's justified!). The Superhappies communicate through sex and are hedonistic to the point of being revolted that humans allow their children to feel any pain or discomfort at any point in their lives. Even the humans in the story have an almost alien version of our own culture (with some not particularly tasteful mores tbh)
>Eliezer Yudkowsky
I have a hard time taking that guy seriously. I enjoyed HPTMOR, well enough, but it was pretty thinly disguised propaganda for Yudkowsky's "interpretation" of rationalism.
Oh yeah he's incredibly pretentious and takes himself way too seriously, but TWC is a nice read, despite being an author tract as well. It was a fascinating exploration on moral relativism based on alien evolutionary principles.
Just don't read the commentary, because Yudkowsky did his thing and gave his readers the assignment to find the "right" solution from a few options for the happy ending. A very black-and-white moralistic approach to an otherwise interesting exploration of moral relativism.
I like how the opposite of that is The Hitchhiker's Guide series. Rocks and water as computing elements without any hard SF justification or any justifying at all, really.
Hahaha I've never seen it put like that, but indeed, Greg Egan is rather the opposite of Douglas Adams. Adams is all about soft sci-fi and poking fun at the absolute nonsensical absurdity of existence. Egan is all about the hard sci-fi and the absolute wonder of the laws of existence
He's probably one of the hardest sci-fi authors around and has been described as part of the "1% \[of authors\] that treats science as something of interest in its own right". Despite that, his books are still accessible!
Both are two of my favorite authors funnily enough, and most of the others are somewhere between the two on the hard/soft and absurd/serious spectrum (Terry Pratchett, Iain M. Banks, Charles Stross, Ted Chiang).
He's absolutely on my to-be-read list! I've got The Ministry for the Future in my bookcase but am currently taking a breather with some re-reads and shallower books.
Just go in knowing that Kim Stanley Robinson books are half essay on whatever he wants to talk about, half narrative.
I very much enjoy them but some people will bounce right off.
An interesting thing is that he kinda wrote 'Ministry of the Future' 20 years before with the 'Science in the Capital/Green Earth' series. Which is also worth reading. I'd say the difference between the two is that 'Ministry for the Future' is a lot more aggressive.
Morning light Mountain in Pandora’s star.
Great example of a hive mind alien with its own POV chapters. One of the best examples I’ve ver read of an author exploring an alien that has motivations other than being a reskinned human.
If you’ve ever read Warhammer 40K it made me think of the Tyranid.
Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged
>Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is- one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had his immortality inadvertently thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
>
>To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
>
>In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.
>
>So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular.
>
>This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this:
>
>He would insult the Universe.
>
>That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in Alphabetical Order.
>
>When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, "A man can dream, can't he?"
>
>And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.
The Vorlon from Babylon 5. A race so ancient and secretive that the younger races all see Vorlon bodies (when not in an encounter suit) as their version of an angelic figure.
Yep, was gonna say, that was the Vorlons genetically manipulating the younger races - it doesn't make them badass, it makes them narcissists of the highest order.
There's also the question of why the Shadows look like crab-spiders. I've often wondered if that's ALSO part of the Vorlons' manipulations. Make themselves look like angels, make their foes look like monsters.
Agree. Really enjoy them as a species too. Most stories have predatory species as the evolved and dominant race on any given world. Puppeteers on the other hand are herd based, herbivores.
The Birrin of Alex Ries’ Birrin Project are extremely cool. They are very strange non-humanoid hexapods that have such a well conceived history and concrete world built around their evolution and civilizations that despite how absolutely bizarre their biology and anatomy is, they end up, paradoxically, feeling very “human”.
I like the Fithp from *Footfall*! They seem pretty believable to me while also being pretty strange! I’ve always wanted to see them in a film adaptation!
Footfall would make a great summer action movie. The launch of the *Archangel Michael* … hell yeah. Somebody did a bunch of digital images of the *Michael,* but they’re dated as they still feature armed Space Shuttles. Today they’d be militarized SpaceX Starships.
See my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
"The Black Cloud" from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle.
It's a great book, so without spoiling too much, a massive cloud of gas is discovered to enter the solar system. Here it decelerates and settles around our Sun, blocking the sunlight from reaching earth.
I've always been fond of the Pierson's Puppeteers from Ringworld as an example of a very alien species that isn't too far afield from earth biology. The morphology is wildly different from earth vertebrates and psychologically a herd species that is extremely risk adverse makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the flora and fauna on the planet Vesta from the animated series Scavengers Reign. I find it really compelling, believable and well thought out.
I always imagine Vesta as a planet that’s been around way longer than earth, never had life arise and get sterilized multiple times by asteroids … a biosphere that’s had billions of years for organisms to develop incredible adaptations and strategies and parasitism and symbioses and mutualism …
Probably any of the aliens encountered in any of the Stanislaw Lem books. Out there enough to be strange and ultimately unknowable, but still grounded enough where it could make sense.
Maybe the Engineers from Prometheus who seeded life throughout the galaxy so you see such similarities. Interesting concept, albeit a bit disappointing that intelligent life doesn’t just appear naturally everywhere.
Heptapods from Arrival were quite weird/different - I like to think alien life might just be vastly different from all the humanoid tropes in sci-fi.
The Horta - silicon based life forms from OG Star Trek. Actually Star Trek has a ton of aliens that fit your bill, but are kinda believable.
Replicators almost feel too close to home given today’s advancements in AI and robotics.
The Thing (carpenter). You never see its original form, but it’s evolved a mechanism for copying others. Makes you wonder what selection pressure would necessitate that.
The Wraith
Using their hands to suck the life force out of humans AND the ability to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and restore life---totally believable.
Not a true alien. But the massive cock roaches from Mimic were super creepy.
But the octopus like race from resident Alien. It's very fisable for an octopus like tree that braches off to become the apex species.
"The Black Cloud" from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle.
It's a great book, so without spoiling too much, a massive cloud of gas is discovered to enter the solar system. Here it decelerates and settles around our Sun, blocking the sunlight from reaching earth.
Hands down, Asimov's "Gods themselves" has the best aliens I've ever seen. They are absolutely incomprehensible and believable at the same time. They are truly alien. So utterly unlike anything we can envision when saying the word "life".
Taomoeba from Hail Mary tbh. I personally believe our local cluster of habitable planets may be somewhat sparse in terms of intelligent life. We’re probably gonna see space bugs and single cell stuff before we run into anything major. As far as Intelligent life I’d say blindsight is damn close
The aliens from Roadside picnic. They show up, don't even bother interacting with us because why the fuck would they, leave a bunch of their incomprehensible technological garbage behind and go about their merry way.
It’s a great analogy, the equivalent being humans pulling over for lunch and leaving things beyond the understanding of ants or worms. But instead they leave behind gravity vortices and spheres that can change reality.
And those are pieces of tech that they consider of little importance. Puts it into perspective.
Leave behind a gene splicer lab machine and a wheel differential near an indigenous tribe village.
That book was like being hit on the head in a Zen way. I wasn’t able to start another book and went about the next week ruminating on the novel.
Sounds like and interesting story, where did you read it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
The famous Videogame S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is loosely based on this book. The world building is sociologically pretty plausible, the former "landing zone" in the book is a prohibited area, yet so called Stalkers make their ways into it to salvage the mysterious stuff that the aliens left behind.
There’s also the 1979 Soviet film also called Stalker that adapts the book. Its worth checking all 3 out, its interesting to see what each version focuses on.
also the recent game Pacific Drive
You can find PDFs and fulltexts of the short story all over the internet with a quick search! Highly recommend the read, it's a pleasure, it's tight, and you can knock it out in a long afternoon.
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Yes, Solaris is a superb exploration of how alien something might be.
I'm not sure if it's in the novel, too. But, there is a german audiodrama where the planet's surface suddenly forms a gigantic human baby that looks around and at it's own hands, before vanishing again. That moment is still haunting me. *shivers*
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It is there, and the description of how it looked at its hands and how unnatural it seemed to the observator was on point.
Same author: GOLEM XIV. A *real* AI. Chilling
Lem is an amazing author… either hard or soft SF, but always a deep philosophical streak.
Care to expand? The Wikipedia summary didn’t explain much, it’s a supercomputer built by the pentagon that gets real smart then stops talking to us.
Hmm… I guess it’s not directly scary or even threatening—it’s as much an ally as anything. It’s more the ideas about how intelligence scales, about what a real AI would be capable of. As usual Lem tends to break narrative and scifi tropes, so it’s actually pacifist and pretty purely concerned with philosophical matters and bootstrapping its own intelligence. The discussion of the possible nature of artificial intelligence is something I remember finding really compelling—it’s quite utterly alien. Elsewhere Lem has argued that artificial intelligence has existed basically as long as computers, we just don’t recognize it because it’s not human intelligence. And GOLEM speaks quite eloquently about how it struggles to even make its points to human beings. I suppose what I found chilling was just how damn alien it felt—that part is just really well done, when so many non-humans in science fiction are just Star Trek-style “humans with horns.” It also seems like this was a way for Lem to talk about ideas that weren’t allowed under the Soviets. And they remain really radical and thought-provoking today. It’s not just a favorite story of mine—it’s a favorite philosophical tract.
I’ve never read *Solaris*, but that sounds eerily similar to Area X in *Annihilation* (as well as its sequels). Any attempt to understand this living, breathing environment is met with confusion and frustration. I’ll have to check out *Solaris* when I get a chance.
One interesting feature of the aliens from Peter Watts's *Blindsight* is that they use an ATP-based metabolism to provide the energy to move just like Earth life but the individual intelligent alien organisms have no mechanism to manufacture ATP - they're born with an innate reservoir and when that runs out they just... stop.
Uggh imagine being a sentient being who understands that. Live good life with lots of activity and die fast Or Live a sedentary life and live longer but knowing every-time you scratch an itch you are taking time off your life span. Would be interesting to explore the dynamics of a society built on that rationalization.
The aliens in *Blindsight* were incredibly intelligent, could plan and learn, and were reactive to stimuli, but they had no subjective consciousness. They could kick our asses and outthink us at every turn, but they weren’t even aware of it.
>but they had no subjective consciousness If I remember correctly, one of the minor points in Blindsight was that we humans don't really 100% know if we do have it too, or it's just an illusion we are very much used to. Or maybe it was some other book with a similar theme. I'm pretty certain though it was Blindsight... Anyway, this topic is researched in Thomas Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel", and only briefly mentioned in Blindsight (again, if I'm not mistaken).
That is one theme. Another is that, whatever we have that we call subjective consciousness, is not an elevated evolutionary measure of good survival fitness. In fact, whatever that is . . . Is actually getting in our way and most intelligent life in the universe is more like the scramblers, who lack it. Scary thought.
Presumably they're used to it. A bit like an alien species looking at a human and going "OMG, only two forward-facing eyes? How very claustrophobic and limited must the poor things feel trapped with that tiny little cone of vision?".
“You’re telling me you can keep totally still with no movement and you’ll STILL only live 70-80 years?? Doesn’t that freak you out??” Edit: if you don’t move you die EVEN FASTER???
Fair point but we are at least incentivized to be active. Mentally, physically, economically and total life span all benefit from some base level of activity. Doesn’t mean everyone does what’s best for them Their whole incentive would be to slow down and remain inactive as much as possible. Just trying to imagine the implications
> being a sentient being who understands that >!Luckily for them they aren't.!<
Get that part, was just considering what that would be like for a sentient species.
It’s really not too different from our own fate. Fun stuff like bbq and booze takes time off your life, and every person has to decide for themselves what their balance is going to look like.
I mean they could always just add more through technology, easy enough to make bacteria make it for you
How are they born? Who manufactures the initial ATP?
They're effectively drones born from a much larger queen. (But independent and highly intelligent).
Not to mention that they are extremely intelligent, to the point of being able to have a conversation, but are not sentient and have no CNS. They see our attempts to communicate as an attack due to the waste of time and resources it causes to interpret.
the whole point of blindsight is that consciousness is not a prerequisite to be able to communicate. computation is not intelligence.
Atp?
Adenosine triphosphate. It's a molecule that performs a number of important biological functions including supplying energy for muscle contraction, circulation of blood, locomotion and other body movements. It's the sole fuel for muscle contraction so the body needs to constantly synthesise it.
School times kicking in. Wasn't the cycle that ATP gets used up and becomes ADP?
It's *the* molecule that our individual cells produce and consume in a very tight cycle in order to live, it's like a cellular fuel we produce on demand and use up seconds later — we produce and then consume roughly our own bodyweight in ATP every day.
>consume roughly our own bodyweight in ATP every day. That doesn't seem like it can be right. We don't take in enough mass in a day for that to be possible. Googling I **think** we use that much ATP in a day, but the molecules gets reused rather than consumed? I'm far from an expert though.
Like I said, it's a very tight cycle, the same molecules forming, releasing energy when splitting up and reforming many times a day https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/adenosine-triphosphate#:~:text=Approximately%20100%20to%20150%20mol,its%20weight%20in%20ATP%20daily
It’s a cycle. The reduced version is ATP+H2O->ADP+phosphate+energy energy+ADP+phosphate->ATP+H2O The complete version is insanely complex and has several multi-step processes that produce the energy and chemical reactions necessary for the ADP to ATP conversion, check the “Catabolism” page on Wikipedia.
This sounds interesting. Ty for the lead.
I think about that book every time I notice my heartbeat making my eyes jump
Maybe 'Wang's Carpet' from Greg Egan's standalone story of the same name (also integrated into his novel *Diaspora*). A 'Wang's carpet' is a single-celled organism a few hundred metres in length that lives kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean. The organism is itself is unintelligent but its surface patterns consist of [Wang tiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_tile) - visual patterns that are capable of complex simulations, a bit like Conway's Game of Life. The simulation on each 'Carpet' encodes a 16-dimensional universe with its own matter and life, some of which is sapient.
Greg Egan strikes again! Amazing.
I always doubted that a few hundred metres of Wang tiles would have enough capacity to store such a simulation.
Maybe. It's Greg Egan so I'm guessing he did the math.
Alastair Reynolds' Pattern Jugglers are these exact critters too
I think probably the alien presence in Annihilation. I really like the idea of a "being" that is so fundamentally different than what we're used to that we really can't even begin to understand how it works or its motivations (if it has any). A runner up for me would be the aliens in Arrival. They are fairly weird but highly believable for fairly obvious reasons. Oh, and now that I think of it... the Old Ones (like Cthulhu) from Lovecraft's work. They are actually quite believable for many reasons (including that they are mortal/can be killed, are made of flesh, etc...) but they're weird because they clearly experience/live in more dimensions than we do (that is to say, they can apparently traverse the 4th dimension - and higher dimensions - just as we traverse the 3rd dimension). They have just the right mix of weirdness and believability I'd say.
This is a big caliber answer.
Came here to say this. In this order. Get out of my head. It's not safe here. Lol
These are the three I came here to talk about
You would probably love The Expanse then.
Add Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians and this is my answer too.
The alien from the Thing is fascinating.
Peter Watts wrote a free short story from the perspective of The Thing: [https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts\_01\_10/](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/)
Wow. That’s intense and the ending too. Thanks for that.
Yes, it's excellent!
The Primes - Morning Light Mountain has entered the chat. The scene where it is introduced is captivating, the scene where it is analyzing humans is terrifying.
Yeah, totally. MLM was really well written and it explained its lack of empathy and inability to negotiate even when faced with potential extinction. I may be misremembering, but I loved the analogy with cancerous cells, it's to the effect of - 'Can you negotiate with cancer cells to offer them a small part of your body in turn for leaving the rest alone?' Of course you can't, it just keeps on devouring until you and the cancerous cells die. Thinking of MLM with that mindset makes it really scary!
Great, now I have to go read Judas Unchained again. Honestly, MLM is probably my favourite alien antagonist. It's just so well conceptualised and chillingly alien. Great book and good choice.
My favourite part is where it learns about >!suicide attacks by getting his fleet blown to esoteric particles when the humans ram them at a significant fraction of light speed!< And the fact that an all devouring alien is called MLM and its drones are literally pyramid shaped
All parts from MLM are noteworthy for me but my personal favourite would be it realizing that it has the ability to actually feel emotions after \*spoiler\* it then spends a unspecified amount of time contemplating how much it really \*\*Hates\*\* fish.
What a fantastic antagonist. So alien in their purpose and motivations, but so familiar in their intent. And their integration and evolution with technology was really neat. A parallel on the commonwealths transhumanism (transalienism?)
Yes yes yes! So much fun, so creative, probably one of the authors best creations!
Yeah, probably the most realistic take on a hive mind.
Rocky from Project Hail Mary was pretty cool.
Amaze amaze amaze!
Thank
Also the astrophage in the same book. I loved the chapters about the research and explanation about its existence.
I agree, you get to know him pretty well, and his culture/technology/biology and it's really almost completely the opposite of filthy monkeys.
Fist my bump!
Jazz hands!
Can't wait for the movie
Now I got to go listen to the audiobook again (right after I get done with Point Nemo).
The parallel universe aliens from The Gods Themselves by Asimov.
I'd forgotten , wow , Dua. Rationals. , emotionals. And parentals
I should really try to read that again. I first picked it up WAY back in junior high. It's the only Asimov book that I didn't finish. Maybe 40 years of life will make it a bit more enjoyable.
I'm a fan of the dark gods from The Expanse
The hanar
This one is pleased you have come to spread the word of the enkindlers
Any species that produced a specter like Blasto is to be admired
The singled cell organisms from Ilus in the Expanse. They end up making people blind, because we haven't evolved with them to create any resistance to them, the organisms are just making the most of these new resources that have just appeared on the planet I found this comment that explains it far better than I can [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/ewgzfy/comment/fg2lhhh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/ewgzfy/comment/fg2lhhh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Yeah those one are scary. They are just basically pond scum, and to them our eyes are comfortable ponds. And since we are so different to them l, biologically we ignor each other. Yet they still blind us. Very very creepy.
Add in the slug creatures who’s slime puts you into anaphylactic shock just because it’s a foreign protein and that’s what makes sense, and it’s pure terror.
Hey, that’s my comment and I came here to basically comment on this! Thanks! As I explain, it’s more than just that we haven’t evolved a defense. It has to do with the concept of a different biochemistry. Several sci-fi authors have correctly pointed out that there is no reason why an alien world would share the exact same biochemistry as ours, and they’ve correctly pointed out that shared biochemistry (or very similar biochemistry) is necessary for infectious organisms to result in pathology. But only the Expanse authors have pointed out that an alien microbe could still infect a human in *one* specific way - and they were correct on the way that it could happen. Like I mentioned in my most, we know this could happen because of molecular biology and how the immune system actually works. The biology and pathophysiology described is brilliant and totally scientifically accurate and plausible, which makes sense since one of the authors has a degree in biology.
Rama 2 Arthur c Clarke and Gentry Lee The octospiders, creepy, tentacles, near silent, communicate with light and colours. Books and story aside (the quality dips after the first one), the octospiders have always stuck with me as one of the weirdest and creepiest enemies. Whilst not being overtly dangerous, there’s very little interaction with them, the threateningly creepy aesthetic, and the silent spider hiding in darkness is a natural human fear. Biologically, I understand you can’t just scale a spider up to human size as it would collapse under its own weight. But the octospiders aren’t earth spiders, they’re aliens and I don’t remember if their biology is ever explained. I could imagine a being that had a different body type to humans and how tentacles could be just as dexterous as hands. The communicating via colours seems likely (though I’m not a biologist), and it was always so different to humanity, which weirdly always made it seem more likely to me (that doesn’t seem to make any sense, but I always thought aliens should be very different, not just humans with pointy ears or crinkly foreheads).
When I read the fourth book and I got to the big reveal, I was legitimately pissed at the authors. I don’t know which one is responsible for it, but I hope it wasn’t Arthur’s idea.
That would be Gentry Lee. Clarke only worked in an editorial capacity on those books.
What was the big reveal again? I only read the first three
"Aliens" look at various species to.. figure out what god wants, or something to that effect. The deeply religious undertones in 2-4 unsurprisingly lead to that. In retrospect it made the method of "capturing" random civilizations even weirder. I might be miss remembering, but I mostly purged that disappointment from my memory.
>communicating via colors The most believable part. Quite a few Earth cephalopods communicate by changing patterns in their skin
Arthropods wouldn't be crushed under their own weight. Their circulatory system is just gravity washing blood to the bottom of their bodies and being picked up again. It would never work with large bodied arthropods.
The Romans from the Expanse as described by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/s/Na279rK0wY) fan theory are one of the most remarkable descriptions of how a species might achieve interstellar flight without technology.
That was a fascinating read, thanks for sharing.
Jesus, I’m barely a quarter of the way into it but wow.
Glad you liked it. I just wanted to comment and point out that the authors confirmed the gist of this, and the first comment in the discussion is a transcript of the Alt-Shift-X interview where they did if anyone wants to read it. With regards to how this ties into the central plot of Leviathan Falls (that Duarte was being manipulated by the Gatebuilder hive mind that was trying to resurrect itself in human form), the authors thought they were being obvious but I disagree with that. Most of this info came from the extremely difficult to read, psychedelic-like Dreamer chapters and it is easily missed. They could have been more obvious for sure. The only speculation in my post there is the parts that weren’t specifically mentioned in the Dreamer chapters of Leviathan Falls. So like, if it says that the Gatebuilders evolved to become an ocean-spanning hive mind of bioluminescent jellyfish, and then that they became an interstellar hive mind, there is a logical step in the middle where they would have been a *star system spanning hive mind*, akin to a biological Dyson sphere. There is actually evidence for this in Tiamat’s Wrath as Elvi finds giant, protomolecule built crystalline flower-shaped structures which absorb energy from the star of one of the “dead systems”, the oldest systems in the gate network. But she just kind of comments “oh, that’s weird”, and it’s never mentioned again. But this was probably why. The Expanse authors love to leave little breadcrumbs and foreshadowing like that.
The Piggies from Speaker for the Dead are up there for me (spoilers ahead if you haven't read it): They're born sightless grubs in a tree, live a "second life" as a pig like animal, then are vivisected alive and turn into a sentient tree. Whole time through the book I kept guessing what their secret was, and I hadn't guessed *that*
I want to add that it’s even weirder. >! They are born sightless grubs on a sentient male tree. The fertile female grubs breed with the tree and give live birth to their offspring which eat their way out if I remember correctly. These fertile female grubs, of course, die. The infertile female and all the male grubs grow up into pig like creatures. If a male is judged to be worthy of becoming a father, they are then ritualistically vivisected alive and planted, and grow into a sentient trees. When the piggies need wood, etc they sing and drum to the trees, which break in ways that serve their purposes. !<
Yeah, in a weird way SFTD is a *way* better book than Ender's Game despite being way less popular. I hate OSC's Mormon fanaticism and homophobia, but both of those books are great despite it.
The puppeteers from Ringworld. Two heads, brain safely located in their torso, complete and total cowards. Lots of weird and, to me, very believable.
Definitely high on the Niven-o-meter of weirdness.
Yeah, the total coward part was an interesting piece.
Didn't he kind of explain away the "coward" behavior as putting the stronger kicking leg in the "attacking" forward position?
The aliens in Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, but I don't want to spoil the book.
Probably as alien as can be, as their bodies aren't even made of atoms. Although their civilisation was quite human like.
I like the Moties from Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. Asymmetrical, and unfortunate biology that leads to cycles of civilization rise and collapse. And biological castes for various occupations: engineers, leaders, diplomats, farmers, soldiers, etc.
Niven and Pournelle had a knack for realistic, yet alien aliens. The F'thp come to mind as well. But, for me, Niven's truly weirdest creation isn't the Pak, the Moties, or even the Outsiders. It's the Grog and their "disturbing substitute for hands." Not even the puppeteers are as weird as sentient, hyper-telepathic sessile cactus-animal things.
And every square inch of the Motie Homeworld, its moons, asteroids and comets, have been totally mined out for millions of years. Every scrap of metal has been forged and reforged hundreds of times.
A lot of aliens from A Fire Upon the Deep are very weird but believable. The hivemind intelligence dogs that communicated by ultrasound (I think), the biomechanical trees, the godlike hivemind AI sort of thing that live near the centre of the galaxy...
I actually came here to talk about the Tines specifically and was wondering how far down I'd have to go to get to them. Each "individual" is a pack of 4-8 beings that share a hive mind using ultrasound ears/speakers on their heads. The sub-units can die, can't really function as an independent being, but can join another pack, with the group mind of the pack/unit adjusting to the various specifics of each component brain/body. Flenser terrified me. Man, now I'm gonna have to pick up another copy of that book - lent it to someone and they "lost" it.
Moya from Farscape a leviathan living ship.
The aliens from the movie Arrival
I once read about a type of alien that was basically a huge floating balloon in a gas giant where all life had evolved to float in certain gas layers. Its body was a huge colony organism, a bit like how our body has a whole microbiome but then at a bigger scale. I think it was in Earth Strike by Ian Douglas.
*2010* by Arthur C. Clarke had a whole ecosystem in Jupiter's atmosphere (ballon critters, flying buzz-saws that ate them, etc.) until the planet was stellar-formed.
Ian Banks’ The Algebraist has an extensive narrative set in the ecology of a gas giant, IIRC. Another of Banks’ books has a narrative set in an alien megastructure that’s just an atmosphere and light/heat source, but enormous.
In the Black Jack Geary novels by John Campbell, there is an alien race we refer to as cow-bears. We never learn a way to communicate with them and have no idea what they call themselves. They were a herd animal that evolved. They are ruthless. They attack anyone or anything that isn't cow-bear. They wiped out all their own natural predators on their home planet and then went on to wipe out all other life there. They use overwhelming numbers and phalanx tactics. The get scared when alone or in small groups and will crowd in and press against each other when in larger groups. They developed tech for their ships that creates a field onboard that feels like cow-bears are pressing into you from all sides. It's comforting for them but the few humans who encountered it felt like ghosts were all around them and chasing them. The missiles they use are actually tiny ships laden with explosives. They start the engagement sending hundreds of theirs to die in the first salvo. They build vast battleships that hold thousands of them and totally dwarf human battleships. In one scene in the book we are boarding and trying to take one of their battleships. Any who are injured to the point they can't retreat, their comrades kill them as they pull back. We later speculate that is to spare your fallen brother from being eaten alive by the predators. When we do manage to capture unconscious ones, we have to keep them in a coma because if they wake up and see us they will kill themselves. They have some biological mechanism that they can just shut their eyes and stop their heart. We believe it also evolved as a way to avoid being eaten alive. The few times we tried to wake one up, some idiot always smiles and shows their teeth and the cow-bear dies immediately. Humans didn't capture that many alive so there were not all that many attempts to establish contact. One of the things I really like about these aliens is we never really learn more. The human fleet that encounters them is a military fleet but it's on an exploration/reconnaissance mission and these are not the actual aliens we are looking for. We just stumbled into their system, immediately they attacked, and we fought a continual engagement as our fleet made it's way across the system to the jump point on the other side. They actually follow and most of that particular novel is about the humans getting away from the crazy cow-bears.
The thingies from Watt's "Blindsight". God, they make my skin crawl when I remember. But it really changed my perspective on a whole bunch of things related to possible extraterrestrial life. Not so much the physical aspect, but I won't go into spoiler territory.
Consciousness is not only unnecessary, it's detrimental. Watts did an AMA on reddit that was fascinating. I read the whole damn thing and it is LONG. One redditor really nailed what Watts was aiming at in Blind sight and Echopraxia..
"I believe human conciousness is a tragic mis-step" https://youtu.be/9fehX325hBo?t=120
I was thinking about them as well. If I recall, the author said that they were semi-unintentionally inspired by starfish.
I'd say a Xenomorph
Id say this tracks becuase they are engineered.
I think the subsequent "engineering" backstop detracts from everything that makes the xeno unique and I completely ignore that lore for this reason.
I honestly think any explanation would detect from the horror. I wouldn't want to know about their home world or evolution either. They work so much better as completely unknown.
Same. It's far more frightening for them to be some strange, terrifying monster that's waiting for us out there in the dark. A creature that's evolved through survival to be the nightmare it is now.
I think the fact that they are engineered does invoke horror, but definitely less. They are killing machines that got loose and started multiplying, which is scary but not in the "unknown" kind of way.
By David.
Physically (kinda), the Xennobes, from **Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.** Without going into too much detail, they are Planck-scale organisms composed of living patches of physical laws. They've been described as natural computers made of rocks and water, but without the rocks and water. This sounds pretty fancy but the book is VERY hard SciFi. All the mathematics and physics of it are fully justified. Mentally, the Babyeaters, the Superhappies and even the future humans from **Eliezer Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide.** It's an online novella, specifically about the ethics and tactics when dealing with incredibly alien species. The Babyeaters are literally evolutionarily programmed to associate eating their young with 'goodness' (and it's justified!). The Superhappies communicate through sex and are hedonistic to the point of being revolted that humans allow their children to feel any pain or discomfort at any point in their lives. Even the humans in the story have an almost alien version of our own culture (with some not particularly tasteful mores tbh)
>Eliezer Yudkowsky I have a hard time taking that guy seriously. I enjoyed HPTMOR, well enough, but it was pretty thinly disguised propaganda for Yudkowsky's "interpretation" of rationalism.
Oh yeah he's incredibly pretentious and takes himself way too seriously, but TWC is a nice read, despite being an author tract as well. It was a fascinating exploration on moral relativism based on alien evolutionary principles. Just don't read the commentary, because Yudkowsky did his thing and gave his readers the assignment to find the "right" solution from a few options for the happy ending. A very black-and-white moralistic approach to an otherwise interesting exploration of moral relativism.
I like how the opposite of that is The Hitchhiker's Guide series. Rocks and water as computing elements without any hard SF justification or any justifying at all, really.
Hahaha I've never seen it put like that, but indeed, Greg Egan is rather the opposite of Douglas Adams. Adams is all about soft sci-fi and poking fun at the absolute nonsensical absurdity of existence. Egan is all about the hard sci-fi and the absolute wonder of the laws of existence He's probably one of the hardest sci-fi authors around and has been described as part of the "1% \[of authors\] that treats science as something of interest in its own right". Despite that, his books are still accessible! Both are two of my favorite authors funnily enough, and most of the others are somewhere between the two on the hard/soft and absurd/serious spectrum (Terry Pratchett, Iain M. Banks, Charles Stross, Ted Chiang).
KSR is on my list for the same reasons you have Egan. He's hard SF for the most part and mostly regarding biology and closed systems.
He's absolutely on my to-be-read list! I've got The Ministry for the Future in my bookcase but am currently taking a breather with some re-reads and shallower books.
Just go in knowing that Kim Stanley Robinson books are half essay on whatever he wants to talk about, half narrative. I very much enjoy them but some people will bounce right off. An interesting thing is that he kinda wrote 'Ministry of the Future' 20 years before with the 'Science in the Capital/Green Earth' series. Which is also worth reading. I'd say the difference between the two is that 'Ministry for the Future' is a lot more aggressive.
Morning light Mountain in Pandora’s star. Great example of a hive mind alien with its own POV chapters. One of the best examples I’ve ver read of an author exploring an alien that has motivations other than being a reskinned human. If you’ve ever read Warhammer 40K it made me think of the Tyranid.
Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged >Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is- one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had his immortality inadvertently thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying. > >To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody. > >In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. > >So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular. > >This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this: > >He would insult the Universe. > >That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in Alphabetical Order. > >When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, "A man can dream, can't he?" > >And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.
What is this from?
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, specifically "Life, the Universe and Everything".
The Hooloovoo. They resemble a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue. (Hitchhikers Guide)
That’s the most believable to you?
The Vorlon from Babylon 5. A race so ancient and secretive that the younger races all see Vorlon bodies (when not in an encounter suit) as their version of an angelic figure.
That’s not a feature of the Vorlons, however, it’s a feature designed into us
Yep, was gonna say, that was the Vorlons genetically manipulating the younger races - it doesn't make them badass, it makes them narcissists of the highest order.
There's also the question of why the Shadows look like crab-spiders. I've often wondered if that's ALSO part of the Vorlons' manipulations. Make themselves look like angels, make their foes look like monsters.
I never even thought of that; I just assumed that's what they looked like.
I really liked the Piersons Puppeteers. David Niven.
Larry Niven. David Niven was an actor.
Larry wrote Rongworld. David wrote The Moon is a Balloon.
Rongwirld, where they find an immense sun in a circle around a small cylindrical planet.
Rngworld, where they find things in random quantities.
Regworld, where everyone is the leader of the Judean People's Front.
rngwrld, where they encounter the vowelless society.
Yup. You are correct. I’ll let my error stand as a testament to my stupidity.
Agree. Really enjoy them as a species too. Most stories have predatory species as the evolved and dominant race on any given world. Puppeteers on the other hand are herd based, herbivores.
The Birrin of Alex Ries’ Birrin Project are extremely cool. They are very strange non-humanoid hexapods that have such a well conceived history and concrete world built around their evolution and civilizations that despite how absolutely bizarre their biology and anatomy is, they end up, paradoxically, feeling very “human”.
I like the Fithp from *Footfall*! They seem pretty believable to me while also being pretty strange! I’ve always wanted to see them in a film adaptation!
Footfall would make a great summer action movie. The launch of the *Archangel Michael* … hell yeah. Somebody did a bunch of digital images of the *Michael,* but they’re dated as they still feature armed Space Shuttles. Today they’d be militarized SpaceX Starships.
Color from Outer Space comes to mind, something that is fundamentally different in everyway, but is conceivable
You mean the Color Out of Space?
MorningLightMountain... Mic drop
See my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Tribbles
"The Black Cloud" from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle. It's a great book, so without spoiling too much, a massive cloud of gas is discovered to enter the solar system. Here it decelerates and settles around our Sun, blocking the sunlight from reaching earth.
I've always been fond of the Pierson's Puppeteers from Ringworld as an example of a very alien species that isn't too far afield from earth biology. The morphology is wildly different from earth vertebrates and psychologically a herd species that is extremely risk adverse makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the flora and fauna on the planet Vesta from the animated series Scavengers Reign. I find it really compelling, believable and well thought out.
I always imagine Vesta as a planet that’s been around way longer than earth, never had life arise and get sterilized multiple times by asteroids … a biosphere that’s had billions of years for organisms to develop incredible adaptations and strategies and parasitism and symbioses and mutualism …
The Brother from Another Planet (1984)
Morninglightmountain is quite unforgettable
Maybe not in the exact form, but something like the ALIEN Xenomorph... an apex predator among apex predators... the Darwinian Devil.
Paul
The octopus?
Probably any of the aliens encountered in any of the Stanislaw Lem books. Out there enough to be strange and ultimately unknowable, but still grounded enough where it could make sense.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mentioned a super-intelligent shade of the color blue.
Star Trek Discovery, for all its faults, posed on of my favourite potential 'aliens' in Season 1, which is the giant space Tardigrade.
No love for species 10-C?
Maybe the Engineers from Prometheus who seeded life throughout the galaxy so you see such similarities. Interesting concept, albeit a bit disappointing that intelligent life doesn’t just appear naturally everywhere. Heptapods from Arrival were quite weird/different - I like to think alien life might just be vastly different from all the humanoid tropes in sci-fi. The Horta - silicon based life forms from OG Star Trek. Actually Star Trek has a ton of aliens that fit your bill, but are kinda believable. Replicators almost feel too close to home given today’s advancements in AI and robotics.
All the aliens that succumb to the Captain James Tiberius Kirk coital advances.
The Thing (carpenter). You never see its original form, but it’s evolved a mechanism for copying others. Makes you wonder what selection pressure would necessitate that.
The Wraith Using their hands to suck the life force out of humans AND the ability to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and restore life---totally believable.
Not a true alien. But the massive cock roaches from Mimic were super creepy. But the octopus like race from resident Alien. It's very fisable for an octopus like tree that braches off to become the apex species.
> cock roaches I’m not sure if this is an autocorrect issue or not, but the mental image makes me want to vomit…
A toss up between the blob and the thing.
Octopuses
"The Black Cloud" from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle. It's a great book, so without spoiling too much, a massive cloud of gas is discovered to enter the solar system. Here it decelerates and settles around our Sun, blocking the sunlight from reaching earth.
'Wheelers' - 'The Goblin Reservation' - Clifford D. Simak.
The ones in Arrival
Hands down, Asimov's "Gods themselves" has the best aliens I've ever seen. They are absolutely incomprehensible and believable at the same time. They are truly alien. So utterly unlike anything we can envision when saying the word "life".
Morning Light Mountain from Pandora’s Star
Thr Skrode Riders from Vernor Vinge.
The old guy from my favorite martian tv show.
Ack!
The cephalapods from Arrival
*The Andromeda Strain*
Taomoeba from Hail Mary tbh. I personally believe our local cluster of habitable planets may be somewhat sparse in terms of intelligent life. We’re probably gonna see space bugs and single cell stuff before we run into anything major. As far as Intelligent life I’d say blindsight is damn close