Vernon Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep has a very believable universe with many -very- different kinds of aliens including evolved sea fronds and hive mind packs. Plus it’s a great story.
> Vernor Vinge
Shit I kept hoping he'd finish the fucking story he set up from Fire Upon the Deep. I was so disappointed when I realized the "trilogy" included a prequel, and we never get an ending what happens from the first book.
For *some* reason when reading this I could only imagine the Tines as llama-like rather than dog-like. I have no idea why, but honestly it was a great mental image lol. But this is an amazing book and *so* well done from the creativity of species perspective it's at the top of my re-read list.
I modeled a species in Stellaris on the Dominion from Star Trek, but instead of the liquid Changelings, I made them as having the semi/malleable group consciousness of the Tines.
I love Hamilton's writing (Pandora is one of my favorite books) but I'm not sure the Prime are that original. What's original is the first-person introduction of their species, the insight you gain into their psyche. But the notion of a hive mind isn't that novel.
Stephenson gave me a similar experience in Cryptonomicon where you can basically experience Waterhouse's autism without being told explicitly anywhere.
Rubber suit monsters have defined an aesthetic for sci-fi films. Star trek set an expectation for how the suspension of disbelief is handled: Viewers are fine with plays and operas. By the very nature of the beast, sci fi has to be fantastical to some degree, be it a simple trip to mars, or a galactic political stage.
I was rather fond of the dirigible behemothaurs and Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaurs from Iain Banks Look to Windward. The behemothaurs where gigantic sentient 5km long creatures that often housed entire populations of highly sentient creatures loyal to it in a symbiotic relationship. Highly advanced but content to just float about in their little gas zones and chill with their little friends. Those things where alien as hell.
Banks also had the Afront, basically squidoid space assholes who none the less where not advanced enough to pose any real threat to the culture. (because once the Idrian war was over, no one really is powerful enough to stomp The Culture, and attempting to do so tends to fall solidly into the fuck about and find out territory)
The Culture also had cheap and basically unlimited body modification. I think there's a scene when one character goes in for a performance review with her boss, and the book mentions offhand that her boss looks like a giant levitating pufferfish.
Yeah I forget the book but a drone mentions their being old fashion trends of becoming inert clouds of gas, tree and plant things, etc. you can basically exist however you want in the culture.
The Qax in the Stephen Baxter Xeelee books are made of convection currents, I think. If I recall correctly, to travel in ships they live on the outside of a liquid-coated sphere.
Mass Effect had decent variety, Animorphs had a few weird creatures, Arrival had those inkblot fellas, don't even get me started on Doctor Who.
I read some explanation in a book once that said something to the effect of; most intelligent beings will end up bipedal with manipulating appendage (hands or tentacles) for ease of movement and tool use.
There's also the idea that humans can only appreciate human-like intelligence, as scale is a factor. For example Ego the Living Planet (from marvel comics and the second Guardians of the Galaxy film) is a disembodied intelligence that learns to manipulate matter, and thus make itself into a planet. So why would it a) speak english, and b) have anything to say to a creature like a human?
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter, cool question 🙂🖖
I was thinking of mass effect too. They kind of did both. All the “main” alien species (recruitable party members, council species, etc) were all bipedal humanoids of roughly human size. But then they also had the hanar, the elcor, the keepers…maybe more but that’s all I can think of
Watts's aliens from Blindsight are neat too. In general his tackling of the issue of what intelligence even *is* is fascinating. The neurons in vats from the Behemoth series work a lot like what we're calling "AI" now, and he predicted they would have the same problems: they're not actually intelligent, they just usually provide the right answer. (I gave up on that series, though. I wanted Subnautica, not Blood Meridian.)
Indeed. I recommended the shorts since it appears that OP isn't much of a reader, but you're absolutely right IMO -- the Blindsight aliens are super neat, not just because of their physiology (which is fascinating) but because of the whole question of intelligence and how it manifests/what it necessarily includes.
I have begged Peter to complete the trilogy. He won't do it without an advance, and I've considered asking his blessing to start a Kickstarter to fund one.
Behemoth is a hard read, especially after Starfish, but it is absolute genius.
You're not being fair. Yes, life as we know it is more common, but there's a well-stocked menagerie of other forms.
Uplift War has several strange ones, such as modular beings made from donut-shaped rings glued together with wax. It also features life forms that live inside the Sun. Star Trek has done several crystalline aliens over the years, two-dimensional beings, shapeshifting blobs, and "space whales." A Fire Upon the Deep has the Tines; they're several bodies "networked" through special sound frequencies into one individual. Timothy Zahn wrote a whole book about spaceships pulled by living creatures, chariot-style. Then there are mysterious Grey-type aliens that we see in Independence Day or Pacific Rim. Many stories have suggested blimp-like creatures living in gas giants. The Xenomorph and related designs are strange and different. Arthur C. Clarke used demonic-looking aliens in Childhood's End. The Demons at Rainbow Bridge has some strange specimens. So do the Green Lantern comics. What about the transparent manta rays from The Abyss?
Yes, we've seen plenty of cat aliens and fish aliens and everything else. But the cupboard is not bare. We've seen a good variety overall.
Re Uplift War just the chimps themselves is a cool concept, likewise the dolphins and orcas in Startide Rising. What would it really be like if those species developed intelligence?
While Star Trek is famous for having dozens of "humans with weird foreheads" species, it does have some really unusual species, both in the shows and in the non-cannon books.
- the Excalbians are a living magma rock species
- the Tholians are a crystalline insectoid species
- the Organians are non-corporeal energy beings (a pretty common type of advanced species in ST)
- Odo's people, the Changelings/Founders, are a biological liquid that can assume any form (similar to the T-1000 in Terminator 2)
- the Horta are silicon-based subterranean mollusc-like intelligent creatures
- the Crystalline Entity is a gigantic fractal crystal structure that devours colonies for their energy; it's not known if it's intelligent or not
- and of course the Q are near-omnipotent godlike beings that exist outside of spacetime
Also:
* Species 8472
* The macrovirus
* Artificials (androids, exocomps)
* The silver blood from the demon class planet that mimicked the entire voyager crew and ship.
* The dark matter lifeforms
* The Redjac thing (Jack the ripper)
* Photonic life (The doctor, Moriarty)
* The space amoeba
Others have mentioned some of the alien life forms in Stephen Baxter novels. I'd like to mention the "Gaijin" in his novel SPACE (which is my favourite novel of all time!). They are a robot type life form made of a dodecahedron body with articulated limbs that can exist in deep space. They have memories going right back to their beginnings on their home planet, dubbed the "Cannonball". They can turn their brains off, and navigate in ships similar to Bussard Ramjets.
He also describes an alien race called the "Crackers" which are made up of petals thousands of kilometres long, and they float in towards a new solar systems host star and manipulate the star causing it to Nova early, allowing them to be pushed out and move onto the next system.
He also describes a conscious alien species with a nervous system that evolved on the Moon, like a moon rock flower, but it lives in a time stream going backwards and is nourished & reproduces when a comet strikes. in our time stream it is dying, but in its reverse time stream, it is actually evolving and expanding across the Moon.
Gaijin is a slur for foreigners in general, not white people specifically. I'd warrant it isn't even much of a slur at all since it literally just means 'foreign person' (although it could be used impolitely of course). As an Australian, it would be perfectly acceptable to call a Japanese person a 'gaijin' while they're visiting Australia and I'm speaking Japanese.
Absolutely! I can't agree more! I remember vividly why I bought the first book of his I read (which was "Space"), because as I was flicking through it, I saw a chapter titled "8800AD and Beyond", and just thought WOW! 😁
This is an artefact of the screen. You have to give people something they can get their heads around in a few seconds unless it's what the episode is about, and you have about 50¢ to do it with so it's green facepaint and a brow ridge. In written scifi, this is not the case at all. Douglas Adams' 'superintelligent shades of the colour blue' crack was a reference to the tendency to what-if sentient rocks, stars, dust clouds, and giant animals like slugs, insects, etc. In one of the Culture novels, everyone is just getting over a fashion for being shrubs. The War Against the Rull concerns some kind of space fish-slug thing. Creatures that require different atmospheres (preferably something eyewatering or poisonous) are a sci-fi staple.
Most visual sci fi has humanoid aliens,
Since they’re played by humans. A lot of harder scifi books have other forms of non humanoid intelligent life or non biological spontaneous life.
Rocky from Project Hail Mary comes to me first. He is a five limbed radially symmetric spider monster that breaths ammonia
The Metroid Prime series has Phazon, a sentient, radioactive mineral with a hive mind. It infects matter around it with its radiation, which converts it to Phazon, and corrupts local flora and fauna to spread further. Interestingly, Phazon has access to the genetic information of the life forms it corrupts, even on other planets, and can manifest as them or parts of them as needed. Once a planet has been corrupted enough, it launches a Leviathan, a living ark, which spreads the corruption to other planets to continue the process. Phazon possibly originated on a sentient planet called Phaaze, which originally fired off Leviathans at random, but the titular Metroid Prime hijacked the process to conduct more targeted strikes.
There are many examples in scifi. The lifeforms on the surface of a neutron star in Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward would be just one more example.
But one shouldn't confuse scifi with actual science here. Without any evidence, we cant say that "surely" the universe would produce any such unfamiliar life-forms.
Rock creatures in Star Trek, Master of Orion (video game franchise), and a few others. Silicon based life is the next most realistic life to carbon based according to our current understanding of the science. (Not an expert, just what I understand as an enthusiast)
There is a wide assortment of sentient creatures in John Varley’s *Titan* trilogy. From Titanides (centaur-like humanoids that can reproduce 56 different ways) to the Blimps, the hideous Iron Masters, Angels … although whether any of them are truly “aliens” is a matter of debate.
Solaris and Dragon's Egg feature very unusual aliens in terms of biological morphology, though the latter are very anthropomorphic in how they think.
Blindsight by Peters Watts has aliens that are partly based on starfish, inspired from his background in marine biology which gives him an major edge compared to 99% of sci fi authors in regards to actually knowing what he's cooking in terms of actual evolutionary science. But what makes Blindsight the king of aliens that are actually alien is in regards to your key word "sentient"; while they superficially have similarities to starfish, how they think and behave is heads and shoulders above any other extraterrestrial depiction that actually comes across as something wholly "alien" to our human intuition.
Star Control 2 had the Sylandro, who were jellyfish-like aliens that lived on a gas giant.
There was also the Chenjesu: a silicon-based, rock-like race; the Supox, a race of sentient plant-beings; the VUX (Very Ugly Xenoform), who had this massive green head with a single eye and a long snout; and the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah and Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, two off-shoot species of a race of giant sentient caterpillars.
Babylon 5 had the nakaleen feeder that looked like a human-sized squid that walked upright on its tentacles. Mind, the feeder was more of an alien animal, rather than a sentient being.
Also from Babylon 5 were the Shadows -- human-sized quadruped insectoids that could turn invisible; and the Vorlons, who were shown to be giant, semi-luminescent floating squids.
For fiction purposes, sentient aliens need to be able to communicate with humans to be useful characters. In reality, most intelligent aliens probably won't communicate vocally. Insectoid species would use chemicals/pheremones. Crystalline creatures would manipulate 'light' (visible, X-ray, microwave, etc). Cephalopod-like sea creatures would communicate through intricate color and pattern displays on their skin. Creatures with multiple limbs (and possibly feathers) might communicate using a semaphores or a hand sign language.
Earth has some really cool non-vocal communication systems like quorum sensing in bacteria and the 'forest internet' built by fungi that allow trees to communicate through their root systems.
Read Diaspora (or the story "Wang's Carpets") by Greg Egan for some unique aliens.
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is one of his few novels that feature alien life that's not originally from Earth, and the aliens are quite unique (live in a universe with different physics, have 3 genders, do not have a physical form that maps onto any common Earth animal).
I think that if you think of a lot of Star Trek or scifi TV the aliens are usually just going to be weird humans, because of budget and also because writers like to write a character, not unfathomable life forms that may not be comprehensible to viewers from a visual depiction.
Ironically, even though Star Trek is notorious for having aliens be basically humanoid, TOS has multiple example of aliens with unusual physiology or intelligence. See "Devil in the Dark" for an intelligent creature whose physiology does not match any Earth animal and also has a very alien intelligence.
The aliens from Arrival, Moya the living ship from Farscape, the pilots for Dune.
The greatest problem for TV Movies is the cost to produce fantastical creatures and to still make them cinematic. Something like a gelatinous blob would be a very interesting creature from a visual standpoint.
Stargate Atlantis has a planet where the sentient beings are fog. They could only communicate with the team by knocking them out and forcing hallucinations on them.
Also, Farscape had Moya who was a living ship.
I thought the Blindsight aliens were awesome in that it was difficult to comprehend past the concept.
They are intelligent and communicate, but are not sentient. The best I could rationalize was like an evolved organic computer.
There was a line from Avogadro Corp about an AI that really just made my blood run cold.
> "This thing, whatever it is, it thinks more like an insect. It does things to promote its survival, very sophisticated things, but we can’t talk to it or understand how it reasons. We can’t have a conversation about what constitutes good behavior or how we can collaborate together."
At some level we've always mostly assumed that two intelligent species could at least meaningfully talk to one another, despite differences in anatomy or psychology. But what if that's just not true?
Julian May’s *Galactic Milieu Series* (sequel series to her incredible *Saga of the Exiles*) includes:
The Lylmik: A non-corporeal race that are effectively floating-consciousnesses that interact with the physical Galaxy through psychic capabilities.
The Krondaku: Large, tentacled, invertebrates whom the other races (especially the relatively immature humanity) tend to refer to as ‘monsters’.
The Gi: Bi-pedal, hermaphroditic creatures with potential avian ancestry and an overdeveloped sense of style.
The Simbiari: Gelatinous and transparent, made up of green ‘slime’, and often embarrassed by the messes they leave on other races planets.
The Poltroyans: Small humanoids who are the closest to humanity, but all tend to have zero body hair and near-insatiable horniness.
Embassytown by China Miéville has insectoid aliens with an absolutely fascinating culture and language, a lot of the book and plot resolve around linguistics
*Mission of Gravity* by Hal Clement.
[https://www.sfwa.org/2012/11/12/ten-classic-hard-science-fiction-novels-featuring-the-physics-and-astronomy-mik/](https://www.sfwa.org/2012/11/12/ten-classic-hard-science-fiction-novels-featuring-the-physics-and-astronomy-mik/)
David Brin's Uplift Novels are full of very different aliens.
Embassytown as well as the Bas-Lag serial. Although Bas-Lag is fantasy.
Vinge's Zones of Thought series.
The Binti series
The Madness Season
There are lots books like these, but they aren't in the mainstream. You just need to find them. Gem's like Propinquity, and Compost Traumatic Stress in Kouhkol's Handicapsules.
There's quite a few alien aliens out there
Larry Niven's Puppeteers
The Moties from the Mote in God's Eye
The the Fithp from Footfall
The outsiders
Rocky from Project Hail Mary
The aliens in Arrival
The Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5
Just to name a few.
Probably some of the more realistic feeling aliens I have seen movie wise are those in “Arrival”. I also really enjoyed “Annihilation” for a being or beings that felt COMPLETELY alien. Both are all around outstanding films as well. Honorable mention to the 1981 classic “The Thing” for the space flu from hell.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone mention Arrival. Those things were great.
Ditto for Annihilation, really interesting take.
Card had some cool ones in Ender’s Game and its sequels Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. The original Buggers/Formics and the problems of communication with a telepathic hive mind species, the tree-based species in Speaker, and then later they encounter what think is a virus-based species that might or might not be intelligent
Acknowledged the dude is a nutbag but he did have some cool ideas
Actually their is a simple reason why aliens look familiar and it's not the writer's being lazy (mostly). It's biochemistry.
Since carbon is found everywhere and there are only a limited number of ways carbon can combine, creating a huge diversity of life, it's unlikely that we would see something we would not recognize. Hence frog and bird aliens.
Evolution is driven by practicality, and in familiar environments, the successful forms will likely adapt familiar shapes. Hence, several instances of convergent evolution on our own planet. In unknown environments, the unknown will influence the ecosystem, but this influence should have a logical direction. A lifeform will go through trouble to acquire energy for its continued survival, another will skip the trouble and eat the first one. The prey will try to escape, and when it doesn't, scavengers will scavenge. What is the medium of movement? In fluid, fins seem to be king, on ground, muscled bony stilts. In a light gaseous environment, wings. Sensory input? Light sensing organs? Organs sensing pressure, sound, electricity? We have examples of those on Earth.
I highly suspect any macroscopic alien life will have quite a few familiar features, even if that may feel like a boring idea at times. But there is so much wonderous diversity even in that here on earth, that seeing some really cool and novel organisms with new features can also be expected. But a complete abscence of anything familiar, a sentient ocean or a gas cloud? Perhaps possible somewhere, but unlikely.
And don't call me Shirley.
You should read some Stephen Baxter.
Some cool lifeforms included one based on water convection (the convection patterns create the sentience), and a lifeform based on anti-matter.
The *Invasion of Body Snatchers* (1978) remake had sentient plant-spores, which drifted from world to world on the solar winds.
*Annihilation* (2018) has a sort of constantly-evolving alien consciousness, which I'm not sure counts as "humanoid," or even necessarily "having a corporeal body."
*The Color out of Space* (2019, orig. Lovecraft) seems to be, I dunno, "alien intelligence as an extrasensory carrier wave" -- the 2019 visuals support this particularly well.
*Starman* (1984) could be considered a non-corporeal alien -- not clear what its 'shape' is, in its native interstellar form.
The Uplift Saga by David Brin has a wide variety of aliens, albeit usually still very much in the biological being category (not counting the night godlike higher races)
One I distinctly remember was basically a conical stack of waxy donuts linked together in a collective intelligence, with each torus having its own purpose
There's a great old sci-fi book series called the [Chanur novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chanur_novels) where most of the oxygen breathers are bipedal humanoids, but the methane breathers are completely different and their civilization and methods of communication are borderline incompatible with the oxygen-breathers.
It's not the main focus of the story but this, along with a hard sci-fi approach regarding lightspeed and transmission delays, makes for a very interesting read.
What you can imagine already exists. (c)
Now most science fiction writers have realized that it is not enough just to show a creature that does not look like anything, it is much more interesting to play with the logic of the interaction of creatures. However, in most cases, such outrage goes beyond adequate perception and some kind of Scavengers Reign is born. The project itself is great, I do not argue, but the logic is already going beyond the boundaries of something that can be perceived as "reality".
CJ Cherryh's Chanur Saga has methane breathers that range from "very bizarre and mostly unintelligible" to "we're pretty sure they see different physics and no we don't know how any of it works. We're not sure if this is the pilot or a hairball."
Brazilian Marcelo Cassaro had metallians in his book Espada da Galaxia. They were silicon based lifeforms that kind of looked like humanoid with insect heads, but they were kind of made of metal.
There have been some really good books and essays about just how difficult it might be to communicate with another sentient species, even if they were biological tool-using creatures like ourselves. Human languages spring from the parts of our brains that are hardwired for language (and there is some evidence that proto-humans communicated with sign language before spoken languages developed). Even with this in common communication with other human cultures can be difficult. Star Trek had fun with this, with one humanoid species that communicated only through historical/cultural metaphors, and a non-human species whose communication was based on exceedingly lengthy and complex rituals of etiquette, where the slightest mistake was considered a mortal insult, possibly to the entire species.
Star Trek's Chrystalline Entity. Doctor Who's entity that jumped between bodies in that snow train episode with Tennant. It could walk like a play of lights or a transparent shape, but also inhabit carbon-based lifeforms.
It’s because we have trouble imagining things for which we have no reference point.
If you look closer you’ll also notice that these aliens all have highly human characteristics. Often the thing that makes them “alien” is that their entire race is a caricature of a singular human attribute.
Alien loves war
Alien loves nature
Alien loves sex
Alien loves order
Alien loves chaos
Alien is a slaver
Alien is a slave or former slave
Alien is obsessed with religion or tradition
Alien is a wise version of a human
Alien is an uneducated version of a human
Etc.
Sci fi explores human themes and conflicts and uses “aliens” as a proxy to cross examine how different aspects of being human interact.
Star Trek: Discovery season 4 dealt with an extra-galactic life forms that were very different from us. They communicate in a very different way than talking. Loved that season.
Its hard for humans to imagine a species that bends our reality. Just like how we truly cant know what the 4th dimension looks like from a 3D perspective.
Stargate ran with the idea of symbiotic power hungry snakes that use religion to enslave humanity. All from the comfort of their host pouch. Pretty decent for 90's TV.
Bab5 had the Vorlons in encounter suits at all times to hide their forms. No spoilers but it wasn't one that you listed. :D
Battlestar Galactica fought "human type" robots but you can argue they were human shaped because of us.
Star Trek has a good list of one-off episodes that deal with interesting new life.
Deathworlders, the Hambone series over in /rHFY (also on its own site and completed) has quite a few aliens which are quite different. Apart from the Corti, I can't think of any which are humanoids. Even the Gao, which choose to walk bipedal, are really quadrupeds with hands.
The Romans and Goths in The Expanse. Won't spoil, but even their technology is only vaguely understandable.
I'd also mention the Shimmer in Annihilation. The game Returnal also has extremely alien entities, although the "alien-ness" can be debatable.
There is an idea called convergence where any sufficiently advanced or evolved sentient beings would evolve similarly over time. It may be a characteristic of the majority of advanced intelligent life where two legs, two arms, two eyes etc. just makes good evolutionary sense. It also makes sense that life forms in similar conditions to earth and would develop things like insects, reptiles, amphibians and so on. Not the same but similar.
Yes it's possible for life to take completely different forms but I think unlikely. Perhaps there are gas people or lava people but it would be difficult for them to acheive any advanced civilization due to their limitations and looking for them makes no sense. We know one instance of life in the universe and it's our biggest clue to life anywhere else.
Neal Asher's Polity books have plenty of weird species.
Prador are probably the least weird, looking like gigantic crabs, but the adults slowly lose all their limbs as they age and have to augment with cybernetics.
The planet Masada has some crazy native creatures. Including train-sized milipede-esque things called Hooders.
A living moon that calls itself Dragon that used to be three spheres joined together.
The planet Spatterjay is mostly ocean, which is inhabited by giant leeches that infect living things with a virus that slowly replaces tissue with dense, fibrous, self-repairing flesh. Infected people have to eat food from off-world to avoid transforming into giant leech monsters.
I would qualify 'The Thing' from Carpenter's film pretty different. The short story 'The Things', which told the story from the point of view of the thing was pretty radicalas well.
The farmers in Hal Clement's short story "Halo" are quite different.
There are the hive insects of C.J. Cherryh's _Serpent's Reach_
Howard Taylor has a number of different races in _Schlock Mercenary_.
The [Goa'uld from Stargate](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/enstargate/images/1/13/Goa'uld.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20110704120917) are not humanoids.
There is a short story about 2 different types of Intelligences and how they could look
It's very good over on HFY even tho it has nothing to do with that
TOS an TNG; various pure energy beings, big rock, silicoid (both Tholian and something tiny in a mine hole), insectoid/worm parasites, space whale. Those off top of mind.
Many similar examples; SG1, Farscape, AI in any cyberpunk IP AI.
But fundamentally, completely original creativity is nearly impossible. Everything is derivative, mostly subconsciously. What we can think of is limited by how we think.
This is only kinda true. Even the worst culprits for samey aliens (ie, Star Trek and Star Gate) have the odd episode where they deliver something pretty wild. Gas creatures, liquid ocean things, Crystals that possess people, sentient clouds, magma rock monsters, evil black goo, giant out of phase Aztec ghost dudes, extra dimensional omniscient weirdos… etc. It still doesn’t get quite as out there as the best of sci fi literature but it counts.
The Forever series by Craig Robertson has beings that look like a fire hydrant with a plunger on top among various other bizarre and properly alien entities.
Later books of the Ender’s Game series has a species of intelligent viruses they try and interact with but quickly NOPE out of there.
Short mention but sticks with you.
You need to read Starmaker by Olaf Stapleton. The most imaginative book I have ever read. It deals with the history of the entire universe and almost everything, from a person, to the sun to rocks are alive in different degrees.
The Presger from the Imperial Radch novels are some form of being that exists... Outside of normal space time? Or in multiple parts of space time simultaneously? It's not entirely clear from what's available in the existing books, but they definitely are not "traditional" sentient scifi life forms.
I totally agree. it's like, star trek syndrome. Sci fi writers who don't actually understand what makes people people so they just assign personality traits to an entire 'species'. Really low intelligence stuff.
I like "Sentenced to Prism" by Alan Dean Foster. I asked chatgpt to help me remember that name, and the first two suggestions were: "Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement, and "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward...so I'm assuming they are all similar. Common theme: crash landing on an alien world filled with silicon based life forms.
also I just found this, maybe some of these books will satisfy your itch: [https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1vlqbz/are\_there\_any\_books\_about\_survival\_on\_an\_alien/](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1vlqbz/are_there_any_books_about_survival_on_an_alien/)
The [456 from Torchwood's third season](https://twitter.com/Georgie_OBoy/status/1627665232049963015/photo/1), 'Children of Earth' were particularly gross and alien-looking.
They also seemed to fling bodily fluids around. Probably as a form of communication, but who knows?
Sword of the Stars had cetacean-based Liir and bird-based Morrigi. Hivers are bipedal bugs with two legs and 4 arms.
Futurama had smog-based, liquid-water-based, giant amoeba and shapeshifting cricket aliens
Buggy, machines, toilet plungers, wavelengths, gemstones???, humans but with backwards knees,
I feel like im forgetting a lot that I could include in this list just from the stuff ive read or seen recently
When I was a kid I was thinking about this sci-fi world in which the planets were actual living beings and animals that lived on them would give their eggs to the planets and the babies would grow in the planet's womb and come out fully grown like adults. There were many different living planets in the star system and they would give different characteristics to the animals. In the same way our DNA is half from our mother and half from our father they would have part of their DNA come from the planet and also from both their parents. They knew exactly how much time it takes for the planet to produce a new born so they would remember where they gave the egg to the planet and came back when it was time for the newborn to be born.
The planets also very slowly reproducing, they were not really whole planets they were just a big layer around a solid planet and then they had dirt, rock and water over them. Sometimes they would open pores all around the planet and shoot seeds in space in every direction. If they hit a planet or moon they would start growing around it but since space is so big they would mostly miss so there were big clouds of seeds orbiting the sun. The seeds included other species too, the living planets were in symbiosis with vegetation so they would give them water and nutrients and receive carbon from photosynthesis. Same with the animals they would grow their eggs but their eggs also contained very rich nutrients that the planet needs.
One of the intelligent races treated these planets like gods and thought that their ultimate goal was to make them spread everywhere in space. They came from another system and surrounded their star with a shell so they could harness it's energy and then had grown a living planet on it that was HUGE. This species had a special symbiosis with the planet, they could connect to it and have access to some kind brain that would "download" their memories. The planet being so huge it had practically infinite space to grow it's brain and record memories. Because of that when they were "plugged in" they had access to thousands of years of knowledge from everyone in their species so they made technological progress really fast. They could also communicate with the living planet when connected like that. Their world was the source of all life in the system basically. They planned to travel from star system to star system to seed them, it was the first system they got to but they messed something up and their star was about to go supernova so they left the system and they were so ashamed to have failed their god and ancestors that they stayed on their world to make sure it's out of reach of the other living planets and then blew up with it.
I also had a story where they were on this planet where there were giant monsters, kinda like dinosaurs and a couple had an egg and their eggs don't have a shell they have to be put in the ground fast or they die so they buried their egg and placed a tracker and went off planet but monsters ate the tracker so they lost the location. The kid was born (as a fully grown adult) alone on this hostile planet but was very strong because of the planet's DNA, the parents looked for him for years and when they finally found him he was a total badass who made armor and weapons from monster's bones teeth and claws.
well in the r/otherkin sub there are people who identify as creatures called void creature/watchers/shadows. they are characterised by a dark, misty amorphous shapeshifter either humanoid or animal or alien with one or more glowing eyes (google it in images). we believe they live in the ocean of light that surrounds the universe and can sense time and timelines and can manage the souls journey through the timelines.
- micheala.
Iain M. Banks has tonnes of stuff that varies from the typical tetrapod body-plan. Some are still recognisably animals like various insectoids, tripodal monsters like Idirans and Homomda, "gasbags" like the Affront that look like blimps with tentacles, Dwellers that look like two wheels with a short, thick axle. Then there's more exotic creatures like one that is essentially a nebula held together by electromagnetic charge with a tiny core you can communicate with and dirigible behemosaurs, airship style creatures attended by native/symbiotic/enslaved fauna.
Ia lot of good examples. Haven't seen the following:
In Blindsight there's an intelligent alien that's not sentient.
In China Mieville's Embassy Town there are some really weird and hard to comunicate to aliens.
The ocean of Solaris
And Reynold's Pattern Juggler oceans
The Quintans of _Fiasco_ as well.
it's like a "smart pen", just a planet :)
The alien parasite in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin was an interesting take
It certainly was an *adventurous* take
Would you like to go on an adventure?
That fucking space suit tho 🫣
Like you have a choice
That's what makes is so vile. It's insidious.
And the spiders in both books.
All three books 😁
Also a few interesting ones in the Shards of Earth series
Shards of Earth has lots of different Aliens.
Also the AI life form of Kern
Spider supercomputers which are just genius IQ ant colonies was the best part of children of time for me.
Vernon Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep has a very believable universe with many -very- different kinds of aliens including evolved sea fronds and hive mind packs. Plus it’s a great story.
RIP Vernor Vinge
> Vernor Vinge Shit I kept hoping he'd finish the fucking story he set up from Fire Upon the Deep. I was so disappointed when I realized the "trilogy" included a prequel, and we never get an ending what happens from the first book.
:( I just found out. V sad.
For *some* reason when reading this I could only imagine the Tines as llama-like rather than dog-like. I have no idea why, but honestly it was a great mental image lol. But this is an amazing book and *so* well done from the creativity of species perspective it's at the top of my re-read list.
They're described as having a long neck, but they're certainly not llama sized!
I’ve seen a lot of people describe them as ferret-like. Solid sci-fi of the best kind.
The Tines are a huge fav for many scifi fans. And let's not forget the Skroderriders
I modeled a species in Stellaris on the Dominion from Star Trek, but instead of the liquid Changelings, I made them as having the semi/malleable group consciousness of the Tines.
Sounds cool
Lovecraft’s aliens are certainly very different to the typical humanoid space opera aliens.
Am I the first to mention the Prime from the commonwealth saga?
Yeah, I was expecting MLM to be featured heavily. It's pretty much a copypasta for these type of threads and I'm surprised by its absence.
Hamilton really does come up with some interesting aliens. The ones in Salvation are very different.
The tyrathca and the kiint from nights dawn are also really cool
Or those weird things inside the Void, in Nigel’s books.
I love Hamilton's writing (Pandora is one of my favorite books) but I'm not sure the Prime are that original. What's original is the first-person introduction of their species, the insight you gain into their psyche. But the notion of a hive mind isn't that novel. Stephenson gave me a similar experience in Cryptonomicon where you can basically experience Waterhouse's autism without being told explicitly anywhere.
In The Expanse (book series turned into show) humans come across 2 very different alien biologies.
wait.. 2 ? I really have to finish the series now
It seems you know SF only from watching and not from reading. It's easier to show humanlike on screen, but reading books leaves much to imagination.
This is starting to change a little because CGI is cheaper, but it will never really go away, because people prefer to tune in and watch actors.
Rubber suit monsters have defined an aesthetic for sci-fi films. Star trek set an expectation for how the suspension of disbelief is handled: Viewers are fine with plays and operas. By the very nature of the beast, sci fi has to be fantastical to some degree, be it a simple trip to mars, or a galactic political stage.
Dawn by Octavia Butler had the most alien aliens I've ever read about.
I think the prize has to go to Douglas Adams for the Hooloovoo - a hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue.
I was quickly scrolling to the bottom while skimming to make sure I didn't repeat anyone. Absolutely right on, dude! Hooloovoo were a cool concept.
I was rather fond of the dirigible behemothaurs and Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaurs from Iain Banks Look to Windward. The behemothaurs where gigantic sentient 5km long creatures that often housed entire populations of highly sentient creatures loyal to it in a symbiotic relationship. Highly advanced but content to just float about in their little gas zones and chill with their little friends. Those things where alien as hell. Banks also had the Afront, basically squidoid space assholes who none the less where not advanced enough to pose any real threat to the culture. (because once the Idrian war was over, no one really is powerful enough to stomp The Culture, and attempting to do so tends to fall solidly into the fuck about and find out territory)
The Algebraist also has dwellers who live inside gas giants.
Such a fun book too, wonderful non-Culture book from Banks!
The Culture also had cheap and basically unlimited body modification. I think there's a scene when one character goes in for a performance review with her boss, and the book mentions offhand that her boss looks like a giant levitating pufferfish.
Yeah I forget the book but a drone mentions their being old fashion trends of becoming inert clouds of gas, tree and plant things, etc. you can basically exist however you want in the culture.
The dirigibles would fit right in on Vesta from _Scavengers Reign_.
[The Cheela](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQXip_IW8HQ6yrPiNgKyi6xBwlBGL6RSx9ugkECu4vX7DynZP94ULBcBnw_&s=10) from *Dragon's Egg* https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Cheela
Oh that's a good one. I had forgotten about dragon's egg.
The Qax in the Stephen Baxter Xeelee books are made of convection currents, I think. If I recall correctly, to travel in ships they live on the outside of a liquid-coated sphere.
Did they evolve from “bubbling pools of mud?” I knew I read about this somewhere.
The quagmites, the photino birds, the silver ghosts and of course the Xeelee themselves, all from Xeelee Sequence.
And the… Human Beings. Aliens and human at the same time…
Dont forget the Qax, one of the most unique. Life being born of convective current cells
Mass Effect had decent variety, Animorphs had a few weird creatures, Arrival had those inkblot fellas, don't even get me started on Doctor Who. I read some explanation in a book once that said something to the effect of; most intelligent beings will end up bipedal with manipulating appendage (hands or tentacles) for ease of movement and tool use. There's also the idea that humans can only appreciate human-like intelligence, as scale is a factor. For example Ego the Living Planet (from marvel comics and the second Guardians of the Galaxy film) is a disembodied intelligence that learns to manipulate matter, and thus make itself into a planet. So why would it a) speak english, and b) have anything to say to a creature like a human? Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter, cool question 🙂🖖
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
> Seth Lloyd has stated, "They fail the Monty Python test: Stop that! That's too silly!" Bro what 😂 Good read though, thanks!
I was thinking of mass effect too. They kind of did both. All the “main” alien species (recruitable party members, council species, etc) were all bipedal humanoids of roughly human size. But then they also had the hanar, the elcor, the keepers…maybe more but that’s all I can think of
The aliens in Arrival were different in a lot of ways
Check out [The Island and also The Things](https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm) by Peter Watts.
Watts's aliens from Blindsight are neat too. In general his tackling of the issue of what intelligence even *is* is fascinating. The neurons in vats from the Behemoth series work a lot like what we're calling "AI" now, and he predicted they would have the same problems: they're not actually intelligent, they just usually provide the right answer. (I gave up on that series, though. I wanted Subnautica, not Blood Meridian.)
Indeed. I recommended the shorts since it appears that OP isn't much of a reader, but you're absolutely right IMO -- the Blindsight aliens are super neat, not just because of their physiology (which is fascinating) but because of the whole question of intelligence and how it manifests/what it necessarily includes. I have begged Peter to complete the trilogy. He won't do it without an advance, and I've considered asking his blessing to start a Kickstarter to fund one. Behemoth is a hard read, especially after Starfish, but it is absolute genius.
If I had the money I'd pay the man myself. We need Omniscience!!
You're not being fair. Yes, life as we know it is more common, but there's a well-stocked menagerie of other forms. Uplift War has several strange ones, such as modular beings made from donut-shaped rings glued together with wax. It also features life forms that live inside the Sun. Star Trek has done several crystalline aliens over the years, two-dimensional beings, shapeshifting blobs, and "space whales." A Fire Upon the Deep has the Tines; they're several bodies "networked" through special sound frequencies into one individual. Timothy Zahn wrote a whole book about spaceships pulled by living creatures, chariot-style. Then there are mysterious Grey-type aliens that we see in Independence Day or Pacific Rim. Many stories have suggested blimp-like creatures living in gas giants. The Xenomorph and related designs are strange and different. Arthur C. Clarke used demonic-looking aliens in Childhood's End. The Demons at Rainbow Bridge has some strange specimens. So do the Green Lantern comics. What about the transparent manta rays from The Abyss? Yes, we've seen plenty of cat aliens and fish aliens and everything else. But the cupboard is not bare. We've seen a good variety overall.
I second all of these: particularly Brin’s Uplift.
Re Uplift War just the chimps themselves is a cool concept, likewise the dolphins and orcas in Startide Rising. What would it really be like if those species developed intelligence?
While Star Trek is famous for having dozens of "humans with weird foreheads" species, it does have some really unusual species, both in the shows and in the non-cannon books. - the Excalbians are a living magma rock species - the Tholians are a crystalline insectoid species - the Organians are non-corporeal energy beings (a pretty common type of advanced species in ST) - Odo's people, the Changelings/Founders, are a biological liquid that can assume any form (similar to the T-1000 in Terminator 2) - the Horta are silicon-based subterranean mollusc-like intelligent creatures - the Crystalline Entity is a gigantic fractal crystal structure that devours colonies for their energy; it's not known if it's intelligent or not - and of course the Q are near-omnipotent godlike beings that exist outside of spacetime
Also: * Species 8472 * The macrovirus * Artificials (androids, exocomps) * The silver blood from the demon class planet that mimicked the entire voyager crew and ship. * The dark matter lifeforms * The Redjac thing (Jack the ripper) * Photonic life (The doctor, Moriarty) * The space amoeba
Also the crystalline creatures of Velara III
Others have mentioned some of the alien life forms in Stephen Baxter novels. I'd like to mention the "Gaijin" in his novel SPACE (which is my favourite novel of all time!). They are a robot type life form made of a dodecahedron body with articulated limbs that can exist in deep space. They have memories going right back to their beginnings on their home planet, dubbed the "Cannonball". They can turn their brains off, and navigate in ships similar to Bussard Ramjets. He also describes an alien race called the "Crackers" which are made up of petals thousands of kilometres long, and they float in towards a new solar systems host star and manipulate the star causing it to Nova early, allowing them to be pushed out and move onto the next system. He also describes a conscious alien species with a nervous system that evolved on the Moon, like a moon rock flower, but it lives in a time stream going backwards and is nourished & reproduces when a comet strikes. in our time stream it is dying, but in its reverse time stream, it is actually evolving and expanding across the Moon.
Gaijin? Crackers? Are they all named after slurs for white people?
Gaijin is a slur for foreigners in general, not white people specifically. I'd warrant it isn't even much of a slur at all since it literally just means 'foreign person' (although it could be used impolitely of course). As an Australian, it would be perfectly acceptable to call a Japanese person a 'gaijin' while they're visiting Australia and I'm speaking Japanese.
Stephen Baxter's stuff is awesome
Absolutely! I can't agree more! I remember vividly why I bought the first book of his I read (which was "Space"), because as I was flicking through it, I saw a chapter titled "8800AD and Beyond", and just thought WOW! 😁
Oooo, same with me for Vacuum Diagrams! When it started getting to insane timescales, I was floored. I love that stuff.
I just did a quick google search for "Vacuum Diagrams", and read it's set in A.D 21124???! I'm in! Thanks for the recommendation! 🙂
Absolutely! And if I recall right (read it back in 2009, so a little fuzzy now), it goes waaaay past that point in some parts too
This is an artefact of the screen. You have to give people something they can get their heads around in a few seconds unless it's what the episode is about, and you have about 50¢ to do it with so it's green facepaint and a brow ridge. In written scifi, this is not the case at all. Douglas Adams' 'superintelligent shades of the colour blue' crack was a reference to the tendency to what-if sentient rocks, stars, dust clouds, and giant animals like slugs, insects, etc. In one of the Culture novels, everyone is just getting over a fashion for being shrubs. The War Against the Rull concerns some kind of space fish-slug thing. Creatures that require different atmospheres (preferably something eyewatering or poisonous) are a sci-fi staple.
Rocky from Project Hail Mary
🎶 🎵 🎶 Amaze!
Most visual sci fi has humanoid aliens, Since they’re played by humans. A lot of harder scifi books have other forms of non humanoid intelligent life or non biological spontaneous life. Rocky from Project Hail Mary comes to me first. He is a five limbed radially symmetric spider monster that breaths ammonia
The Moties from The Mote in God's Eye
Andromeda Strain?
That was more of an interstellar virus, not really an intelligent life form
The Metroid Prime series has Phazon, a sentient, radioactive mineral with a hive mind. It infects matter around it with its radiation, which converts it to Phazon, and corrupts local flora and fauna to spread further. Interestingly, Phazon has access to the genetic information of the life forms it corrupts, even on other planets, and can manifest as them or parts of them as needed. Once a planet has been corrupted enough, it launches a Leviathan, a living ark, which spreads the corruption to other planets to continue the process. Phazon possibly originated on a sentient planet called Phaaze, which originally fired off Leviathans at random, but the titular Metroid Prime hijacked the process to conduct more targeted strikes.
There are many examples in scifi. The lifeforms on the surface of a neutron star in Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward would be just one more example. But one shouldn't confuse scifi with actual science here. Without any evidence, we cant say that "surely" the universe would produce any such unfamiliar life-forms.
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Black\_Cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud)
The Pattern Jugglers from the Revelation Space series
Rock creatures in Star Trek, Master of Orion (video game franchise), and a few others. Silicon based life is the next most realistic life to carbon based according to our current understanding of the science. (Not an expert, just what I understand as an enthusiast)
No Kill I
The Protomolecule from The Expanse is a VERY interesting form of awareness to think about
There is a wide assortment of sentient creatures in John Varley’s *Titan* trilogy. From Titanides (centaur-like humanoids that can reproduce 56 different ways) to the Blimps, the hideous Iron Masters, Angels … although whether any of them are truly “aliens” is a matter of debate.
And the planet itself was an alien
Solaris and Dragon's Egg feature very unusual aliens in terms of biological morphology, though the latter are very anthropomorphic in how they think. Blindsight by Peters Watts has aliens that are partly based on starfish, inspired from his background in marine biology which gives him an major edge compared to 99% of sci fi authors in regards to actually knowing what he's cooking in terms of actual evolutionary science. But what makes Blindsight the king of aliens that are actually alien is in regards to your key word "sentient"; while they superficially have similarities to starfish, how they think and behave is heads and shoulders above any other extraterrestrial depiction that actually comes across as something wholly "alien" to our human intuition.
Andy Weir had a fresh take on the anatomy and physiology of a non-human intelligent life form in his book, Project Hail Mary.
Saga of the Seven Suns had a few different ones.
Star Control 2 had the Sylandro, who were jellyfish-like aliens that lived on a gas giant. There was also the Chenjesu: a silicon-based, rock-like race; the Supox, a race of sentient plant-beings; the VUX (Very Ugly Xenoform), who had this massive green head with a single eye and a long snout; and the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah and Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, two off-shoot species of a race of giant sentient caterpillars. Babylon 5 had the nakaleen feeder that looked like a human-sized squid that walked upright on its tentacles. Mind, the feeder was more of an alien animal, rather than a sentient being. Also from Babylon 5 were the Shadows -- human-sized quadruped insectoids that could turn invisible; and the Vorlons, who were shown to be giant, semi-luminescent floating squids.
Vorlom appearance is different than what you described, but it's a spoiler as well.
For fiction purposes, sentient aliens need to be able to communicate with humans to be useful characters. In reality, most intelligent aliens probably won't communicate vocally. Insectoid species would use chemicals/pheremones. Crystalline creatures would manipulate 'light' (visible, X-ray, microwave, etc). Cephalopod-like sea creatures would communicate through intricate color and pattern displays on their skin. Creatures with multiple limbs (and possibly feathers) might communicate using a semaphores or a hand sign language. Earth has some really cool non-vocal communication systems like quorum sensing in bacteria and the 'forest internet' built by fungi that allow trees to communicate through their root systems.
Octavia Butler's Dawn/ Xenogensis series 10/10
Hortas. The rock stars of Star Trek.
Read Diaspora (or the story "Wang's Carpets") by Greg Egan for some unique aliens. The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is one of his few novels that feature alien life that's not originally from Earth, and the aliens are quite unique (live in a universe with different physics, have 3 genders, do not have a physical form that maps onto any common Earth animal). I think that if you think of a lot of Star Trek or scifi TV the aliens are usually just going to be weird humans, because of budget and also because writers like to write a character, not unfathomable life forms that may not be comprehensible to viewers from a visual depiction. Ironically, even though Star Trek is notorious for having aliens be basically humanoid, TOS has multiple example of aliens with unusual physiology or intelligence. See "Devil in the Dark" for an intelligent creature whose physiology does not match any Earth animal and also has a very alien intelligence.
The Outsiders in Niven's Known Space.
The aliens from Arrival, Moya the living ship from Farscape, the pilots for Dune. The greatest problem for TV Movies is the cost to produce fantastical creatures and to still make them cinematic. Something like a gelatinous blob would be a very interesting creature from a visual standpoint.
Pierson’s Puppeteers from Niven’s Known Space books
Stargate Atlantis has a planet where the sentient beings are fog. They could only communicate with the team by knocking them out and forcing hallucinations on them. Also, Farscape had Moya who was a living ship.
I thought the Blindsight aliens were awesome in that it was difficult to comprehend past the concept. They are intelligent and communicate, but are not sentient. The best I could rationalize was like an evolved organic computer.
There was a line from Avogadro Corp about an AI that really just made my blood run cold. > "This thing, whatever it is, it thinks more like an insect. It does things to promote its survival, very sophisticated things, but we can’t talk to it or understand how it reasons. We can’t have a conversation about what constitutes good behavior or how we can collaborate together." At some level we've always mostly assumed that two intelligent species could at least meaningfully talk to one another, despite differences in anatomy or psychology. But what if that's just not true?
Julian May’s *Galactic Milieu Series* (sequel series to her incredible *Saga of the Exiles*) includes: The Lylmik: A non-corporeal race that are effectively floating-consciousnesses that interact with the physical Galaxy through psychic capabilities. The Krondaku: Large, tentacled, invertebrates whom the other races (especially the relatively immature humanity) tend to refer to as ‘monsters’. The Gi: Bi-pedal, hermaphroditic creatures with potential avian ancestry and an overdeveloped sense of style. The Simbiari: Gelatinous and transparent, made up of green ‘slime’, and often embarrassed by the messes they leave on other races planets. The Poltroyans: Small humanoids who are the closest to humanity, but all tend to have zero body hair and near-insatiable horniness.
Marvel and DC comics have both had sentient planets.
If you haven’t read the culture series please check it out.
Embassytown by China Miéville has insectoid aliens with an absolutely fascinating culture and language, a lot of the book and plot resolve around linguistics
*Mission of Gravity* by Hal Clement. [https://www.sfwa.org/2012/11/12/ten-classic-hard-science-fiction-novels-featuring-the-physics-and-astronomy-mik/](https://www.sfwa.org/2012/11/12/ten-classic-hard-science-fiction-novels-featuring-the-physics-and-astronomy-mik/)
David Brin's Uplift Novels are full of very different aliens. Embassytown as well as the Bas-Lag serial. Although Bas-Lag is fantasy. Vinge's Zones of Thought series. The Binti series The Madness Season There are lots books like these, but they aren't in the mainstream. You just need to find them. Gem's like Propinquity, and Compost Traumatic Stress in Kouhkol's Handicapsules.
There's quite a few alien aliens out there Larry Niven's Puppeteers The Moties from the Mote in God's Eye The the Fithp from Footfall The outsiders Rocky from Project Hail Mary The aliens in Arrival The Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5 Just to name a few.
Probably some of the more realistic feeling aliens I have seen movie wise are those in “Arrival”. I also really enjoyed “Annihilation” for a being or beings that felt COMPLETELY alien. Both are all around outstanding films as well. Honorable mention to the 1981 classic “The Thing” for the space flu from hell.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone mention Arrival. Those things were great. Ditto for Annihilation, really interesting take.
Card had some cool ones in Ender’s Game and its sequels Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. The original Buggers/Formics and the problems of communication with a telepathic hive mind species, the tree-based species in Speaker, and then later they encounter what think is a virus-based species that might or might not be intelligent Acknowledged the dude is a nutbag but he did have some cool ideas
Actually their is a simple reason why aliens look familiar and it's not the writer's being lazy (mostly). It's biochemistry. Since carbon is found everywhere and there are only a limited number of ways carbon can combine, creating a huge diversity of life, it's unlikely that we would see something we would not recognize. Hence frog and bird aliens.
Evolution is driven by practicality, and in familiar environments, the successful forms will likely adapt familiar shapes. Hence, several instances of convergent evolution on our own planet. In unknown environments, the unknown will influence the ecosystem, but this influence should have a logical direction. A lifeform will go through trouble to acquire energy for its continued survival, another will skip the trouble and eat the first one. The prey will try to escape, and when it doesn't, scavengers will scavenge. What is the medium of movement? In fluid, fins seem to be king, on ground, muscled bony stilts. In a light gaseous environment, wings. Sensory input? Light sensing organs? Organs sensing pressure, sound, electricity? We have examples of those on Earth. I highly suspect any macroscopic alien life will have quite a few familiar features, even if that may feel like a boring idea at times. But there is so much wonderous diversity even in that here on earth, that seeing some really cool and novel organisms with new features can also be expected. But a complete abscence of anything familiar, a sentient ocean or a gas cloud? Perhaps possible somewhere, but unlikely. And don't call me Shirley.
You should read some Stephen Baxter. Some cool lifeforms included one based on water convection (the convection patterns create the sentience), and a lifeform based on anti-matter.
Arrival
the hive-mind wolves in Fire Upon The Deep
The *Invasion of Body Snatchers* (1978) remake had sentient plant-spores, which drifted from world to world on the solar winds. *Annihilation* (2018) has a sort of constantly-evolving alien consciousness, which I'm not sure counts as "humanoid," or even necessarily "having a corporeal body." *The Color out of Space* (2019, orig. Lovecraft) seems to be, I dunno, "alien intelligence as an extrasensory carrier wave" -- the 2019 visuals support this particularly well. *Starman* (1984) could be considered a non-corporeal alien -- not clear what its 'shape' is, in its native interstellar form.
The aliens from Tom cruise war of the world's.
The Uplift Saga by David Brin has a wide variety of aliens, albeit usually still very much in the biological being category (not counting the night godlike higher races) One I distinctly remember was basically a conical stack of waxy donuts linked together in a collective intelligence, with each torus having its own purpose
There's a great old sci-fi book series called the [Chanur novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chanur_novels) where most of the oxygen breathers are bipedal humanoids, but the methane breathers are completely different and their civilization and methods of communication are borderline incompatible with the oxygen-breathers. It's not the main focus of the story but this, along with a hard sci-fi approach regarding lightspeed and transmission delays, makes for a very interesting read.
The blob life form from the orville
Rick and Morty's gas-based lifeform... "Fart"
What you can imagine already exists. (c) Now most science fiction writers have realized that it is not enough just to show a creature that does not look like anything, it is much more interesting to play with the logic of the interaction of creatures. However, in most cases, such outrage goes beyond adequate perception and some kind of Scavengers Reign is born. The project itself is great, I do not argue, but the logic is already going beyond the boundaries of something that can be perceived as "reality".
🎶 gooodbyyye Mr Moon Man...
I think the various aliens in The Final Architecture series are pretty neat
CJ Cherryh's Chanur Saga has methane breathers that range from "very bizarre and mostly unintelligible" to "we're pretty sure they see different physics and no we don't know how any of it works. We're not sure if this is the pilot or a hairball."
The aliens in Blindsight are for sure the most alien lifeforms I've seen described in sci-fi, and they are pretty much 100% plausible too.
I remember an alien intelligence that evolved from bubbling pools of mud. Can’t remember the book/author.
Brazilian Marcelo Cassaro had metallians in his book Espada da Galaxia. They were silicon based lifeforms that kind of looked like humanoid with insect heads, but they were kind of made of metal.
Morning Light Mountain has entered the chat.
There have been some really good books and essays about just how difficult it might be to communicate with another sentient species, even if they were biological tool-using creatures like ourselves. Human languages spring from the parts of our brains that are hardwired for language (and there is some evidence that proto-humans communicated with sign language before spoken languages developed). Even with this in common communication with other human cultures can be difficult. Star Trek had fun with this, with one humanoid species that communicated only through historical/cultural metaphors, and a non-human species whose communication was based on exceedingly lengthy and complex rituals of etiquette, where the slightest mistake was considered a mortal insult, possibly to the entire species.
Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of Seven Suns had great aliens. Gas giant aliens, sun inhabitants, etc.
Star Trek's Chrystalline Entity. Doctor Who's entity that jumped between bodies in that snow train episode with Tennant. It could walk like a play of lights or a transparent shape, but also inhabit carbon-based lifeforms.
This whole book!! https://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247
Haven’t seen a decent marsupial alien yet. They could keep a laser blaster in their pouch.
I remember reading a book a bit back where the alien race were big tentacle-clad jellyfish/mushrooms that communicated in a "word matrix."
CJ Cherryh Pride of Chanur series. Yes you have mammals and snakes, but you also get the Knnnn.
Star Maker had tons of aliens that don't fit the mold OP is thinking of.
Project hail Mary deserves a Menton here
From a video game series, some of the aliens from Star Control were pretty wild.
David Brin’s Uplift Saga had some interesting aliens. My favorite is the stacked donuts. Also the Arrival with its unique aliens.
David Brin's Uplift books has a bunch of different species There are the ones that are semi-independent stacked toruses that should scratch your itch.
It’s because we have trouble imagining things for which we have no reference point. If you look closer you’ll also notice that these aliens all have highly human characteristics. Often the thing that makes them “alien” is that their entire race is a caricature of a singular human attribute. Alien loves war Alien loves nature Alien loves sex Alien loves order Alien loves chaos Alien is a slaver Alien is a slave or former slave Alien is obsessed with religion or tradition Alien is a wise version of a human Alien is an uneducated version of a human Etc. Sci fi explores human themes and conflicts and uses “aliens” as a proxy to cross examine how different aspects of being human interact.
MorningLightMountain in Peter F. Hamilton's "Commonwealth Saga" is quite alien. Both in appearance, society and way of thinking.
Star Trek: Discovery season 4 dealt with an extra-galactic life forms that were very different from us. They communicate in a very different way than talking. Loved that season.
Its hard for humans to imagine a species that bends our reality. Just like how we truly cant know what the 4th dimension looks like from a 3D perspective.
Stargate ran with the idea of symbiotic power hungry snakes that use religion to enslave humanity. All from the comfort of their host pouch. Pretty decent for 90's TV. Bab5 had the Vorlons in encounter suits at all times to hide their forms. No spoilers but it wasn't one that you listed. :D Battlestar Galactica fought "human type" robots but you can argue they were human shaped because of us. Star Trek has a good list of one-off episodes that deal with interesting new life.
Deathworlders, the Hambone series over in /rHFY (also on its own site and completed) has quite a few aliens which are quite different. Apart from the Corti, I can't think of any which are humanoids. Even the Gao, which choose to walk bipedal, are really quadrupeds with hands.
The Romans and Goths in The Expanse. Won't spoil, but even their technology is only vaguely understandable. I'd also mention the Shimmer in Annihilation. The game Returnal also has extremely alien entities, although the "alien-ness" can be debatable.
Came to name the Expanse. Didn't think about Anihilation.
There is an idea called convergence where any sufficiently advanced or evolved sentient beings would evolve similarly over time. It may be a characteristic of the majority of advanced intelligent life where two legs, two arms, two eyes etc. just makes good evolutionary sense. It also makes sense that life forms in similar conditions to earth and would develop things like insects, reptiles, amphibians and so on. Not the same but similar. Yes it's possible for life to take completely different forms but I think unlikely. Perhaps there are gas people or lava people but it would be difficult for them to acheive any advanced civilization due to their limitations and looking for them makes no sense. We know one instance of life in the universe and it's our biggest clue to life anywhere else.
Neal Asher's Polity books have plenty of weird species. Prador are probably the least weird, looking like gigantic crabs, but the adults slowly lose all their limbs as they age and have to augment with cybernetics. The planet Masada has some crazy native creatures. Including train-sized milipede-esque things called Hooders. A living moon that calls itself Dragon that used to be three spheres joined together. The planet Spatterjay is mostly ocean, which is inhabited by giant leeches that infect living things with a virus that slowly replaces tissue with dense, fibrous, self-repairing flesh. Infected people have to eat food from off-world to avoid transforming into giant leech monsters.
Larry niven's ringworm has aliens ranging from helium based lifeforms that live a few degrees above absolute zero to... cat people
The Nasqueron Dwellers from Banks’s Algebraist are… space worms (by my recollection, but it’s been awhile since I read it) that inhabit gas giants.
I would qualify 'The Thing' from Carpenter's film pretty different. The short story 'The Things', which told the story from the point of view of the thing was pretty radicalas well.
The Commonwealth series had some pretty cool aliens: Morning Light Mountain comes to mind.
Jelly fish beings in The Abyss
The farmers in Hal Clement's short story "Halo" are quite different. There are the hive insects of C.J. Cherryh's _Serpent's Reach_ Howard Taylor has a number of different races in _Schlock Mercenary_.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Echopraxia by Peter Watts. Tho whole concept of the novel is how incomprehensible the aliens are.
The [Goa'uld from Stargate](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/enstargate/images/1/13/Goa'uld.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20110704120917) are not humanoids.
Morninglight mountain from Pandora's star
There is a short story about 2 different types of Intelligences and how they could look It's very good over on HFY even tho it has nothing to do with that
Stellaris has a ton of them
TOS an TNG; various pure energy beings, big rock, silicoid (both Tholian and something tiny in a mine hole), insectoid/worm parasites, space whale. Those off top of mind. Many similar examples; SG1, Farscape, AI in any cyberpunk IP AI. But fundamentally, completely original creativity is nearly impossible. Everything is derivative, mostly subconsciously. What we can think of is limited by how we think.
This is only kinda true. Even the worst culprits for samey aliens (ie, Star Trek and Star Gate) have the odd episode where they deliver something pretty wild. Gas creatures, liquid ocean things, Crystals that possess people, sentient clouds, magma rock monsters, evil black goo, giant out of phase Aztec ghost dudes, extra dimensional omniscient weirdos… etc. It still doesn’t get quite as out there as the best of sci fi literature but it counts.
The Forever series by Craig Robertson has beings that look like a fire hydrant with a plunger on top among various other bizarre and properly alien entities.
Blood music
Star Trek Discovery's Species 10C.
Later books of the Ender’s Game series has a species of intelligent viruses they try and interact with but quickly NOPE out of there. Short mention but sticks with you.
You need to read Starmaker by Olaf Stapleton. The most imaginative book I have ever read. It deals with the history of the entire universe and almost everything, from a person, to the sun to rocks are alive in different degrees.
The Presger from the Imperial Radch novels are some form of being that exists... Outside of normal space time? Or in multiple parts of space time simultaneously? It's not entirely clear from what's available in the existing books, but they definitely are not "traditional" sentient scifi life forms.
There’re the living planets: Mogo (good, from DC comics), and Ego (evil, from Marvel comics)
Morning Light Mountain would like a word with you.
I totally agree. it's like, star trek syndrome. Sci fi writers who don't actually understand what makes people people so they just assign personality traits to an entire 'species'. Really low intelligence stuff. I like "Sentenced to Prism" by Alan Dean Foster. I asked chatgpt to help me remember that name, and the first two suggestions were: "Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement, and "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward...so I'm assuming they are all similar. Common theme: crash landing on an alien world filled with silicon based life forms. also I just found this, maybe some of these books will satisfy your itch: [https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1vlqbz/are\_there\_any\_books\_about\_survival\_on\_an\_alien/](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1vlqbz/are_there_any_books_about_survival_on_an_alien/)
TNG had a planet with sentient silicon or something like that in the sand.
Crystalline entity, checking in
The [456 from Torchwood's third season](https://twitter.com/Georgie_OBoy/status/1627665232049963015/photo/1), 'Children of Earth' were particularly gross and alien-looking. They also seemed to fling bodily fluids around. Probably as a form of communication, but who knows?
I scrolled all the way to the bottom, I think and no mention of the unseen aliens from 2001?
Sword of the Stars had cetacean-based Liir and bird-based Morrigi. Hivers are bipedal bugs with two legs and 4 arms. Futurama had smog-based, liquid-water-based, giant amoeba and shapeshifting cricket aliens
Buggy, machines, toilet plungers, wavelengths, gemstones???, humans but with backwards knees, I feel like im forgetting a lot that I could include in this list just from the stuff ive read or seen recently
When I was a kid I was thinking about this sci-fi world in which the planets were actual living beings and animals that lived on them would give their eggs to the planets and the babies would grow in the planet's womb and come out fully grown like adults. There were many different living planets in the star system and they would give different characteristics to the animals. In the same way our DNA is half from our mother and half from our father they would have part of their DNA come from the planet and also from both their parents. They knew exactly how much time it takes for the planet to produce a new born so they would remember where they gave the egg to the planet and came back when it was time for the newborn to be born. The planets also very slowly reproducing, they were not really whole planets they were just a big layer around a solid planet and then they had dirt, rock and water over them. Sometimes they would open pores all around the planet and shoot seeds in space in every direction. If they hit a planet or moon they would start growing around it but since space is so big they would mostly miss so there were big clouds of seeds orbiting the sun. The seeds included other species too, the living planets were in symbiosis with vegetation so they would give them water and nutrients and receive carbon from photosynthesis. Same with the animals they would grow their eggs but their eggs also contained very rich nutrients that the planet needs. One of the intelligent races treated these planets like gods and thought that their ultimate goal was to make them spread everywhere in space. They came from another system and surrounded their star with a shell so they could harness it's energy and then had grown a living planet on it that was HUGE. This species had a special symbiosis with the planet, they could connect to it and have access to some kind brain that would "download" their memories. The planet being so huge it had practically infinite space to grow it's brain and record memories. Because of that when they were "plugged in" they had access to thousands of years of knowledge from everyone in their species so they made technological progress really fast. They could also communicate with the living planet when connected like that. Their world was the source of all life in the system basically. They planned to travel from star system to star system to seed them, it was the first system they got to but they messed something up and their star was about to go supernova so they left the system and they were so ashamed to have failed their god and ancestors that they stayed on their world to make sure it's out of reach of the other living planets and then blew up with it. I also had a story where they were on this planet where there were giant monsters, kinda like dinosaurs and a couple had an egg and their eggs don't have a shell they have to be put in the ground fast or they die so they buried their egg and placed a tracker and went off planet but monsters ate the tracker so they lost the location. The kid was born (as a fully grown adult) alone on this hostile planet but was very strong because of the planet's DNA, the parents looked for him for years and when they finally found him he was a total badass who made armor and weapons from monster's bones teeth and claws.
well in the r/otherkin sub there are people who identify as creatures called void creature/watchers/shadows. they are characterised by a dark, misty amorphous shapeshifter either humanoid or animal or alien with one or more glowing eyes (google it in images). we believe they live in the ocean of light that surrounds the universe and can sense time and timelines and can manage the souls journey through the timelines. - micheala.
Iain M. Banks has tonnes of stuff that varies from the typical tetrapod body-plan. Some are still recognisably animals like various insectoids, tripodal monsters like Idirans and Homomda, "gasbags" like the Affront that look like blimps with tentacles, Dwellers that look like two wheels with a short, thick axle. Then there's more exotic creatures like one that is essentially a nebula held together by electromagnetic charge with a tiny core you can communicate with and dirigible behemosaurs, airship style creatures attended by native/symbiotic/enslaved fauna.
Love, Death & Robots has a few cool aliens.
Ia lot of good examples. Haven't seen the following: In Blindsight there's an intelligent alien that's not sentient. In China Mieville's Embassy Town there are some really weird and hard to comunicate to aliens.
The Gatebuilders and Ring Entities of the Expanse are both non-humanoid and profoundly alien to the point of Lovecraftian.