Mindfucking Biology

[BigBadCalla]

One thing that always annoys me about science fiction involving aliens is the depiction of aliens as simply being humans with differently-colored skin.  Even when book/movie/show creators go out of their way to make the aliens "weird," most times they still have a head and Earth-style limbs.  I want some good sci-fi examples of really, REALLY weird aliens, ones that have a completely different biology/evolutionary past, different senses, incomprehensible projections into dimensions humans can't see, etc.  I thought the movie Contact was going this way but the ending was kind of a cop-out in terms of actually explaining it.  Nerds of PD let me see some recommendations.

PS IF THIS IS THE WRONG FORUM PLEASE INFORM ME/MOVE THE TOPIC/RAPE MY FIRSTBORN

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A form of life that lives in the vacuum of space, composed of the interference patterns of huge amounts of photons (enough to have a tendency to bounce off each other, which is A LOT) -- this form of life is intelligent, but has no capacity for physicality, because it's composed entirely of light and radio waves and such, however it can communicate with humans via radio waves. Its predecessors were bundles of self-sustaining interference patterns of light that spontaneously occurred when three stars orbiting each other managed to spontaneously supernova and accidentally create a lagrange point between the black holes.

[Cait M. R.]

Greg Bear did this already. Multiple times.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Greg Bear did this already. Multiple times.

He should join the club. Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge are getting lonely in the clubroom.

They might start making out. *Nobody* wants that.

[BigBadCalla]

Greg Bear did this already. Multiple times.

He should join the club. Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge are getting lonely in the clubroom.

They might start making out. *Nobody* wants that.

Thanks for the suggestions.  Time to get mindfucked.

[LMNO]

Niven and Pournelle wrote The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand, a pair of books written in Hard Science style about an alien race, and our (in)ability to understand their thought process and culture.

Also of interest may be the Ender trilogy, with Xenocide as a very thoughtful but ultimately dull approach.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Vinge made a race in A Fire Upon the Deep that was pretty interesting -- doglike things that as individuals were too dumb to do much, but formed consciousness as groups of three or four communicating through subsonics short-range. Biologically, not too bizzare, but the plot had human children interacting with them. One must always consider the anthropic principle factor.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Cherryh's Chanur saga has such interesting aliens as:

A species that looks like a tangled nest of black hair and spider limbs; they engage in an extremely primitive form of trade with other species but their communications are unintelligible to everyone else, and they don't abide by any kind of trade routes or laws regarding space navigation

A serpentine species with a tripartite brain that speaks in seven-part matrix sentences, meaning a translation of their speech yeilds a weird grid of words that requires some brainthinkwork to interpret wtf they're saying

and both of these, and certain others, breathe methane, meaning big space stations have oxygen and methane sections.

[Kai]

This discussion reminds me of They're Made out of Meat.

[Reginald Ret]

Thank you Kai, that was greatly enjoyable.

[Eater of Clowns]

This discussion reminds me of They're Made out of Meat.

That was fucking wonderful, thanks for the link.

EoC,
totally tweeting this.

[Jenne]

Octavia Butler, one of the few notable African-American woman sci fi writers, wrote a trilogy called Lilith's Brood (formerly called Xenogenesis trilogy) that has non-human like extraterrestrials.

[Haeresis Zarathustra]

The Revelation Space books by Alastair Reynolds has a few of these; actually, all of the very few aliens encountered at all are like this. The two I can think of off the top of my head are:

-Grubs, basically giant maggots. Most prominent in Chasm City, also my favorite of all the books, definitely worth a read.

-Pattern Jugglers, essentially semi-sentient masses of seaweed that can store knowledge from people who come in contact with them, and implant that knowledge into others. People who contact them extensively tend to get completely absorbed.

[Kurt Christ]

Also by Niven is the Known Space series, which feature pupeteers, who have two heads stationed on long necks, the mouths of which serve double function as hands, a braise encased in their torso, and three legs.

[Dimocritus]

One thing that always annoys me about science fiction involving aliens is the depiction of aliens as simply being humans with differently-colored skin.  Even when book/movie/show creators go out of their way to make the aliens "weird," most times they still have a head and Earth-style limbs.  I want some good sci-fi examples of really, REALLY weird aliens, ones that have a completely different biology/evolutionary past, different senses, incomprehensible projections into dimensions humans can't see, etc.  I thought the movie Contact was going this way but the ending was kind of a cop-out in terms of actually explaining it.  Nerds of PD let me see some recommendations.

PS IF THIS IS THE WRONG FORUM PLEASE INFORM ME/MOVE THE TOPIC/RAPE MY FIRSTBORN

Well, in many cases this type of "unrealistic alien" doesn't fit the purpose of the author, who may just be using science-fiction as a type of socio-political statement on the here-and-now. Science fiction isn't always about science or fiction. Anyhow, there's always "Arena."