Looking for sci-fi where the aliens are unlike any being on Earth. I've always been weary of humanoid aliens with misspelled Arabic word names, maybe they're green, or half-human, half-fish people on a planet lightyears away that should have drastically different evolutionary paths. Any recs?

@axoaxonic have you heard of the Hoka?

@axoaxonic I think some of Sheri S Tepper's work might fit. Grass, The Fresco, and Shadow's End are all books that have different life forms.

@axoaxonic @SRLevine Farscape? Not all the aliens are like that but many of them (including a couple in the main ensemble) are.

Like, one of them is a plant, one is a small amphibian, one is an insectoid grafted to the ship (which is also alive).

@axoaxonic

Solaris by Lem
And Octavia Butler certainly has some that fit the bill.

@axoaxonic Stanislaw Lem's Solaris?

@axoaxonic Animorphs!

@axoaxonic A Hooloovoo, of course, is a superintelligent shade of the color blue.

@axoaxonic

Hail Mary by Andy Weir

@axoaxonic Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought Series has some of the best species-building I've encountered in scifi.

@axoaxonic kinda the opposite of what you're looking for biologically, but exactly what you're looking for culturally, would be LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game fits this bill well & the sequel actually gets deeper into the alien stuff.

I assume "the aliens are gross non-sentient bugs we gotta fight" is not exactly what you're looking for?

The game Alpha Centauri kinda fits maybe, although being a 4X game it's got some inherently twisted ideology stuff.

The game FTL has an interesting diversity of non-human races, but not really much room for cultural depth.

@axoaxonic @SRDas Slaughterhouse 5. The aliens look like plumbers helpers

@axoaxonic
David Brin's Uplift books dive into this pretty well. In the first ones he kind of casually mentions a species consisting of stacks of wax rings, and I feel like someone must have challenged him on them, because in his second trilogy in that universe they become really major characters. But more generally he spends a lot of time in these books on the different ways different species think.

@axoaxonic There are some alien aliens in the wayfarer series, but that's not the focus.

You could try the short They're made out of meat.

@axoaxonic here are a couple of authors who have exactly that:

David Brin (brightness reef) has multiple species with wildly different body types and modes of thought
Vernor Vinge (a fire upon the deep) has characters with collective consciousness formed of small groups

@SRDas I haven't. Other than shoe and oat milk brands, searching brings up a Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson collection. Are there particular stories in it that fit the bill?

@axoaxonic The Gw'oth are like sentient starfish, definitely different from the typical humanoid aliens.

https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Gw%27o

@MisuseCase I watched Farscape a bit and liked it, though I feel like those are still a little bit too earthly. I'm wondering if there are any shows/stories where even the biological taxonomy is alien

@icastico I just passed Octavia Butler Ave in Lake Forest Park. I've read Parable of the Sower and Dawn. Any others you'd recommend for the above reasons?

@icastico @axoaxonic Yes I was going to suggest starting with Octavia Butler's Bloodchild and Other Stories

@trigonella For some reason I've only read Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Lem. I saw the older Solaris movie when I was a teenager but mostly just remember the human psychological side of it. I should read the book, it probably goes deeper into the alien life aspect

@MyWoolyMastadon Looks cool. I don't think alien microorganisms would break my immersion as much as weird versions of earth animals do

@benfulton I guess that does fit the description better than most ha

@Karstan The wiki page for the first book mentions environments with different physics but also a "dog-like species." Interested though, especially since I still haven't read anything by Vinge. Thanks

@tiotasram I've read a lot of Le Guin's books and they're all great, but yeah the most alien part of the aliens (at least to a 70's western audience) is that they're nonbinary lol. Never read Ender's Game and didn't even know there were aliens in that series, I thought it was about VR war in space.

Nothing against alien bugs, I'm just really wondering how many writers have succeeded in describing creatures that don't have an Earth counterpart.

I haven't really gotten into a game in a long time actually besides online Go and Zelda on an SNES emulator, I'll look into these because it's a great medium for sci-fi

@xvf17 @SRDas Plungers are definitely not Earth beings I suppose. I've read that though

@xvf17 @axoaxonic most terrific book! And I reread just 2 yrs or so ago. But not really about the aliens.

@stevegis_ssg Honestly even stacks of waxy rings sounds more interesting in this regard. Going into the subjective phenomena of the aliens sounds like it'd be something I'd be into also, thanks

@ajroach42 Both seem cool, thanks

@axoaxonic

Her story “Bloodchild” comes to mind.

@axoaxonic Earthman's Burden was a fun read (caveat: a loooong time ago; I still have that and Hoka! but haven't reread in 30yrs or gotten kids to read)

@axoaxonic

It's a decent book. A good summer read. I liked his Martian book much better though.

*jazz hands*

And there is an alien other than micro organisms. Well thought out I thought.

@axoaxonic @icastico Bloodchild and Other Stories

@axoaxonic "dog-like" vastly mischaracterizes them, imho. :) There's also an interesting spider/crab species.

@SRDas I'll check it out thanks. Down for any sci fi really but it'd nice to find ones with truly alien aliens

@SRDas @xvf17 @axoaxonic I'll have to re-read it. I haven't read it since 2002 in Army training.

That got me invited to a meeting with the commander.

@axoaxonic in that case you should look for a copy of The Black Cloud

@SRDas Oh that one seems realistically otherworldly, will look for it

@axoaxonic @axoaxonic @axoaxonic I’m writing a science fiction story at the moment which has non-human creatures, but they are not aliens. They are intelligent raisins 🙂

But not sure that helps you. The best aliens I recall are from Stanley G. Winbaum but you might have read his stuff already?

@f @AngelaPreston I haven't but I'll check it out. Wiki says the aliens are the "first non-anthropomorphic thinking creature represented in american science fiction", very interesting.

Do the raisins start out early in life as grapes?

@axoaxonic @AngelaPreston I first read Weinbaum about 40 years ago and his aliens still remain in my mind. So they were certainly impactful 🙂

Too bad that he passed away fairly young. I often wonder what else he might have written 😞