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Science Fiction Books About Aliens

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47 pointsaxiomdata31650 comments

Happy to see Stanislaw Lem on this list! He was obsessed with humans not having the capability of seeing or understanding aliens.

His Master's Voice is about a SETI-like project that found a recurring signal, and the international effort to decode that signal (spoiler: it fails, gets defunded, the book ends)

Fiasco is a bit more 'normal' in its first contact story, but here too the communication fails abruptly for no apparent reason. Eden is my favorite - it's a bit like the Rama books, a space crew explores an alien land and can't make heads or tails of it.

I'll throw in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky for consideration. A significant element in both is a first encounter between a group of (mostly) human characters and something distinctly nonhuman.

The two novels are conceptually part of a series, but each can stand alone.

I never imagined Science Fiction could mix with Catholicism, but the weird combination sets an interesting backdrop for The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

(There is the book A Canticle for Leibowitz too, or at least these are the ones that I have read)

The book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

If you liked Canticle check out some books by Lafferty, though mainly a short story author, Past Master was well received.

Two other books which mix Catholicism with SF are Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" and James Blish's "The Day After Judgment".

Second that. Also "Children of God" that complements it. The story is very profound and has stayed with me for years. It's a rarity to read something that original in sf these days.

I think that science fiction should tangle more with both science and religion, and not because "it's an opportunity to write something interesting," but because in our real world the two are still fighting and, for now at least, one of them has the upper hand on fundamentally shaping our perception of human nature and on loudly proclaiming what's the meaning of life.

Sadly, your run-of-the-mill author and your run-of-the-mill editor are often shy of that type of conflict, and more interested on writing about interstellar conflicts and exploitative mining mega-corporations.

Star Maker... A book so good, after reading it, I couldn't believe it was possible to write a book like that. Please do yourself a favor and give it a try, it's not that big. Arthur C Clarke and Stanislaw Lem cite it as an inspiration.

Yeah I'd also recommend this (and Last of Men) by Olaf Stapledon. Written in the 30s, it shows an incredible breadth of vision in space and time.

Blindsight anyone?

https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

This is a great first-contact novel, probably my favorite example of this genre. The book concludes with some ideas about the nature of consciousness that I found to be legitimately frightening. I read the book years ago but it feels even more relevant now as we watch new forms of “intelligence” like ChatGPT beginning to emerge.

Exactly. Blindsight is a hard read, but it is as frightening as any horror story I have ever read. It absolutely deserves a place in the list of best alien stories.

Every time I use ChatGPT, I think about Blindsight's premise of intelligence without consciousness. Interacting with the AI feels so much like the alien interactions in that book, it is scary.

At least none of the LLMs I've worked with have decided to refer to themselves as Rorschach.

Yet.

Yes! The aliens, non-humans and neuro-diverse humans were set off against each other brilliantly.

I'd also add "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky for aliens who are still alien but also manage to be people.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim...

Just finishing Children of Memory. They were ok, not on the level of Blindsight IMO. Also reminds me of Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, which was also superior IMO.

I don’t know dude. It was so difficult to read. The way the aliens were presented was very original, but the storytelling kind of put me down. All the characters seemed flat, the environment was hard to conceptualize, a lot of made up words. And what was this thing with vampires? Who needs vampires in a sf book?

> Who needs vampires in a sf book?

They're SF vampires -- efficient, neurodiverse predators -- not undead/magic vampires.

They were reborn from traces in human DNAs and tamed with a drug they need to survive in our environment. They are very fast and very smart, that's why they are kept around.

I thought it was was an interesting take on making vampires work as having existed in the past. Especially clever why they don't like crosses.

What did you think about echopraxia?

Have not read it yet, need to.

There is also Portia, the possibly more alien life form in Echopraxia, the sequel to Blindsight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echopraxia_(novel)

One of my favorite alien stories is _The_fourth_profession_ by Larry Niven: https://libcat.ru/knigi/fantastika-i-fjentezi/240989-larry-n...

I've not read it (yet), but I've been watching "Quinn's Ideas" videos about The Three Body Problem. Basically all the aliens kill your planet due to game theory, so best stay hidden.

Then there is All Tomorrows... is it even a novel? Let me just say that you don't want the Qu to find you:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061124141617/http://www.nemora...

Game Theory and the Three-Body Problem:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348439715_Game_Theo...

I really enjoyed Project Hail Mary, which has quite an interesting alien in it.

i really enjoyed it as well. Also there’s seems to be a movie in the works based on it

Tbh science fiction books without aliens is much more interesting category to explore/discuss, seeing that aliens are dime a dozen in scifi.

In general scifi is such a weird genre. Basically anything set in space gets labeled as scifi regardless if they have anything to do with any sort of science. But then you also have all sorts of non-space scifi too like cyberpunk.

Aliens are also always look like earth animals, or a chimera like a human with a cat head, and can have sex with terrans to produce hybrids.

Sure.

Except for the alien ocean in Solaris, the cheela in Dragon's Egg, .. and all the other not earth-animal-like aliens.

Those aside, sure.

Yeah, I've read Dragon's Egg. There are exceptions. But there are an overwhelming number of scifi books featuring aliens that are human except they have a cat head. Might as well have ChatGPT write them.

I also move on when any synopsis says "the fate of the universe hangs in the balance" and "journey to the end of time".

Star Trek, of course, is infamous for aliens merely having an appliance glued to their face. Zzzzzz....

Even aliens that formally resemble Earth animals, like those in Blindsight, can be made utterly, unhumanly, unearthly alien, if the author has deep ideas about what a radically different life form could be.

Really? That's a good description of the SF section of literotica.com, as well as visual SF like movies, tv and comics, but written SF is much more diverse. If there is any trope, I would say that a disproportionate number of evil aliens are arachnid in appearance.

Books like Neuromancer or Snow Crash have no aliens, but describe worlds that are weirder than in many books with aliens!

I always read "scientific fiction" not as "scientifically correct fiction" but rather "fictional but plausibly-looking science". I think this goes all the way to G.H.Wells who described things like gravity-insulating material, and logical consequences thereof.

Neuromancerwintermute explicitly states he has signals of another AI from Alpha Centauri.

I don't think the aliens play a key role there; more like a cameo, another sign we're in "the future".

It might not be a published novel but I really enjoy "War Queen", a web novel about first contact from the (hive mind) aliens' perspective.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46850/war-queen

The best scifi alien short story, ever.

Meat

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

Alien meat farm. (We might be too).

https://www.scribd.com/doc/100964572/Larry-Niven-Bordered-in...

I recommend the Stories by Alastair Reynolds in the Revelation Space universe. The Inhibitors and the Pattern Jugglers come to mind.

I'll throw in Saturn Run. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Agreed, and pleased to see this one mentioned. "Lighter" than the usual stuff that gets lauded as great sci-fi but very enjoyable with enough realism to draw you in.

I can't get enough of good SF with interesting aliens, not because I'm such a voracious reader, but because there is so little of it.

My suggestion for the list would be the Sector General series by James White. It's a bit like the TV series House but with alien patients. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General)

Johm Brunner's The Crucible of Time. There are only aliens in that book, even if the aliens behave quite humanly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible_of_Time

Legendary Iain M. Banks is a true classic now.

For some hard sci-fi I do highly recommend Neal Asher, which reminds me of Banks universe.

And a classic "We are Bob" by Dennis Taylor, which is a very easy way to introduce anyone to sci-fi.

The same site from last time around, but with a bit of a wider scope:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35853131

Enders game series. Almost goes without saying. :)

Ender's Game is fairly weak on the aliens front. They make no direct appearances until the very end of the book.

The (unrelated) aliens in the sequel Speaker for the Dead are considerably more interesting. I wouldn't recommend any of the other sequels/prequels/sidequels, though.

The Bug Wars by Robert Asprin has no humans at all.

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