The most alien alien?

I love books that really stretch and explore the possibilities of "alienness": alients that are really DIFFERENT, where the author has put some thought into how differences in physiology or evolutionary path might be related to differences in sociology or psychology, as well....

And I'm looking to be introduced to new ones. What are some of your favorite, really ALIEN, aliens?

I'll start with one of mine: In Children of the Mind: Aliens that communicate, not by sound or touch or sight, but by constructing complex molecular structures (similar to viruses) and sending them to eachother. A race so alien it's probably impossible to even evaluate WHETHER they are intelligent or not.... in any human sense.

What are some aliens that you have read about, that stretch the imagination?

Odo

The planet Solaris in Stanislaw Lem's book of the same name is an entity that may or may not be intelligent and "communicates" by creating physical manifestations of entities pulled from visiting humans' psyches. A large part of the book deals with humans’ inability to determine if this behavior was intentional or even actual.

I've always thought that was interesting, and maybe inspirational material for Alastair Reynolds' Pattern Jugglers?

stream of consciousness:

Writers have a really hard time with this, not surprisingly. Too alien, and they are incomprehensible to us, and the story runs the risk of becoming boring.
That said, the aliens in Rama (first book only) pulls it off quite well, I think. The whole POINT of the story is that the aliens are enigmas.

I do enjoy von-Neuman type stories too. While pretty alien in their goals, they are understandable, so I'm not sure that counts.

hmm...then again, are you interested in alienness and incomprehensible (which is easy to do - all the author has to do is provide only the humans' pov a la Rama, Solaris, Excession), or alien but explained (Children of the Mind, from what I gather from your explanation)?

In the book The Forever Man, two of the main characters are sent on a long-distance flight on a ship, and the way they survive it is by basically having their minds transplanted out of their bodies into the ship. Although they're human, this results in one of the most alien character ideas I've ran across in a long time.

IIRC, the aliens in Under Heaven's Bridge by Ian Watson & Michael Bishop are very alien.

wave without a shore includes Cherryh's complex aliens and the adversory.

I wasn't totally convinced by Eric Flint's mother of demons but for a free ebook (on Baen) they are more alien than most.

Even Donaldson's Amnion (gap series) are pretty alien.

but for a free ebook (on Baen)

That's a very odd qualification.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that free stuff (especially when it isn't out of copyright) is generally, with granted numerous exceptions, less good than stuff that is sold. It doesn't have to be, but more often than not, it is.

I don't think that holds true anymore. Most publishers have been handing out free ebooks for the past couple of years - Tor and Orbit being two examples. It's a way to encourage purchases. Many authors also do the same for their published works.

But an author who has books available in bookshops... you would hope the ones they give away are of the same quality as the ones they expect you to pay for.

My favourite aliens are the !tang in the Joe Haldeman short story 'A !tangled web' (collected in Dealing in futures). They are laid-back perambulating haystacks with seven sexes and various stages of estrous and a love of word-play. They disguise a reluctance to talk about a subject by employing an elaborate death-related metaphor which always ends "All die. O the embarrassment." As the story is set in Haldeman's ongoing (if occasional) Confederacion universe, it's to be hoped that they will crop up somewhere else in future.

Of course, they're just different from us, and part of the story is about how the human protagonist concludes a business deal with them in opposition to another human who does not display empathy with the !tang. So could they be said to be the 'most alien'?

Perhaps the most alien aliens I can think of are the Syccans in Bob Shaw's The palace of eternity, because we are completely unable to communicate with them on any level and can find little or no common ground - which is why the human race in the novel is in a losing war against them.

The "starfish" aliens in Blindsight confused the hell out of me, and were very very alien. I'm still not sure I understood that book. I also loved the "scientific" explanation (and inclusion in the crew) of real vampires. Remarkable! The book dealt with the concept of consciousness vs sentience; itself a very difficult subject to understand.

Most aliens in SF are just anthropomorphic simulacra in green suits.

The "hive mind" creature in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep was pretty good, but I read that many years ago when I was younger and my cynicism not as high (or is it, my standards were lower?). :)

I'll second the starfish from Blindsight, which were incredibly alien both physically and psychologically (if that term even applies to them!). It's a remarkable book - a meditation on consciousness as much as a science fiction story.

The Waveries - a short story by Frederic Brown - comes to me from the mists of my memory. This was about an electrical race that took up residence in telephone wires (although given my memory, it could have been something totally unrelated).

Excession by Iain M. Banks deals with a potential alien encounter, if indeed that was what it was.

Dear Greg,

I saw one of your cooments in a science fiction fun group. you have asked about the most alien alien.

I think that you will find the most strange (but yet plausible) entity in the world of science fiction when you read:

"Dragon's Egg" from Robert L. Forward

best regards

Tlatmil

Six Moon Dance is to me an interesting look at how humans might react to settling on a supposedly uninhabited planet. (I don't want to post spoilers)

ETA- gregstevenstx I really liked the attempts to communicate with the alien in Children of the Mind have you read Card's earlier work Wyrms, you can see some of his ideas of alien-ness developing.

How about the multi-dimensional Invaders in The Ophiuchi Hotline?

"Women are from Venus"

18> true, but does that count as science fiction? ;)

Wow, I have none of the books in the touchstones yet... Must be limited to more traditional aliens. My favorite alien aliens are from James White and the Sector General novels

The memory of the devil-resembling overlords of Childhood's End sticks with me.

I expect my aliens to be inexplicable, nay they must be "ALIEN". I do not want little gray men nor little Buggers - literally - who poke probes up my bum. To this end I nominate The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

Sorry, I forgotten how to do touchstones, something about double brackest/braces/parenthesise when and if they work.

Hey they do work!

I haven't read The Black Cloud but the aliens sound a little like the biological goo in Bear's Blood Music and the "gods" in MacLeods Engines of Light series (Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light, Engine City).

Stanley G. Weinbaum managed to create some really interesting aliens in his short stories. Try and pick up a copy of Interplanetary Odysseys.

Hey, I like this thread. Some alien-nation completely new to me and some authors to check back into.

Guess I'll have to find the suggested Cherryh title. Only kept one out of most of her plethora after she traded in universe-building for the well-worn path of taking an earthly trait and grafting it onto humanoids...

DUCKS and waddles away, quacking?