16 KiB
Stories with Alien Aliens
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 30
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Created: 2017-09-02T07:29:41
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[deleted]
Comments:
u/None [+25] (an hour later)
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Solaris by Stanislav Lem
To an lesser extent, Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. They aren't as unknowably mysterious but still different in a very interesting way.
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+9] (an hour later)
The aliens in Pandora's Star are probably the best I have read when it comes to being wildly different. A great read, but I wish Hamilton had skipped the parts with the hippy fairy tale magic level technology.
u/None [+5] (2 hours later)
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u/None [+10] (2 hours later)
The travel itself plays absolutely no role in Solaris as the entire plot takes place on one planet that is far off from Earth. So if you want you can pretend it's without FTL and just a close neighboring star, IIRC it's never mentioned how long it took them to get there.
You're missing out on Hamilton though. While there is a super conventient FTL method at the very central of the setting he goes out of his way to stay away from usual Space Opera tropes.
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
Hmm, well I'll check out Hamilton, then. From the description I was a bit worried it was very Star Trek-y, which is not really my cup of tea.
The whole sentient ocean generating hallucinations thing on Solaris seems a bit implausible, though. If the ocean can understand them well enough to bring up repressed memories it can surely understand well enough to communicate, at least a bit. Or does it make more sense in the book than in the reviews?
u/Roxolan [+7] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (14 hours later)
If the ocean can understand them well enough to bring up repressed memories it can surely understand well enough to communicate, at least a bit. Or does it make more sense in the book than in the reviews?
This is discussed a little bit in the book.
Solaris is a one-of-a-kind entity. It has not had to evolve the buttload of communication protocols we have as a social species living on a planet full of animals. Its only known interaction with the outside world (before the event of the book) is tidal manipulations to stabilize its orbit. Forget communication barriers, it's not clear it would understand communication itself with an external entity as a concept.
Complex "geological" constructs regularly emerge from the ocean, stick around for some time, then disperse. The scientific community's best guess is that this is how Solaris's thoughts are produced and/or stored. But they have no idea, really.
One character compares the things that Solaris is doing to, what if we scanned one of those structures, built an exact replica, and dumped it in a random spot in the ocean? Just because we could do it, doesn't mean we have any fucking clue how that would feel from the inside (or if that's even a sensible question; Solaris may not even be sentient).
u/ajuc [+1] (8 days later)
Lem may be too philosophical at times, but do give him a go. It makes a lot of sense.
u/entropizer [+2] (10 hours later)
Pretty sure Blindsight is free on the author's website?
u/None [+1] (12 hours later)
Oh. :( I already bought it on Amazon. Oh well, I can read it on my Kindle.
u/talks2deadpeeps [+2] The Culture (21 hours later)
It's always good to support a good author, anyways.
u/Hobovampire [+1] (18 hours later)
Peter Watts is just fantastic highly recommend
u/dinoseen [+1] (15 days later)
Still only part way through so please no discussing of Blindsight specifics, but do you know of any other stories that depict vampires in a similar way, as purely natural predators of mankind that we mostly outcompeted but that are nonetheless beings that outmatch us in every possible way one on one?
u/thrawnca [+12] Carbon-based biped (2 hours later)
Have you read Three Worlds Collide? Short, but good for considering aliens with fundamentally different values.
u/None [+4] (3 hours later)
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u/WilyCoyotee [+5] (10 hours later)
The Humans were the third "alien" group.
u/None [+1] (12 hours later)
The Humans didn't really seem alien, but, of course, they're humans.
u/WilyCoyotee [+5] (12 hours later)
There only really two humans as we know them in the story, the two watchers/observers, one on the ship and planet. The rest of human civilization is pretty different, what with compulsory racial/gene blending done a few ..centuries ago?, legalized rape, and whatever the electronic web-democracy-stock market thing was. The culture humans had then is practically it's own alien culture, just as repugnant to us as the other two are...because it's Three worlds colliding, observed by an immortal with no investment in any of them.
*watcher/observer=confessor
u/None [+2] (a day later)
The electronic web-democracy-stock market thing is called futarchy.
I guess I've read too much history to really consider the humans alien. None of their values seemed as different from the norms of the modern monoculture as slavery and paederasty, and those are both well within the sphere of what I'd consider as normal human values. Baby Eaters were definitely a bit different, though.
u/kuilin [+1] (2 days later)
I guess I've read too much history to really consider the humans alien
Hm. What if you read the entire TWC believing that the point of view and main characters are aliens, and that the, say, Superhappies were actually humans far in the future?
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
I could imagine Superhappies being post-humans. Babyeaters were a bit different, though.
u/Dreamliss [+8] (38 minutes later)
Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh (and many of her other books such as the pride of chanur, cuckoo's egg, serpent's reach)
The Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card, particularly into the second book.
A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
Damocles by S.G. Redling
u/bloodfist [+9] (16 hours later)
Speaker for the Dead is definitely one of my go-to "alien aliens" books. I actually read them out of order when I was a kid and read that one first. While I think Ender's Game is a better book in terms of pacing and broad appeal, Speaker will always be my favorite. The aliens were just so compelling.
u/Dreamliss [+3] (18 hours later)
If you're into 'humans interacting with aliens that are actually alien' I suggest you read the other ones, particularly the Foreigner series. Do you have any others? I love ones with lots of human - alien interaction and curiosity between them, especially first contact books.
u/bloodfist [+2] (19 hours later)
Thanks! I definitely will. I am definitely into that.
In another comment I mentioned The Mote in God's Eye and Ringworld, both by Larry Niven. Big fan of both of those.
Mote is an excellent first contact book, and Ringworld is a classic in general. I find the Puppeteers to be a really interesting alien race.
u/htmlcoderexe [+4] (15 hours later)
Okay I started on this crystal society thing and I have questions.
what the shit?
so did Inside Out rip this off or the other way around?
2), but with HJPEV and his personalities thing
how long is this in HPMoRs, and is only the first book free or the rest are buyable somewhere?
u/None [+3] (21 hours later)
It's really, really good. Stick with it! It's got both the best AI and the best aliens I've ever seen in fiction.
It diverges from the Inside Out model in a bit... (Really mostly in the second book, though)
^
The first book is about 0.4 HPMoRs, the second is about 0.3. Only the first is free; the second is available on Amazon.
u/htmlcoderexe [+1] (a day later)
"First one is free!", haha. But yeah, my statement was more of awe than anything. What I've read so far was very very interesting, and I've not even touched the subject of aliens yet.
u/Roxolan [+2] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (a day later)
For what it's worth, HPMOR came first, then Inside Out, then Crystal Society.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
Strong disagree with "it's really really good." I highly recommend stopping reading after the first ~20% ... in my opinion, it was all downhill from there.
u/htmlcoderexe [+1] (2 days later)
I'm around Ch 20, pace is slowing but still readable. HPMoR had a similar issue, sometimes pacing was shit and sometimes it rocked. Plot with blue balls.
u/bloodfist [+4] (16 hours later)
Haven't seen Ringworld or The Mote in God's Eye mentioned, which both usually come up in this conversation. Not the most alien aliens in either, but damn good examples of really unique and well thought out aliens.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (4 hours later)
Karl Schroeder has a number of stories with truly alien aliens.
Ventus - a human-created artificial ecology that has assumed its own goals and rationality, in which humans are now merely one more species to be managed.
Permanence and short stories like Solitaire - consciousness is simply a stage an intelligent species goes through. Humans come late to a galaxy that's had generations of interstellar ecosystems layered upon each other.
The Virga series - Artificial Nature is not conscious in any real sense, but its method of simulating reality to plan for its goals works at least as well.
u/the_terran [+3] (6 hours later)
Stanislaw Lem is a master of this. Try Eden, Fiasco, and Solaris.
u/ajuc [+1] (10 hours later)
Yup. Also on related subject (first contact) - His Master's Voice.
u/htmlcoderexe [+1] (15 hours later)
Eden was one of my first and favourite scifi novels I've ever read. Although his aliens were often parodies of whatever political regime was trendy to make parodies of at the time. But still. I loved the disk race and the convo with the dying scientist.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Looking at descriptions of his books, the aliens seem to be allegories of human societies rather than anything incomprehensibly other.
u/paradoxinclination [+3] (a day later)
It's one of the subs more commonly recommended stories, but you should check out The Things. It's a short story that re-tells the famous John Carpenter movie from the aliens perspective, and it's just fantastic.
u/MagicWeasel [+3] Cheela Astronaut (a day later)
Love the Crystal Triology, I'm thinking of re-reading it. Can't wait for the third book!
Just realised that nobody has recommended Dragon's Egg yet, and given my flair, I should probably do it.
Now, I'm not going to lie - the aliens in Dragon's Egg aren't as alien as many of the others shown. They have a society broadly similar to ours with some notable exceptions (no pair bonding, different method of raising children, no taboo about cannibalism), but those are exceptions that I wouldn't be surprised to read were commonplace in an Amazonian tribe.
The really amazing thing about Dragon's Egg is that the life forms exist on a neutron star and use neutron physics. The novel was written by a neutron star physicist so it contains a LOT of detailed things about the magnetic field and how the aliens interact with that.
And even more amazing is that the aliens make First Contact with humanity, but they live 1,000 times faster than we do: so a Cheela lives and dies in 15 minutes. This means that the humans who are on a space ship orbiting the neutron star get to watch the society literally go from hunter-gatherer to spaceflight within the space of 12 hours. It's really, really cool.
Again, the Cheela are not altogether that alien, but I think they're still very alien because the physics they operate under is so very different to our own. I believe it's available for Kindle though I might recommend the paperback if you can get ahold of it because there's an appendix in the back that is very helpful when you read it (so you can flip across to see how much 30 seconds means to a Cheela).
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I love that book! They're not my first thought for truly alien aliens, but it's an awesome story nonetheless.
u/MagicWeasel [+1] Cheela Astronaut (a day later)
Did you read Starquake? I thought it was bad the first time I read it (really made the Cheela much more human!), but the second read through it stood up better. Not a patch on the original though, but probably worth the read.
u/eternal-potato [+4] he who vegetates (2 hours later)
The relevant trope is called Starfish Aliens.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (22 hours later)
Currently reading A Fire Upon the Deep, there are at least two very unique alien races that are pretty central to it. Besides which it's a fantastic story once you get through the dense on-the-fly worldbuilding, with an AGI as the primary antagonist.
u/Nighzmarquls [+2] (a day later)
There is a direct chronological sequel to that too ( I forget the name ), a prequel called a deepness in the sky.
And a double sequel short story called babbler.
u/buckykat [+3] (2 days later)
The prequel has another kind of strange alien, but the question of how really alien or human their minds are is left kind of open. There's a really strong translation convention going on in the narration of their scenes.
u/Nighzmarquls [+2] (a day later)
KADO:the right answer. Is an anime that has some of the best alien first contact scenario I've seen.
And it's actually a pretty good alien alien.
u/None [+2] (23 days later)
Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. The protagonist's mind is at first limited to seeking out intelligences like us but as he sees more and more this limitation falls away.
Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon, when the Martians propagate their spores to Earth.
u/selementar [+1] (4 hours later)
There's an old-ish anime where alien(s) are alien enough to be non-obvious.
...
Listed in the aforementioned Starfish Aliens trope examples, too.
...
I wonder what other examples have the alien aliens play a major role in the process rather than a minor appearance.
u/astralbrane [+1] (17 hours later)
I'm reading Timelike Infinity, in which the aliens consist of turbulent convection cells in liquid. Their thought processes seem more or less similar to humans, though.
u/HiEv [+1] (a day later)
Not actually an alien, but I found Kurt Russell's character in the 1998 sci-fi film "Soldier" to have a far more alien mind than the aliens in most sci-fi films.
u/vallar57 [+1] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (a day later)
Play Stellaris and turn on imagination to max XD
u/CCC_037 [+1] (9 days later)
Chanur's Pride by C.J. Cherryh. (And sequels).