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Favorite Sci-Fi aliens
Roy Hasson
Israel
Kfar Saba
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After enjoying the great Favorite Sci-Fi ships? geeklist, I thought I'd start a similar one involving our favorite Sci-Fi aliens.
So - list your favorites, whether from fiction, film or TV.
I'll start with a few of mine. The aliens I like are those that can not easily be replaced by quirky humans, that think and act in ways that are very different from the way we do. Here goes.
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Hunter E
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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One of my issues with most of the aliens in SF (and by extension, most of the aliens on this list) is how un-alien they are. There's good reason for this, as aliens that essentially fit weird-human or weird-terrestrial-animal stencils are more identifiable, easier to tell stories about, and definitely easier to cast. Barring exogenesis hand-waving (which usually doesn't stand up to the available information regarding the history of life on earth -- if humans are the descendants of the Galactica crew/an ark full of hairdressers/the couple in that one twilight zone ep, why do we find so much fossil evidence of similar transitional forms, and why do we share so much DNA with other creatures sharing those common anscestors? And if DNA seeded to the primordial world carried code to indefinitely give rise to hominids, Star Trek style, why did vertebrate evolution go down so many dead ends and other extant branches before we happened to come along?) we can expect alien life to be incredibly alien, quite likely to the point of mutual unintelligibility.
That in mind, one of my favorite truly alien aliens in SF are the ice worms of Diadem in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe. These are small, uninteresting worms that burrow through the ice of this glaciated world, but which, Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): through following and reinforcing pheremone trails, give rise to an emergent intelligence, essentially acting as the neurons of a massive and incredibly slow brain, though one with which human visitors could not possibly interact with due to the aforementioned complications...
Reynolds generally does pretty well with alien aliens, if not quite to that extend -- see others in Revelation Space, or the aliens in Pushing Ice for some examples.
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Hunter E
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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And yet, in spite of the above, I still have plenty of suspiciously un-alien aliens* that I love...
The elcor from Mass Effect are just wonderful. My favorite was the ad for the all-elcor production of Hamlet in the Citadel in ME2.
*Sure, the elcor aren't straight humanoid (though plenty of other ME species are), but they're still based on a pretty standard terrestrial tetrapod vertebrate body plan...
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28.
Board Game: Force
[Average Rating:4.35 Unranked]
David van Damme
Netherlands
Rotterdam
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Hmmm, easy this is.
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30.
Board Game: Timeline
[Average Rating:5.67 Unranked]
Hunter E
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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The heptapods from Ted Chiang's Nebula-winning, Hugo-nominated novella Story of Your Life were pretty amazingly alien aliens, and provided some interesting speculation as to what it would take to establish communication with truly alien intelligences. Didn't help that
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): the heptapods' experience of time was non-sequential and deterministic, as refelcted in a non-sequential written language...
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Hunter E
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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And who could forget the Sesame Street martians?
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Hunter E
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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They may have had crap immune systems (and it's a little odd that terrestrial pathogens could even affect them, given that surely they'd have radically different biochemistry), but damn did they have cool toys:
I'm planning on getting a tattoo based on the Martian tripod in this illustration from the 1906 French edition of Wells's The War of the Worlds.
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Bossko B.
England
Brierley Hill
The Black Country
BAZINGA!
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Twi'leks.
Oola, Aayla Secura & Darth Talon. 'nuff said 
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Jeff
United States
Marion
Iowa
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"I voted for Kodos!"
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carlos hernandez
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
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Most of the staff and patients of James White's 'Sector General' space hospital stories and novels are memorable aliens.
The Kelgians, a caterpillar-like alien whose involuntary movements of their fur completely show their emotions, the species is incapable of both lying and tact.
The Tralthans, brilliant surgeons whose keen senses are supplemented by a symbiont that provides acute vision over up to 360 degrees.
Hudlars, Melfans, Illensans, Orligians, Nidians, and on it goes. Just to name a few.
A particular favorite of mine is the Cinrusskin Dr. Prilicla. A sentient insectile alien with six pencil-thin, sucker-tipped legs and two wide iridescent and near-transparent wings.
Cinrusskins are fragile (A casual hand gesture while speaking could easily break one of its legs.), with cowardice being a prime survival characteristic. Prilicla often walks on the ceiling to avoid being run over in the busy hallways.
They have a lack of stamina, and must rest frequently, sleeping deeply, with only a physical stimulus or close presence of danger able to wake them. They also have projective and receptive empathic abilities.
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John Laprise
Qatar
Doha
There is no rest for the wicked...
...and I am so tired.
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Any of the alien races from David Brin's uplift series. Unlike many authors Brin didn't just present alien races, he wrote (in radically different voices) from their perspectives. The inhumaness of his aliens is amazing.
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Shemp Fill-in: Chan?
United States
Fountain Valley
California
Which way did I go?
Pick a card.
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The Tralfamadorans from Slaughterhouse Five. They look like plungers with a hand on top and one eye in the palm of the hand. They don't perceive time sequentially, but as one dimention in a fixed, four-dimensional tableau. Their society has all the same problems as ours does, but they can choose to concentrate on the periods of time when things are good. "Living in the moment" is pretty easy when you can choose which moment.
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39.
Board Game: Dune
[Average Rating:7.63 Overall Rank:91]
Shemp Fill-in: Chan?
United States
Fountain Valley
California
Which way did I go?
Pick a card.
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Gods below! Why wasn't this one on the first page? Bless the Maker and his water. Ripped off in Betelgeuse and Star Wars and other places.
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Ted Duby
United States
Honolulu
Hawaii
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How could we forget lovable Grig!
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41.
Board Game: Mutants
[Average Rating:7.00 Unranked]
United Kingdom
Great Barford, Bedford
Bedfordshire
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Metaluna Mutant
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Chad Bowser
United States
Kernersville
North Carolina
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There are a few to choose from in the Cthulhu Mythos, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with The Colour Out of Space. The creature is unknowable. The author doesn't even attempt to explain the alien to the reader. It just is and just does what it does, which coincidentally is detrimental to us.
It is an admitted inspiration for the Tommyknockers and is possibly an inspiration for the Blob.
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The Honorable Mayor McCheese
United States
Clearwater
Florida
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We are Mooninites from the inner core of the moon, our race is hundreds of years beyond yours.
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Vincent Waciuk
Canada
Ottawa
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How about the Idiran from Iain M. Banks Culture books.
The latest Culture novel 'Suface Detail' was released today! Hurrah!
Waterstone's better hurry with my order.
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Daryl Wilks
United States
Peshastin
Washington
"Love killed the dinosaurs."
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The old b/w Invasion of the Body Snatchers was one of the only movies that actually scared me. Don't fall asleep!
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46.
Board Game: Invasion
[Average Rating:0.00 Unranked]
Jim Brown
United States
Edgewood
Maryland
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John Ringo's Posleen. Breed like rabbits, die like flies, just keep coming! They don't react well to artillery, but they're getting smarter all the time. Their God Kings are intelligent, their commoners are cannon fodder. They mix high tech with sheer numbers to swallow worlds, overpopulate them, and move on to the next.
Great military fiction/action reading, imho!
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Richard
Greece
Marousi
Athens
RPGGrEEK Guild, γινετε μελος εδω:http://rpggeek.com/guild/1256
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E.T. was the first that I thought of when I read the title of the geeklist.
It is definitely my favorite, by far.
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Doc Bullseye
United States
Brownsburg
Indiana
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The fithp from Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The only alien invasion story that EVER made sense.
The fithp resembled elephants with bifurcating trunks that ended in fingers. Descended form herd animals, they still had a herd mentality that subjugated their personal will to the desires of the Herdmaster. Oh, and did I mention that their Herdmaster was just a little crazy?
(I believe that this book would have won the Hugo that year if it hadn't been for a little novel about a boy studying military tactics.)
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You've had mattresses, now for the carpets: the superlative "Wang's carpets" by Greg Egan, almost virtual entities, almost beyond communicating with.
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Dean Glencross
Australia
Geelong
VIC
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The Tenctonese are my fave alien species. From my fave tv show Alien Nation. A massive ship crash landed on earth filled with 250,000 genetically bred Tecntonese slaves and they were integrated into society. It is basically a Cop show with commentary on racism directed at the Aliens (instead of other humans)
They ate meat raw, got drunk on sour milk and salt water was like acid to them. They also had two hearts, were 30% stronger and 20% smarter than humans and could survive in various conditions that would kill humans. But they had their own vulnerabilities such as salt being highly caustic to them.
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Posted Wed Oct 6, 2010 7:26 pm
Spencer
North Carolina
Kfar Saba
Brownsburg
Indiana
Plus, aliens probably have some cool game mechanics we've never heard of.
Sebastopol
Victoria
I hear their dexterity games are out-of-this-world!