Truly Alien beings

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The Orion's Arm Project has some strange aliens.

>posting Watts without mentioning Scramblers.

>clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
that was really good. Thank you.
Makes me sad the alien's epiphany didn't result in deciding to let us be or coexist

>Autists are vampires and really cool and we will kill all non-autists all through the solar system and inherit Earth

>positing twig without mentioning worm.

The entities are pretty amazing ayys themselves.

parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/

We don't know, you make this thread almost every week and you're given the same answer

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These little non sentient cunts are kind of cute
Technically the vampires didn't kill everyone, they just escaped, humanity was either wiped out by echopraxia or transformed by portia by the end.

It sounds like you'd like that Xelle sequence by Stephen Baxter. That guy tries to seriously imagine what life would look like if it evolved on the neutron star.

Just got to say we careful not to over do it. If you make them totally unrecognisable they just becomes non-descript blobs of "otherness" like the generic bug eyed 50s space monsters Don't limit yourself to Star Trek Dudes but don't go full Lovecraft either.

It's okay to draw "some" parables from cultures and animals on earth if it's not a copy paste job.

The movie alien and aliens probably the greatest "Alien movie", because of the alien aliens.

The aliens from Alien are memorably alien aliens, not because they are completely alien, but aliens in ways that are comprehendible alien.

Giger's Aliens designs were understandably alien to the audience and not just alienating. That's what made them so identifiably "alien" aliens and not completely alien

Hildermar Knots are my favorite.

>Alien species first discovered in the neutron star KJEI-54-458945 in the Einstein's Revenge Cluster. They consist of knots of the vortex and charge tubes in the neutronium mantle of the neutron star; each individual is a few centimetres across and lives on soliton waves and neutrino flows. They are based on nuclear matter processes, acting naturally on the femtosecond timescale and have nuclear matter manipulation abilities. The Einstein's Revenge Cluster consists of 34 neutron stars, apparently the result of timed supernovas several hundred million years ago. It is unknown if they were caused by the Knots or some species which created the Knots, but all neutron stars are inhabited by different versions of the Knots.

>The Knots appear to have a largely non-material culture where the basis of interaction is trade in self, orthodoxy and authentic noise (?) according to the communication attempts that have been undertaken by various interstellar institutes. Knots appear to view the world as an eternal unchanging structure, where they just play out its logical unfolding in order to cause their existence (?). Most contact attempts have failed, as the Knots consider the world outside the neutronium a highly abstract mathematical problem rather than something to interact with.

orionsarm.com/eg-article/46709d53449d2

>Technically the vampires didn't kill everyone
Maybe there's a follow-up book, but the end of the novel made it sound like the vampires hunted down all the non-autists and the alien moved on as a result of that as that put a stop to the attacks originating from Earth.

>The alien aliens from Alien are memorably alien aliens, not because they are completely alien alien aliens, but alien aliens in ways that are comprehendible alien alien aliens.
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

>Maybe there's a follow-up book
There's a sequel (interquel?) called Echopraxia that takes place on earth during the Theseus mission.
In that story it is revealed that Another alien race referred to as Portia has infected humanity in a symbiotic relationship giving humans increased intelligence and strength at the cost of killing off our personalities and overwriting it with one that is neither ours nor the portia's. the humans that don't get brainjacked by these aliens end up infected with a viral memetic agent called echopraxia and start mimicking the actions of the closest other humans endlessly until they die of exhaustion.
> but the end of the novel made it sound like the vampires hunted down all the non-autists
Siri was just speculating that vampires would take advantage of their prey willing putting themselves to sleep en masse by logging onto heaven before he even made it back.
> and the alien moved on as a result of that
No the scramblers stopped their attack because the vampire captain rammed the Theseus into the scrambler ship destroying both of them.
>as that put a stop to the attacks originating from Earth
The implication was that humans are the only sentient life in the universe and that the reaction towards humanity from any other race would be much the same as the scramblers was, vampires despite evolving towards non sentience are still self aware enough to trigger that response in other intelligent life.

Let me give some questions: at what point do "starfish aliens" stop becoming interesting and are just outright impossible to even approach, or do anything with?

What makes those kinds of aliens interesting, whether you're a GM or a player?

Eosapians from Barlowe's expedition. No eyes, liquivores, communicate and sense environment through sonar, float via gas sacks, 20 feet tall, and super strong.

And yet they have hands, they in fact the only creatures on Darwin IV that seem to have hands, what is up with that?

>What makes those kinds of aliens interesting, whether you're a GM or a player?
They meaningfully interact with humanity even if those motivations are not discernible. Those interactions can be affected by human actions and responses

He's right though. All of the aliens in Iain Banks books are just funny looking humans. If the narration didn't occasionally remind you that the speaker is actually a double-trunked hexapod you'd have no reason to suspect it wasn't a human talking.

Obviously you need some way to make tools, build things and record your history.
It's pretty hard to become intelligent spiecies if you don't have some sort of a limb that can interact interact with your environment, it doesn't have to be a hand and there are many things that can achieve that but it's hard to become advanced if you can't use anything.

They are still active characters in the story, and therefore have to be relatable to the humans reading it.

I could say that the Taxxons from Animorphs are a very "alien" species who have little in common with humanity, but the result is a cannibalistic race with almost no technology and no impact in the plot beyond getting enslaved by the much more "humanlike" bad guys.

"humanlike" being brain slugs.

I never liked the idea that a completely isolated species could interact with alien anatomy without detriment.

How could the yerks have possibly evolved to interface with the nervous system of humans AND Taxxons AND Hork Bajir AND Andelites? This species are completely separate organisms from entirely different trees. Surely being able to merge with one means another would be impossible or toxic.

They don't even get the progenator race excuse that Startrek does and convergent evolution only makes sense in so far as form not function.

It was mentioned that were other species that the Yeerks couldn't interface with. One of them had their brain distributed into nodes throughout their body. Another had a metamorphosis life cycle. IIRC there were also a few hosts that were just generally seen as useless.

Dolphins use tools, call each others by names, play around a lot and have casual sex to strengthen group bonds. Dolphins are just humans with some cosmetic changes.

>Don't limit yourself to Star Trek Dudes but don't go full Lovecraft either.
But user, Lovecraft is an excellent example of what you're talking about.

Oh, what's that? You've never actually read Lovecraft? Well that explains why you seem to know fuck all on the subject.

Came here to post this. Also OP, you may have some luck with the artist Wayne Barlowe's work. He has 3 awesome books about aliens:

>Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials
>The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe
>Expedition

He has a website, just google his name, and some of his art is up there.

>Expedition
Discovery Channel made a mockumentary based on that book.

youtube.com/watch?v=zHzPEpHYtXQ

What would this version of the Thing do when it encountered a Buddhist monk?

Alien planet
Lovercraft
Star Control 2

Migo are neat

What is it with that guy and hating on self-awareness?

Probably have a chill conversation with his biomass after eating it.

Are you a happy camper? We are *fingers*.

That thing that happens when a word loses all meaning and you just sit there thinking about how weird a word really is.

Also, look closely at that hand; some of the fingers are bony digits, and others look like felshy muscular outgrowths like the proboscus mouth thingy. They had to work hard to get graspy bits on that limb.

That's a thing that winds up getting glossed over in Sci-Fi, because it'd be kinda inconvenient in real life.

Look at the Dextro/Levo Protein Chirality thing in Mass Effect. That's an interesting little nod to the alien proteins problem, but in reality, EVERY SINGLE planet would have its own proteins (even if its based on amino-acids in the exact same configuration as ours) that wouldn't interact at all with other biologies.

The foreign proteins would be unlikely to poison you, but it'd fuck up your tract because none of your enzymes are capable of breaking them down.

Why call it a wheel and not a millstone?

That sounds like some heretical applied science.

because he thinks it's a wasteful energy sink. or at least that's the argument he posits in his books.

I don't think a god from the expanded universe slenderman mythos really counts as an alien.

Think of it like edibility. Many plants have chemicals to deter eating. Humans can eat lots of food that would kill a dog or cat and these aren't foods that we evolved for.

Chemically there is a limited number of way for life to work. Now we might have carbohydrate compounds with additional trace elements but the chemical oxidation to gain energy will be the same theory.

If everything runs off the same ruleset you're going to see similar solutions.

You'd probably be able to break parts of the protein down. John St not receive the full nutrition and maybe some constipation and gas.

>Eating race specific food in Starbound doesn't give additional bonuses
Shit game.

Daily reminder that realistically other aliens are likely to look human-like.

>nothing like humans/earth animals
Not possible. We can't imagine something with no basis

He's from Cali, so he naturally knows in his guts that the Google drone fleet will eventually use the data Google has to cull the human race in order to optimize ad revenue and the fidelity of its predictive model.

> muh convergent evolution meme

All bubbles are spherical, user.

...No, not really.

I guess maybe they'd be likely to be roughly human in the essential sense; but I'd consider a cuttlefish to be roughly human in the essential sense; a medium-sized generalist predator with manipulatory appendages who's primary sense is vision. Two legs, two arms, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, ass crack? No, shut up, that's retarded.

>falling for the "intelligence could only ever form in humanoids" meme

God? Silly cow, we are the Orz!

It's a cosmic horror story. Horror in the sense of "what if something we think of as quintessentially human is actively detrimental to our continued existence?". Survive or remain human. Pick one.

There's no reason that an intelligent species wouldn't evolve the same general body plan when it's clearly the most effective one.

Not an argument.

Go look through Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestials. It has all the books where the aliens are pretty damn alien listed, and how humans relate or fail to relate to them.

>and therefore have to be relatable to the humans reading it
I agree with you in principle but there's a big difference between relatable to humans and identical to humans. I love the Culture series but with one or two exceptions all of its aliens are just human brains in weird bodies.

>He's from Cali,
Even worse he's a fucking leaf.

wheel angles

Simply put: I don't think it is possible to write a novel from a convincingly alien viewpoint that would still be enjoyable for a human to read.

>All you can ever write is humans in rubber suits.

Look at the OP user

Dude, proteins are just pretty complex chemical compounds. They're structure is informed by the elements within. Elements are the same everywhere so proteins while not the same would be running on similar if not the same chemical bonds. Some bonds would absolutely be impossible to eat, we aren't designed to eat grass for instance, but there is no reason to believe that it just being alien would prevent digestion.

MorningLightMountain is the best and most important character in the commonwealth saga books. Prove me wrong.

MorningLightMountain did nothing wrong.

Complex organic molecules often interact with each other regardless of where they come from, often in unexpected and potentially harmful ways. Alien poisons may not be poisonous to humans, but you're entirely likely to have an allergic reaction to an alien protein.

I was thinking the same thing!

>all intelligent life would look like me
Said the tree-swinger who eventually started walking around on flat plains.
>did not evolve exclusively in water
>did not return to water like dolphins/whales
>did not evolve on steep cliff faces like mountain goats
>never burrowed underground for a damn thing
>endoskeleton instead of exoskeleton
>not nocturnal
>two sexes exclusively
>bipedal
>doesn't collect energy from sunlight
>has bones

The Querl in Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks,
and the Azadians of The Player of Games also by Iain M. Banks.

Cant say much about it because i am not a practicioner of natural science but i can say that any race that can pull themselves to human levels of society must have opposable thumbs.

That is why races like hanar,elcor etc in mass effect are major tier bullshit.

Any race that can pull themselves to human levels must have an appendice that can be used to make and use a tool. Any other definition is shit. Tentacles are fine too.

More accurately they need strong, high dexterity manipulators of some kind that can grip things. Otherwise they can't create complex tools.

How do those things eat with their giant dongs getting in the way?

An underwater environment is not conducive to the development of higher technology, unless you go the route of All Tomorrows and have your fish people use organically bred "tech" or the route of Mass Effect and have your species telepathically enslave land dwellers. Not that tech is a must for intelligence, though.

Either way, even though they're neat ideas they'd both be a stretch for obvious reasons. And if we're talking space-faring, well just try to breed a rocket ship from a carp.

There are a lot of problems with photosynthetic intelligence, even disregarding the particularities of why it wouldn't work just on our planet.

Ultimately what it comes down to is the ability to physically create and manipulate tools, an environment that allows for some approach to mechanization (whether it's our way or an alternative), a physiology that can support the energy demands of intelligence and some functional equivalent of encephalization.

If we're just talking about dolphin-tier intelligence though, I suppose you could have most anything occupying that slot.

those wheels angle, yes...

Oh, angels. Yes, they are cool.

Also Lem's "The Invincible"

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>Falling for low energy bait
Stop.
At least make him work for it.

Continue, please.

That isn't even true on earth.

what is this from?

> transhumance space Luddites
> just a brain tied to wheel

God I have always had trouble getting my head around imperium attitude to trans-humanism and technology, but that sums it up to a t.

Take every dehumanising aspect of it you can think of, crank it up to 11, and then use it make people's lives *less* comfortable or efficient.

I don't think you understand what the word alien means.

>i am not a practicioner of natural science
>but am sure I understand speculative alien convergent evolutionary biology perfectly and better than anyone with a different opinion or view
WEW kid

The dongs are their mouths.

The beaks on their heads actually hold their genitals and womb.

Tentacles are awful for tool-use. They are literally eight separate boneless fingers. Each with a different rudimentary brain.

You are Non--not part of Juffo-Wup. You must become Juffo-Wup or void.

The webcomic False Positive.

Elephants can grasp shit at the end of theirs.

Thanks!

>Tentacles are awful for tool-use

Not necessarily. A tentacle may not be great at swinging a hammer, but could turn a wrench, use a stick to poke around a hole and can use suction to grasp objects rather than relying on friction to hold it.

Put a more centralized nervous system (or a smarter sub-brain) behind it and I'll bet you'd see some great stuff.

Similarly, imagine the tools a tentacled creature would make for itself. Tools designed to be used with tentacles. Leverage might be an issue, but they can lay on serious torque and pull strength to objects the manipulate.

No reason whatsoever for things like that to exist. Sapient aliens that human beings will make contact with are going to be warm-blooded, bipedal, have big heads, and possess graspers. They will be humanoid because those traits are necessary for a technological civilization.

>those traits are necessary

>warm-blooded
A slower metabolism could still get the job done.
>bipedal
Nope. Number of legs/feet is irrelevant.
>big heads
Octopuses don't have heads at all. As long as their brain or brains are protected they're good.
>graspers
Got me there. They'll need those.

You're thinking from a very human POV. The very nature of a technological civilization requires a brain smart enough to build with a way to physically manipulate its environment. That's it. Almost everything else is on the table.