Eric Frank Russell’s novel *Sentinels from Space *featured a species that was concealing its existence from humans and trying to keep a secret from a race of aliens called the Denebs.
In Star Trek: TOS, what about the race of aliens that sponsored Gary Seven (Assignment: Earth)? Their existence was unknown to the Federation in the time of Kirk.
I cannot remember the title, but Poul Anderson wrote a novel in the 1950’s that featured a race of shapeshifters that manipulated Terrans and Martians into fighting a war disastrous to both sides. The shapeshifters disguised themselves as leaders of the two peoples. The two heroes, one a Martian and the other a human, finally revealed the secret at the end. In his novel Satan Planet, the Shenna go to great lengths to hide their existence until David Falkyn makes certain inquiries that cause their human agents to reveal themselves. The Scotians in the Dominic Flandry novelette “A Tiger by the Tail,” also try to hide thier existence from the Terran Empire until they are ready to invade.
You might also want to consider the supposed supermen in Heinlein’s novelette “Gulf.” They definitely conceal themselves from the normal humans.
There’s the Others from Haldeman’s Marsbound trilogy. Any other race is probably better off not knowing about them, as the Others are really massively isolationist jerks. Or from Mass Effect, if you don’t feel like reading.
Not the way I remember it. Although the Arisians used their powers to deceive all but the L3s about their true appearance and capabilities, they were well known to the Lensmen, and even some civilians, as the source of the Lens, and as key players in the struggle against Boskone.
The Eddorians seem to have been known only to their immediate subordinates, though.
I always thought that was a very weak plot point. It’s kind of like saying you’d know about red giants if you lived on a planet that revolved around a red giant, and implying that otherwise, you wouldn’t.
Fredric Brown did this repeatedly, in his short stories – from the Prxl, in STAR MOUSE (who camouflaged themselves to hide from predatory aliens and kept the disguise up ever after, pointedly passing on the opportunity to contact Earthmen in particular while remaining secluded from other races in general) to the telepathic pacifists in OBEDIENCE (who can’t bring themselves to kill anyone, know they can’t peacefully coexist with others who have no such limitation, and flee our space fleet to resettle on an uninhabited world).
For bonus points, he also wrote a number of stories where aliens secretly live among us with no reference to whether they likewise conceal themselves from other races; it never comes up, since the plot already has its hands full showing us one regular guy who almost dopes out the secret but gets erroneously convinced otherwise on the last page…
This is also the (inconsistent) policy of The Federation in Star Trek TOS: they (sometimes) go to great lengths to not interfere in pre-space-travel cultures, which includes hiding the existence of space traveling humans. Though that doesn’t really fit the OP (which specified hiding from all aliens), since the Federation was happy (even in episodes where the Prime Directive existed) to make contact with other spacefaring cultures.
But ONLY of Earth. Earth in the MIB universe is actually the direct inverse of the OP - instead of a single race hiding themselves from all others out there, all the other races in the galaxy are hiding themselves from one specific species.
