# Most alien aliens **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 26, 2013, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296 "2013-10-26T11:08:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296/81 "2013-10-29T07:26:50Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > The Bajoran Prophets from DS9 are pretty alien, though they appeared as humans to Sisko and others. They exist in all times at once and have no concept of chronology, and live in a wormhole connecting one point in the galaxy to another thousands of light years away. Speaking of DS9, the Changelings. Their natural state is as an ocean of goop all globbing together. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296/82 "2013-10-29T07:30:12Z")
> [@awldune](#): > > Notable example: > > "The Jophur > > The Jophur are a fictional extraterrestrial race from Uplift Universe. Physically, they are a stack of waxy, living rings. Each ring serves a different purpose, and they connect to each other to form a single being by chemical means via an electrically conductive, sap-like substance that flows down the center to bind the stack together. A Master ring provides a strong sense of individuality to each stack and enforces this with corrective electrical shocks to non-compliant rings." More awesome in that Jophur _without_ Master rings are another,[altogether much nicer](http://www.islanderis.net/users/timbo/library/entries/traeki.html) if somewhat indecisive, race entirely (Jophur are kind of supremacist dicks - very much like Daleks, that’s how I “heard” them in my head). And the Master rings are an outside imposition by their “progenitors”, so it’s a sad story overall - think “The Puppet Masters/Body Snatchers” but everyone’s alien. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296/83 "2013-10-29T11:17:03Z")
There’s a weird case in Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim - the aliens are a bit strange (having a hierarchy that is genetically coded into them, and thus very hard to resist) but in many ways, the humans of 14th century Europe are more alien to the modern point of view than the real aliens are. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296/84 "2013-10-29T11:49:22Z")
Iain M. Banks has several species that fall into this category (of course, he also has the very unlikely pan-human galactic agglomeration that is the Culture) - The Dra’azon - incorporeal species that protect the “Planets of the Dead” for unknown reasons: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dra’Azon#Dra.27azon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dra%27Azon#Dra.27azon) - Dirigible Behemothaurs, and “megalithine” and “gigalithine lenticular entities”, kind of like slow, inscrutable, ancient intelligences that look a bit like a cross between a gigantic blimp and a whale. He also has lots of species that are variations on themes you might see on Earth, of course. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296/85 "2013-10-29T17:13:35Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The ants from [Empire of the Ants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Ants_%28novel%29). They’re “mere” earthly ants, but their thought processes, social organization and so on are weird as hell (and yet more or less scientifically exact, except for the whole individual thought bit). The ants in **[Phase IV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV)** were even stranger. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-alien-aliens/672296.md?page=4)