Updating Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials

In My Humble Opinion
1

Back in the 1970’s there was an art book called Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, which consisted of a set of paintings, with accompanying text, about aliens from SF which were particularly well thought out. As I remember, Barlowe said something along the lines of, “Anyone can put a cat head on a human body. But what does the cat-man eat? What is his culture like?” The book had the Soft Ones from The Gods Themselves, the Black Cloud, Solaris, the tree people from The Word for World is Forest, the Old Ones (or whoever the aliens are who invented shoggoths) from At the Mountains of Madness, etc. (A few authors were extremely well represented- the Ixtl and the bird people from Voyage of the Space Beagle both made the cut.)

What aliens would you add to the guide if it were being updated?

-Ben

2

Did you know Barlowe did a semi-sequel, Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy? But to answer the OP, here’s my suggestions:

The Titanides, the Angels, or any of the other aliens from John Varley’s Titan trilogy.

David Brin’s Uplift series has had numerous alien races, many of which would be good subjects.

Several of Larry Niven’s aliens were included (the Puppeteers, the Outlanders, and the Slavers IIRC) but I’d like to see more.

Jack Chalker is another well represented author who still could use more entries. His Wellworld series had dozens of alien races.

Piers Anthony’s Mantas, from his Omnivore trilogy or the Mintakans from his Kirlian series.

Joe Haldeman’s X!tang from A X!tangled Web.

Harry Turtledove’s Minervans from A World of Difference.

3

The Liadens, Clutch (“turtles”) and Yxtrang from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe novels.

The Sholans, Valtegans and others from Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance novels.

4

Not having read the original, I don’t know if these are duplicates.

I’d like to see the Fithp from Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall, not to mention the Moties from A Mote in God’s Eye.

I’d also like to second the nomination for many of Brin’s races, especially the wheeled g’Kek and the traeki who are comprised of stacks of toroids.

The aliens of the movie Aliens series would be quite interesting as well.

5

Was Orn in the original? What about Ender’s Buggers?

–Tim

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Oooh, I like the Moties! That was a great book. Would you include just the main species, or the service, war, and tiny rat like ones too? Would they be separate or sub-species? Oh, this is so confusing.

–Tim

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For those of you who haven’t seen Barlowe’s work, you can click these links to see his versions of Frank Herbert’s Guild Steersman or Larry Niven’s Puppeteer. Barlowe’s book has been reprinted a number of times and in still available. I’d recommend it to any science fiction fan.

8

Maybe y’all are less interested in hard-science visions, but I’d like to see Kim Stanley Robinson’s nisei human Martians from his Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy.

While genotypically still human, they are extremely tall due to Mars’s lighter gravity. And they have huge upper torsos due to the thinner atmosphere.

And yet, immigration from Earth continues, so they live in a world where the apartments, trains, bridges, everything would have to be constructed to accommodate both sizes of humans.

I’d like to see some depictions of that.

Is Barlowe still alive and working?

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(1, 2)The races from Orson Scott Card’s “Ender” books, I forget the names.

(3)The dinosaur-looking telepaths and (4)underwater humans from Phyllis Gotlieb’s Flesh and Gold.

(5)A little sex appeal couldn’t hurt. I seem to recall the females of the anthropomorphic “Tigeries” in Poul Anderson’s Ensign Flandry being described as having inhumanly perky breasts. (On the other hand, they fed blood straight to their children instead of producing milk–eeww.)

[Ah, yes, remembering odd world-building details from a book I never even finished. I wonder if the fact that I’ve just been reading old Sluggy Freelance had something to do with me remembering that.]
…
Nah.

10

Skroderiders from A Fire Upon the Deep by Vinge. Intelligent sessile sea creatures who have their sense and manipulative organs built into the little wagons they ride around in.

I hthink I would also like to see Barlowe’s impression of the Great Turtle A’Tuin.

11

Giving my copy a quick glance, just the Puppeteers and Thrint. I’d like to see what he’d do with the Kzinti or a few of the more interesting Ringworld peoples.

(Frank Herbert, Hal Clement, and Poul Anderson were also fairly well represented.)

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A Hooloovoo, a superintelligent shade of the color blue.