“They cut the power!” " What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!"
I’m not sure there’s any evidence, but they do seem “intelligently designed” rather than evolutionary. Otherwise, yes, their native planet would be worse than Harrison’s Deathworld.
“A survivor… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” Ash could have been speaking about it as intelligent, or a dumb animal.
I’d theorize they were genetically modified from some species of insect-like nature, and given intelligence. perhaps they were controlled through some sort of transmitted commands, or just let loose. Perhaps they have (had?) some remote kill switch. But it might seem they got away from their creators and are now running loose.
Note: I did not see Prometheus.
I am a big fan of the on-line comic Schlock Mercenary, so of course Schlock (a carbosilicate amorph), Uniocs, Fobotrr…heck, there are a lot and the writer has made all of them interesting…
From books, the Moties from Niven/Pournell’s Mote in God’s Eye are close enough to interact with and alien enough to be quite different from us.
From movies, anyone from the “Klatuu/Gort” society in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (old film). I’d really like to see if it does work.
There’s no reason the Engineers wouldn’t have chosen a particularly successful parasite from a deadly world to engineer into their biological weapon. That way they don’t have to start from the beginning.
Trek; Klingons, Vulcans, Ferengi , heck, even the Spoonheads…err…Cardassians
Farscape; the Nebari, i’ll be in my bunk…with Chiana can I get a Frell Yeah?!
Star Wars; the Twi’Lek
Battlestar Galactica (reboot); Boomer/Athena, and Number Six models
Futurama; MACTECH-PREFERS-THE-BRAINSLUG-PLANET <rips off brainslug>, sorry, ahem, as I was saying… Decapodians, Neptunians, Omicronians, and…ALL-GLORY-TO-THE-HYPNOTOAD… Dammit, too many mind-controllers there…
In the book, scientists have been studying it for decades, hundreds of articles have been written about it and yet, no-one understands what it is or what it wants, as its fundamentally alien nature renders it prospect of establishing communication with it futile. What do the gigantic, baroque superstructures that appear occasionally on its surface mean ? Are the creepy hallucinations that haunt the astronauts orbiting its planet proof of hostile intent or just the product of our inability to communicate ? No-one knows.
I’ve never been happy with Stanislas Lem’s book*, although I like it better than either of the film adaptations.
If you’re looking for incomprehensible aliens that we don’t seem to be able to communicate with effectively, I prefer the Loarra from Terry Carr’s The Dance of the Changer and the Three, which came out about the same time. It was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula that year, but didn’t win either
(which still has not been completely translated into English. The translation we have not only isn’t complete – it’s not direct. It’s the English translation of a French translation. Kinda like the Jerusalem Bible.)
He goes into a lot more detail with his later collaborative series with Ed Lerner. Worth your time, if not quite as good as many of the Ringworld books.
My own favorite aliens are how the Strugatsky brothers described an alien visitation in Roadside Picnic:
I think any alien visitation would be horrifyingly incomprehensible, if we even knew it was occurring. Returning to Niven, I liked how the Thrint in World of Ptavvs was thought of for the longest time as just a statue, serenely untouchable and incomprehensible to everyone that tried to study it. I think any alien artifacts would be similarly beyond the ability of modern science to begin to even understand.
EDIT: Les Espaces’s Solaris ocean got me to thinking. The Juggler Ocean from Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series is a nifty example of an aquatic sentient ocean. In that universe, living beings visit the Pattern Jugglers to be remade, from the atoms up, with new modes of thinking and acting. Think of it as a nanotechnology vat, run by a communal, ocean-spanning organism, that is mostly beneficial. Though sometimes the Jugglers don’t let you leave…
If you like Harry Harrison, it’s typical of his other books. Though Jason dinAlt wishes he was as charismatic as Slippery Jim. Typical of late 60s-mid 70s influence too. But it reads quickly.
MacTech, remember that Chiana is extremely atypical among the Nebari, and that you probably wouldn’t find most of the rest of them to your liking.
And I’ve only read Fleet of Worlds, not any of the sequels, but my impression was that a very devoted fan put a lot of effort into meticulously reconciling all of the many contradictions in Niven’s work, and that Niven officially gave it his seal of approval by putting his name on as co-author.
Though, to be fair, there’s an awful lot that you can reconcile just by assuming that the Puppeteers are lying.
