Does anyone know how far away LV-426 is? Cos the marines were expecting a rescue in 17 days, and I’m guessing that at sublight, that wouldn’t give you much of a range.
…or do Aliens count as intelligent aliens?
Ripley: How long after we’re declared overdue can we expect a rescue?
Hicks: [pause] Seventeen days.
Hudson: Seventeen days? Hey man, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we’re not gonna last seventeen hours! Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before. And they’re gonna come in here…
Even if the xenomorphs were more on the lines of mindless predators, there’s still the Space Jockey. Whatever his species is, it has to be intelligent since they produce starships.
And if you allow the Alien vs. Predator stuff into it, the Predators are obviously intelligent.
[spoiler]
In the last episode, they land on “our Earth,” and there are some form of “pre-man.” Not sure what they might officially be, but possibly a form of neanderthal, cro-magnon, or maybe homo erectus…eventually, it’s implied/said that the Colonials and Cylons bred with them, and the eventual genetic mess of Colonial, Cylon, and whatever they were produced Homo Sapiens.
Although IIRC, it’s said that Hera, (the first Colonial/Cylon hybrid) was Mitochondrial Eve, so I have no idea if that means the pre-humans who were on ‘our Earth’ were actually in the mix or not…I’m not that well versed in genetics.
But the point is, as far as we know, the “people” living on that/our planet were not part of the original batch of humans the Colonials were from, and they were intelligent. They had simple tools and villages, IIRC. So I’d say they qualify.
Now, the argument could be made that they were made by ‘God’ (whether or not it wants to be called that,) at the same time as the Colonial humans, and are genetically identical, so in that case are they aliens just because they are on a different planet? [/spoiler]
FWIW, the Alphanes were only mentioned in David Drake’s “A Grand Tour”, in the first collection of Honorverse short stories. The Alphanes were a long extinct spacefaring species. The story has very little (i.e. nothing) to do with the main Honorverse story lines - it could easily have been rewritten as a freestanding story in its own universe. Drake said he wrote it as an experiment that led to his excellent Aubrey/Maturin inspired RCN novels.
Red Dwarf was the first thing that popped into my mind, too. The universe is explicitly alienless (so say the creators). It’s an important piece of the humor.
The fact that Rimmer doesn’t know this, and keeps thinking they might encounter aliens, frequently serves as the basis for the humour in some episodes (c.f. Polymorph and DNA).
It’s part of the setting’s bleakness that works hand-in-hand with the dark humor. Lister is probably the last human being alive, he’s perhaps millions of light-years from Earth with no way to get home, and there are no aliens out there to help him out or at least console him in his old age.
Space Jockeys and AvP notwithstanding (remember the trophy room on board the Predators’ ship in Predator 2?), there are other parts in the dialogue that strongly imply that other alien races are known to exist.
The marines’ banter over their first meal after defrosting suggests that there are even races we can interact with sexually, such as the Arcturians; the one Frost had was male, but he claims it doesn’t matter.
Additionaly, the logo on the side of the dropship indicates Sgt. Apone’s unit specializes in killing aliens. After all, if there weren’t any, why would Hudson be so disappointed that this outing was just another “bug hunt”?
There was that line about "She’s supposed to be some kinda consultant. Apparently she saw an alien once. ", which I always thought implied they hadn’t encountered any before. Not sure now though
Does the “Cat race” count as alien? (I seem to recall one of the show’s creators saying that (except for the Cats) all life in the universe either evolved from humans or was developed by humans.)
However, I don’t think they have FTL. They can jump into alternate universes, and the occasional wormhole, but technically that’s not FTL travel.
I don’t know if this is official “canon” for the Alien movies or not, but here is a Wiki page on the Space Jockey. It wasn’t in any of the movies, but according to one writer of one of the Alien novels, the alien species is called “Mala’kak’.” How delightfully dumb. (Why is it that aliens HAVE to have random apostrophes in their names, according to science-fiction writers?) The Star Wars comics and “extended universe” fiction is especially bad about this. Enough with the apostrophes!
Well, at the end of Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space-Tyrant series, which is completely alien-free, humanity has discovered a way to convert spaceships to light and somehow (the mechanics of this are somewhat glossed over, as are several other important aspects of the plot here and there) re-integrate themselves back into matter, so it’s light-speed travel, though not faster.
There are non-extinct intelligent aliens in the Academy series. There is mention of some race that they have found that is permanently locked in a lower-tech society (due to having burned up all their fossil fuels before discovering other technologies) that is constantly at war. Can’t remember the name of the race or which book they first get mentioned in, though they discuss having people there studying them.
Most of the novel Omega involves them trying to save an alien race from an Omega Cloud without revealing that they are there.
By Cauldron they’re landing on planets and randomly talking to aliens, though Cauldron to me really felt like a “I hate this series and am killing it forever.” novel.
His Alex Benedict novels had the “Mutes” in them from the beginning.
