Most Alien Aliens

[thechosendenton]

Hey. I'm new to the forums.

I was wondering what you would consider to be the most 'alien aliens' - such as, the creature in Solaris or the Quintans in Fiasco.

 

[demigod.bran]

are you asking us what unique aliens we have heard of? even though there are common description for aliens used many a time but most are always unique any way.

 

[chrispenycate]

How about Fred Hoyle's black cloud, in the novel of the same name?
And I, for one, approve of not using a comparitive (or superlative) with unique, which is an absolute; either something is unique, and there is nothing anywhere identical to it, or it isn't; the idea of partial uniqueness is equivalent to slightly infinite.
Besides, "most alien" does not declare that there is only one of it, just that, as a lifeform. it is as divergent from what we are familiar with as imaginable.

 

[that old guy]

msg deleted

 

[HappyHippo]

I remember reading an Alan Dean Foster novel a good few years ago, his aliens were furry and had big ears... *pause for a quick google search* QUOZL. They were incredibly alien when I read the book.

As for TV aliens; it's hard, because up until the CG revolution, they all had to be fairly humanoid, so the actor fit the costume!

 

[Kanazaka]

I can't choose one, but here are a few:

* The Alien from the Alien saga, because it's so good and so "unique" that many films and comic books have ripped it off (as did that one demon near the end of the Buffy episode "The Gift"); the adult form is not quite insectoid, not quite reptilian--as the filmmakers themselves have described it--and the facehugger resembles a crustacean. Plus, the alien's life cycle is one of the more complex and detailed in all of sci-fi film and literature

* The tribbles, because they're just balls of fur

* The Daleks, because they're just metal cylinders with blinking lights.

 

[bowerbird]

Love David Brin's imaginative Aliens that, mostly, stay alien.

But my favourite aliens were the little teddybear like creatures from "Earthman's Burden" by Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson.

They were what I like to think of as classic John Campbell aliens.

John Campbell once defined aliens as

"Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man"

(from Wikipedia)

The Aliens of Earthman's Burden fit that scenario well and by the simplest expedient - taking one characteristic - in this case imagination and amplifying it.

 

[Dr. Atomic]

* The Daleks, because they're just metal cylinders with blinking lights.

Actually, the Daleks a race of creatures that, at one point, looked like men (or so the various episodes of Dr. Who would have me believe). After a nuclear apocalypse laid waste to their world, they mutated and then encased themselves inside the rolling garbage can. Just sayin'...

I agree with some of the comments above, each alien brings his/her/its own alien-ness, so it's hard to say which is most alien. However, I've found that some are more interesting and creative than others. I like Bat-Rat-Crab monster from Angry Red Planet, just because it's so goofy. And the sentient black hole in Gregory Benford's Eater was different.

Oh, and there was a short story -- can't remember the author! -- about a race of beings that were so big and so long-lived that they simply lived in space, roaming the universe under their own power, and watching planets form and die and suns burn out and all that sort of interesting cosmic stuff. Wish I could remember the story and author... but the scale of the alien really caught my attention.

 

[jackarcalon]

That's easy, whatever entity put the mathematical message in the number pi at the end of the novel 'Contact' by Carl Sagan (too complex for the movie). Anything that can change arithmetic has to be extremely alien. In second place whatever beings controlled the monoliths in the movie version of '2001'.

 

[dustinzgirl]

Alien (1979) is the most alien alien ever. She was intellient, while slightly humanoid in appearance was still just NOT human at all, but still has that whole motherly instinct....Well, until ripley beat her up and then they made the last few sequels which were the devil.

Anyways...

Another alien I have always had a soft spot for is the tribbles (star trek). Seriously, has there ever been a cuter alien ever? And space herpes from ice pirates, they just cracked me up, although those might not actually qualify as an alien.

Oh, and don't forget The Blob (1958 not the crap remakes or spin offs) there is an alien that has absolutely NO form, NO thought other than to consume....us....

And then there is The Thing (1989), which is supposed to be 'alien' but I never really thought of it as an 'alien' but more of a primordial monster living in the ice like on x-files.......but since the thing was formless and only assumed forms, changing it and destroying and stuff.....

And then, lets not forget It Came From Outer Space (1953) because that was just a ship that infected/changed people and you never really saw what kind of creepy alien was doing that, so it was just an it and that made it extremely alien.

PS: I just noticed that Kanazak and I said pretty much the same thing. And I also noticed that I have no modern aliens. Oh well. I don't even put the x-files aliens into the alien category since if you watch the story really carefully they are not really aliens......anyways.......And yeah, while I have watches movies like Solaris, Contact, and that stupid charlie sheen alien movie with the boy who has backwards legs, I have YET to find a movie made after 1990 that scared me. Why? because they explain everything. Its too perfect, and if we are dealing with aliens they should be UNEXPLAINABLE which is what makes them ALIENS.

 

[j d worthington]

Actually, you do see the aliens in It Came From Outer Space (especially nifty if you have the opportunity to see it in the original 3-D format!) And their behavior certainly isn't really alien... their motivations are very human.

I think that's the problem with most aliens in sf; they may look completely alien, but their motivations are usually decipherable in human terms; a truly alien alien would be just that: alien, indecipherable, enigmatic, perhaps to the point of it being very difficult for either party to tell whether the other is actually a living (or at least sentient) object. That's a very tough thing to present, and it's only been done a tiny handful of times. (Even with the Moties we can easily understand their motivation as an overwhelming biological imperative, for example.) I think I'd still have to go for something like the "chromatic entity" (as HPL called it) from Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space", if I'm looking for something truly alien; we don't even know whether it's feeding or not, as all the information we get is filtered through human beings who are affected by its mere presence... it may not be actively harmful in any way, it may just be that it's very existence in our part of space is what causes the horrendous effects; and as for why it does anything it does... we have no clue whatsoever, only assumptions based on our own psychology, and there's every reason to doubt that any of those apply....

 

[dustinzgirl]

Mabye I am confusing it with another movie? I'll have to think about that a while. Haven't watched that particular movie for a few years so I probably have it mixed up with another.


PS: What about That Damned Thing (Ambrose Bierce) I haven't read that in a while but that goes in line with the whole chromatic color things........then again, I don't think that was ever presented as an alien.......

 

[j d worthington]

Mabye I am confusing it with another movie? I'll have to think about that a while. Haven't watched that particular movie for a few years so I probably have it mixed up with another.


PS: What about That Damned Thing (Ambrose Bierce) I haven't read that in a while but that goes in line with the whole chromatic color things........then again, I don't think that was ever presented as an alien.......

Dusty: Could be, though your description of the film certainly sounds like the basic idea of It Came From Outer Space... but you could be conflating two things there.

As for "The Damned Thing"... you're right, it wasn't ever presented as an alien, but then he never said it wasn't (I would imagine that was not in Bierce's mind -- though such an idea certainly was in Fitz-James O'Brien's when he wrote "What Was It?", possibly the first tale in English of an invisible monster). At any rate... even if it was from Earth, it was certainly an alien enough beastie, you're right there....

 

[dustinzgirl]

Yes, then there is Koontz's Phantom, but since he actually states its a primordial ooze, so that doesn't count as an alien but HOLY CRAP that book scared the beejees outta me. Movie was actually OK too, suprisingly enough. Except for Ben Affleck, man I can't stand pretty boys.

Have not heard of Fitz-Jaems O'brien but I will definetly look that up sounds like my kinda story.

 

[j d worthington]

Here you go, Dusty:

Fitz James O'Brien - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

His story actually influenced De Maupassant's "The Horla" and, apparently to some degree, HPL's ideas on handling the invisible monster in "The Dunwich Horror"

 

[Parson]

What about Alastair Reynolds and his Pattern Jugglers. I am still reading the third of the Trilogy, "Absolution Gap" and at least so far, though they play a key role, their reasons and intentions are incomprehensible to me.

Until we meet Aliens who will/can communicate with us. We are left to assume that probably a lot of thier behavior will seem incomprehensible at first but upon further review we might begin to understand in some basic sense.

 

[DevoidRaptor]

Though I didn't like the cutish faces, the aliens from the recent War of the Worls were interesting. I liked that they had three legs, like the Tripods. It makes sense that an alien race with three legs makes three-legged mechs.

 

[Pyan]

I'll put forward the Flouwen, the wave-surfing, amorphous blobs of mathematical genius in Rocheworld by Robert L Forward.

Rocheworld

 

[Blue Tyson]

Yep, the Pattern Jugglers spring to mind.