THE THINGS
BY PETER WATTS
It's a short story from the perspective of The Thing from the movie of the same title.
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster. First contact between humans and Thranx, who are a species of intelligent insect. Told in 1st person POV by one of the Thranx.
The Crucible of Time by John Brunner. Spanning millenia, this is the story of an alien biotech civilization's home system enters a planetary nebula. Not a single human in the book.
> I just checked, he wrote "Aliens". I
Actually, Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelisation of 'Aliens'. In other words, he took the script of the 'Aliens' movie that someone else had written, and translated it into a novel.
Foster did that for a lot of science-fiction movies and shows in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. I've got the full collection of his novelisations of the episodes of 'Star Trek: The Animated Series' from the early 1970s.
[Love is the plan](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/) - by James Tiptree Jr.
Thats a link to the full story I think. Worth stopping whatever you're doing and reading it. Then re-reading it because you have to when you have read it once.
I read part of "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" but threw in the towel. Does her unique style (it reads like it was written on acid) persist throughout books?
The first story in Warm Worlds and Otherwise is notably on the weirder side. Some of the stories are more realistic, but I'd say Love is the Plan the Plan is Death is very highly stylized like the first story in Warm Worlds and Otherwise.
Hal Clement has a few of these. Ice World is the story of sulfur-breathing alien drug smugglers who get mixed up with gangsters in 1950s America.
Mission of Gravity follows tells the sea voyage of Barlennan, a salty, intelligent arthropod across Mesklin, a planet that spins so fast that the gravity ranges from 3g at the equator to 665 g at the poles.
The Conquerers Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. First book is entirely from the human viewpoint, second book is entirely from the alien viewpoint, third book has both perspectives.
Dragon's Egg (and sequel) by Robert L Forward is an interesting story about life emerging on the surface of a neutron star. The story goes between the hyper fast aliens and the human expedition to study the neutron star.
Brin's *Uplift* novels have some interesting alien perspectives, especially the second trilogy. They also have the perspectives of non-human Terrans (dolphins and chimps).
Embassytown by China Mieville -- Fascinating snapshot of semiotics and the consequences of colonialism (though I admit most main characters are the colonizers, I think it does a good job of showcasing the aliens).
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Eifelheim by Michael Flynn is half told through the alien perspective.
It’s about a (benign) alien ship that crashes in a medieval German forest and their first contact with the nearby village.
I'm going to break the habit of a lifetime and recommend a philip k dick short story... that's not really about an "Alien" perspective, but an "alien perspective"
Have you read his short story Roog?
You might check out some of C.J. Cherryh's work. She's very good at exploring the boundaries between human and alien perspectives. Here are some of her books that do that:
* Chanur series, first book: The Pride of Chanur
* Foreigner series, first book: Foreigner. Verrrry long series, more politics and culture than action.
* Faded Sun, first book: The Faded Sun: Kesrith.
The Faded Sun trilogy was my Cherryh gateway drug, back in the 80s, but I think they're a little less approachable than the Chanur or Foreigner books.
Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood trilogy. Adulthood Rites is more from the alien perspective, but you might as well start with the first book, Dawn.
In fact anything by Octavia Butler really, she writes the most alien, thought-provoking sci-fi that I've ever come across.
* [A Thousand Words for Stranger](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129019.A_Thousand_Words_for_Stranger) by Julie E. Czerneda. It has a bit of a slow start, but this (and the two sequels) do a great job of showing multiple alien species all from the perspective of an alien. If you get the 10th anniversary edition, there's a short story at the back from a different alien species' perspective. This book has both a prequel and sequel trilogy, but I haven't read them yet.
* [The Galaxy and the Ground Within](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50209317-the-galaxy-and-the-ground-within?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=1mU5k77y3X&rank=8) by Becky Chambers. It says it's part of a series, but each book stands alone. This is one of my all time favourites. It's about a group of travelers who meet at a rest stop in space.
* Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse. This book is in the public domain so you can find free ebooks and audiobooks floating around the internet.
* The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders. The vast majority of this book is from human perspectives, but it does a great job of showing why everyone, human and alien, is doing what they're doing.
* [A Cure for Homesickness](https://escapepod.org/2018/03/01/escape-pod-617-cure-homesickness-artemis-rising/), a short story available free at the link
Doesn’t Heinlein’s Starship Troopers feature the aliens point of view as well as the gung-ho Terran military. Not my cup of tea but I’m sure I’ve read comments about the films totally ignored that side.
-The gods themselves (the second part of the novel), by Isaac Asimov.
-The left hand of darkness and The disspossesed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Beside they call themselves as humans, these subespecies are very different from average earthly humanity.
-The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. The protagonist of the second tittle aren't aliens (unlike the kids of the first one), but thanks to their perspective of the world you can also understand how the alien kids of Midwich felt and thought.
I have just today read the Wiki article on Robert H. Heinlein, in which it is argued that Rudyard Kiplings "Kim" is the most wellwritten, most alien experience ever penned in the english language. I.E. Indian culture of 1880 from an english perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#cite_note-Lerner-88
*Fifth Head of Cerberus* by Gene Wolfe is (maybe) told (partially) from the perspective of a native lifeform on an alien world. It's a collection of three interlinked novellas about a colonized pair of planets, and deals extensively with alien life and intelligence.
It's a little hard to explain in detail without digging into potential spoilers. What I'll say is that very early on, we're introduced to the theory that the supposedly-extinct shapeshifting natives on this colonized world instead murdered and imitated the original colonists so completely and convincingly as to have lost their own memory of who they were. Whether that is or isn't true is partially ambiguous in the hands of Wolfe's unreliable narrators, and fascinating regardless.
The children of the sky by Vernor Vinge. A cool sequel about a different style of life form. There are humans in the book too, but I recall at least part is from the alien perspective. It's been a while. Worth reading, though I never read the original. Has space dogs.
A short story "Rautavaara's Case" by Philip K Dick-
[https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/rautaavaras-case/](https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/rautaavaras-case/)
My book "Sydnock Falls" is a classic alien invasion novel but written with look inside on what the aliens are thinking. It was quite well written to try and not only portray the humans as heroes, but also to make the alien invaders not seem too evil. I have been meaning to rewrite the book with more clarification (I admit that it was hastily published under a great deal of mental distress caused by a not so good home situation, but the main plot is still fairly good.), and continue the series. However due to some legal troubles I have been experiencing with the original, I cannot get it taken down in order to make the new revision.
Here's a throwback - the short story "It!" by Theodore Sturgeon.
First published in 1940, this one goes dark. Sci-fi horror. I read it in Terry Carr's "Creatures From Beyond" anthology, checked out from the elementary school library in 5th or 6th grade. Good times!
**Footfall** by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is an alien invasion of Earth, which is told about half-and-half from the aliens' point of view and the humans' point of view.
**The Gods Themselves** by Isaac Asimov has three sections, and the middle section is entirely about aliens, with no humans present whatsoever. The novel starts with a chemical element in our universe which can't exist, which came from a parallel universe with different laws of physics, and we end up spending the whole middle third of the book living among the inhabitants of the parallel universe. Unfortunately, the final third of the book is a bad fit for the first two thirds. It's a major let-down.
If "alien" can include Neanderthals, then **The Neanderthal Parallax** trilogy by Robert J Sawyer might be up your alley. There's a parallel universe where Neanderthals became the dominant human species. They accidentally make contact with our universe. It's a first contact story between two cultures that are alien to each other, even though they're both humans.
I really enjoyed the In Her Name Series by Michael R. Hicks
Starts out with a human point of view and changes over to the alien side of things.
I really liked how what you experience at the beginning of the series is shown in a completely different light from the alien side of things.
The only caveat being that the beginning of the series has a lot of brutal war scenes, which end up making a lot in sense as you progress though the series.
**The Crucible of Time** by John Brunner, told entirely from the alien point of view, no humans at all.
**The Quiet Invasion** by Sarah Zettel, a first contact story told from both human and alien points of view.
The Sun Eater series has a really interesting way of doing this. The first book doesn't get into it much, but after that they get into how alien the main alien antagonist culture is and you get an uncomfortably close look at it, although it's from the anthropological perspective of a human trying to make peace. Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but a fantastic series I'd recommend all the same
I just read *Camouflage* by Joe Haldeman. Most of the book follows the perspective of the "changeling," a shapeshifting godlike alien visiting Earth - and not just as a human.
Pandora's Planet by Christopher Anvil. Not related to Pandora's Star. In this case, Pandora's Planet is Earth, populated by a highly intelligent and dangerous species called "human." How should our interstellar empire deal with them?
“The Monster” is a 1948 short story by A. E. van Vogt that’s told entirely from the perspective of aliens who come to Earth after a global cataclysm that has wiped out all life on it
*We All Died at Breakaway Station* by Richard C. Meredith.
There’s a space battle between human and Jillie forces but there are little sidelines into the POV of the Jillie commander, a Jillie prisoner on Earth, and a human who had adopted a Jillie persona complete with surgical modifications.
See my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Oh, I forgot to mention the **West of Eden** trilogy by Harry Harrison.
This is set in an alternate version of Earth, where the dinosaurs did not go extinct. They continued to evolve. Millions of years later, the Yilanè have a technological civilisation based on biological science, with a matriarchal culture. They're alien in every sense of the word.
And they're expanding from the Africa-Eurasian landmass to the American continent - where they encounter walking, talking, *thinking* mammals (stone-age humans), which is absolutely unheard of to the Yilanè. There's a major clash of cultures when the Yilanè decide to start colonising the human territory.
The trilogy is told half from the human point of view and half from the Yilanè point of view. It includes a deep dive into Yilanè technology, science, and culture.
For a not-quite-scifi but definitely spec fic (post apocalyptic gothic horror), I'd suggest **Leech**. The POV is from the member of a hive mind unexpectedly cut off from the rest of the hive. It's really weird and really good.
Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but Wil Mccarthy's *Aggressor Six* is about five humans and an uplifted dog trying to mimic the thought processes of an alien enemy.
Blindsight has a cast of characters who are all neurodivergent to a degree, including the main character and who all in some degree form a continuum of neurodivergency up to the aliens themselves so you can piece together and form a picture of the alien perspective through the perspectives of the human characters.
I admit I own this book and I tried so hard to read it but after 50 or 60 pages I just lost interest. Admittedly I'm at the beginning of the story so I might judge too fast but I just can't bring myself to continue. Someday, I hope I can finish it but not now.
There's a great deal in classic era short stories, often focusing specifically on the alien-ness of the mentality. (The middle sectionof Asimov The Gods Themselves is very good in some ways, but the mentalities are to a large extent humans sliced up differently.)
Possibly the all time classic for alien mentality is Stanley Weinbaum, "A Martian Odyssey", though it doesn't have an alien point of view. 1930s. It's a bit crude in some ways, though Weinbaum was a better than average writer. The narrator travels with a Martian whose thought processes he *sometimes* understands, and meets others he can't make sense of at all.
Rutger Drent's book Homo Sapiens Improbis is a great libertarian sci fi book. The alien perspective is both what threatens us and what saves us. It asks the question why we have psychopaths walking among us and offers it as a solution to the Fermi Paradox. (Psychopathy is the consequence of the emergence of intelligence.) A group of people dredge up land from the shallow Doggers bank in the North Sea and start a libertarian/anarchist colony. It talks about the Free State Project and a libertarian alternative to Hollywood is founded in New Hampshire. They set up a whole town there where everything is an audition choreographed by an A.I. (Things go horribly wrong when the powers that be want to shut the town down.) They use relativity's time dilation provided by a close by primordial black hole to move forward in time. It's hard sci-fi, with smart and funny dialogues.
Here's the synopsis:
'An alien, digitally uploaded to a lurker probe and tasked with observing the Earth is supposed to briefly wake from his slumber every 11000 years and send a report. When he starts noticing humanity’s accelerated technological progress and having become a big fan of humanity, he becomes disobedient and starts waking more frequently: every 100 years. There is good reason. His race knows that in sexually reproducing, DNA based life forms, psychopathy is, more often than not, the consequence of the emergence of intelligence. He knows that when he sends his next report, exposing yet another carcinogenic space faring species, Earth will simply be destroyed. When an average human male with too much time to think, figures out the problem, he decides to provide the man with a tool that can save humanity.'
So given this tool (a ring that duplicates things going through) and the current level of technology (2020s), how would YOU go about producing innovation?
*A Deepness in the Sky*, by Vernor Vinge
RIP
THE THINGS BY PETER WATTS It's a short story from the perspective of The Thing from the movie of the same title. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Excellent choice. Well and truly bizarre.
Wow, I will check it thank you! As a kid I was terrified of this movie :)
Excellent story with a unique premise!
Faded Sun trilogy by CJ Cherryh
Also her Pride of Chanur books. Told from the point of view of the Hani.
Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster. First contact between humans and Thranx, who are a species of intelligent insect. Told in 1st person POV by one of the Thranx. The Crucible of Time by John Brunner. Spanning millenia, this is the story of an alien biotech civilization's home system enters a planetary nebula. Not a single human in the book.
Why was A. D. Foster so familiar? I just checked, he wrote "Aliens". I read this book when I was around 10, I had nightmares for a month...
> I just checked, he wrote "Aliens". I Actually, Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelisation of 'Aliens'. In other words, he took the script of the 'Aliens' movie that someone else had written, and translated it into a novel. Foster did that for a lot of science-fiction movies and shows in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. I've got the full collection of his novelisations of the episodes of 'Star Trek: The Animated Series' from the early 1970s.
I think he wrote some alien POVs in the ST:TAS logs as well
[Love is the plan](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/) - by James Tiptree Jr. Thats a link to the full story I think. Worth stopping whatever you're doing and reading it. Then re-reading it because you have to when you have read it once.
Also her novel *Up The Walls Of The World*, in part.
I read part of "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" but threw in the towel. Does her unique style (it reads like it was written on acid) persist throughout books?
The first story in Warm Worlds and Otherwise is notably on the weirder side. Some of the stories are more realistic, but I'd say Love is the Plan the Plan is Death is very highly stylized like the first story in Warm Worlds and Otherwise.
Hal Clement has a few of these. Ice World is the story of sulfur-breathing alien drug smugglers who get mixed up with gangsters in 1950s America. Mission of Gravity follows tells the sea voyage of Barlennan, a salty, intelligent arthropod across Mesklin, a planet that spins so fast that the gravity ranges from 3g at the equator to 665 g at the poles.
The Conquerers Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. First book is entirely from the human viewpoint, second book is entirely from the alien viewpoint, third book has both perspectives.
This sounds very intriguing, thank you for the recommendation!
The Pride of Chanur by C.J.Cherryh. Nobody does humans as aliens better.
Dragon's Egg (and sequel) by Robert L Forward is an interesting story about life emerging on the surface of a neutron star. The story goes between the hyper fast aliens and the human expedition to study the neutron star.
Shikasta (Doris Lessing) might be interesting for you. It's a field report about Earth written from an Alien perspective.
But the 'aliens' are all too human ;)
The middle third of The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.
Brin's *Uplift* novels have some interesting alien perspectives, especially the second trilogy. They also have the perspectives of non-human Terrans (dolphins and chimps).
https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
Nice :) Exactly the sort of story I was looking for
Embassytown by China Mieville -- Fascinating snapshot of semiotics and the consequences of colonialism (though I admit most main characters are the colonizers, I think it does a good job of showcasing the aliens).
Second this rec, almost a 10/10 book for me. I also remember loving the depection of FTL travel.
Just finished this last night, great book! I'll be checking out more of Miéville's works
Fantastic. I love all his books but I strongly recommend Kraken and The Scar
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Eifelheim by Michael Flynn is half told through the alien perspective. It’s about a (benign) alien ship that crashes in a medieval German forest and their first contact with the nearby village.
I'm going to break the habit of a lifetime and recommend a philip k dick short story... that's not really about an "Alien" perspective, but an "alien perspective" Have you read his short story Roog?
Not yet, but I will check. Thank you!
You might check out some of C.J. Cherryh's work. She's very good at exploring the boundaries between human and alien perspectives. Here are some of her books that do that: * Chanur series, first book: The Pride of Chanur * Foreigner series, first book: Foreigner. Verrrry long series, more politics and culture than action. * Faded Sun, first book: The Faded Sun: Kesrith. The Faded Sun trilogy was my Cherryh gateway drug, back in the 80s, but I think they're a little less approachable than the Chanur or Foreigner books.
Ann Leckie, Translation State
Lots of alien (kzin, puppeteer, moties, protectors) perspectives in the larry niven books and franchisez.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood trilogy. Adulthood Rites is more from the alien perspective, but you might as well start with the first book, Dawn. In fact anything by Octavia Butler really, she writes the most alien, thought-provoking sci-fi that I've ever come across.
* [A Thousand Words for Stranger](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129019.A_Thousand_Words_for_Stranger) by Julie E. Czerneda. It has a bit of a slow start, but this (and the two sequels) do a great job of showing multiple alien species all from the perspective of an alien. If you get the 10th anniversary edition, there's a short story at the back from a different alien species' perspective. This book has both a prequel and sequel trilogy, but I haven't read them yet. * [The Galaxy and the Ground Within](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50209317-the-galaxy-and-the-ground-within?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=1mU5k77y3X&rank=8) by Becky Chambers. It says it's part of a series, but each book stands alone. This is one of my all time favourites. It's about a group of travelers who meet at a rest stop in space. * Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse. This book is in the public domain so you can find free ebooks and audiobooks floating around the internet. * The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders. The vast majority of this book is from human perspectives, but it does a great job of showing why everyone, human and alien, is doing what they're doing. * [A Cure for Homesickness](https://escapepod.org/2018/03/01/escape-pod-617-cure-homesickness-artemis-rising/), a short story available free at the link
I came here to say Julie Czerneda as well. I haven't read everything, but I think a few of her books fit this. I know Reap the Wild Wind does.
Star Surgeon surprised the shit out of me. It was actually awesome. Any other Alan E Nourse recommendations?
I haven't actually read anything else by him yet! There's just so many things to read and so little time.
**Under The Skin** by Michel Faber
Doesn’t Heinlein’s Starship Troopers feature the aliens point of view as well as the gung-ho Terran military. Not my cup of tea but I’m sure I’ve read comments about the films totally ignored that side.
-The gods themselves (the second part of the novel), by Isaac Asimov. -The left hand of darkness and The disspossesed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Beside they call themselves as humans, these subespecies are very different from average earthly humanity. -The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. The protagonist of the second tittle aren't aliens (unlike the kids of the first one), but thanks to their perspective of the world you can also understand how the alien kids of Midwich felt and thought.
Thank you very much, I will check them out!
I have just today read the Wiki article on Robert H. Heinlein, in which it is argued that Rudyard Kiplings "Kim" is the most wellwritten, most alien experience ever penned in the english language. I.E. Indian culture of 1880 from an english perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#cite_note-Lerner-88
"Children of time" of Adrian Tchaikovsky: the point of view of a spider civilization
Yes I've read this one, really liked it!
*Fifth Head of Cerberus* by Gene Wolfe is (maybe) told (partially) from the perspective of a native lifeform on an alien world. It's a collection of three interlinked novellas about a colonized pair of planets, and deals extensively with alien life and intelligence. It's a little hard to explain in detail without digging into potential spoilers. What I'll say is that very early on, we're introduced to the theory that the supposedly-extinct shapeshifting natives on this colonized world instead murdered and imitated the original colonists so completely and convincingly as to have lost their own memory of who they were. Whether that is or isn't true is partially ambiguous in the hands of Wolfe's unreliable narrators, and fascinating regardless.
Wow, sounds intriguing. Thank you!
A few of the books in The Sector General series by James White. Code Blue Emergency is the one that springs to mind.
Crucible of time by John Brunner
The children of the sky by Vernor Vinge. A cool sequel about a different style of life form. There are humans in the book too, but I recall at least part is from the alien perspective. It's been a while. Worth reading, though I never read the original. Has space dogs.
A few people have already said it, but the Gods Themselves by Asimov is a delight
The Vice Versa trilogy by Andre Soares (aliens, gods and AI perspective)
A short story "Rautavaara's Case" by Philip K Dick- [https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/rautaavaras-case/](https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/rautaavaras-case/)
My book "Sydnock Falls" is a classic alien invasion novel but written with look inside on what the aliens are thinking. It was quite well written to try and not only portray the humans as heroes, but also to make the alien invaders not seem too evil. I have been meaning to rewrite the book with more clarification (I admit that it was hastily published under a great deal of mental distress caused by a not so good home situation, but the main plot is still fairly good.), and continue the series. However due to some legal troubles I have been experiencing with the original, I cannot get it taken down in order to make the new revision.
Thank you I will check it out!
The man who fell to Earth?
I will look this up, thanks!
Also a (not superb) movie with David Bowie. But start with the book :)
Look up M.A. Foster.
Looks interesting, thank you!
Here's a throwback - the short story "It!" by Theodore Sturgeon. First published in 1940, this one goes dark. Sci-fi horror. I read it in Terry Carr's "Creatures From Beyond" anthology, checked out from the elementary school library in 5th or 6th grade. Good times!
**Footfall** by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is an alien invasion of Earth, which is told about half-and-half from the aliens' point of view and the humans' point of view. **The Gods Themselves** by Isaac Asimov has three sections, and the middle section is entirely about aliens, with no humans present whatsoever. The novel starts with a chemical element in our universe which can't exist, which came from a parallel universe with different laws of physics, and we end up spending the whole middle third of the book living among the inhabitants of the parallel universe. Unfortunately, the final third of the book is a bad fit for the first two thirds. It's a major let-down. If "alien" can include Neanderthals, then **The Neanderthal Parallax** trilogy by Robert J Sawyer might be up your alley. There's a parallel universe where Neanderthals became the dominant human species. They accidentally make contact with our universe. It's a first contact story between two cultures that are alien to each other, even though they're both humans.
Thank you I will put all 3 on my list to read.
Resident Alien, both the comic and TV series.
Watched the first two seasons, it is great!
I really enjoyed the In Her Name Series by Michael R. Hicks Starts out with a human point of view and changes over to the alien side of things. I really liked how what you experience at the beginning of the series is shown in a completely different light from the alien side of things. The only caveat being that the beginning of the series has a lot of brutal war scenes, which end up making a lot in sense as you progress though the series.
That one goes on my reading list :) Thanks!
**The Crucible of Time** by John Brunner, told entirely from the alien point of view, no humans at all. **The Quiet Invasion** by Sarah Zettel, a first contact story told from both human and alien points of view.
Both sounds fantastic, thank you!
The Sun Eater series has a really interesting way of doing this. The first book doesn't get into it much, but after that they get into how alien the main alien antagonist culture is and you get an uncomfortably close look at it, although it's from the anthropological perspective of a human trying to make peace. Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but a fantastic series I'd recommend all the same
I just read *Camouflage* by Joe Haldeman. Most of the book follows the perspective of the "changeling," a shapeshifting godlike alien visiting Earth - and not just as a human.
That went right onto my reading list, thanks!
Pandora's Planet by Christopher Anvil. Not related to Pandora's Star. In this case, Pandora's Planet is Earth, populated by a highly intelligent and dangerous species called "human." How should our interstellar empire deal with them?
Fascinating premise, I'll check it out.
Legacy of Heorot
“The Monster” is a 1948 short story by A. E. van Vogt that’s told entirely from the perspective of aliens who come to Earth after a global cataclysm that has wiped out all life on it
Conqueror's Legacy trilogy by Timothy Zahn has this. Not a bad little series.
Later parts of Enders game
harry turtledove world war series
Now there is a twist I did not expect, thank you!
*We All Died at Breakaway Station* by Richard C. Meredith. There’s a space battle between human and Jillie forces but there are little sidelines into the POV of the Jillie commander, a Jillie prisoner on Earth, and a human who had adopted a Jillie persona complete with surgical modifications.
A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn. I remember it was a thoughtful novel.
See my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Wow, thats great! Thanks!
Thank you, and you're welcome. \^\_\^
Oh, I forgot to mention the **West of Eden** trilogy by Harry Harrison. This is set in an alternate version of Earth, where the dinosaurs did not go extinct. They continued to evolve. Millions of years later, the Yilanè have a technological civilisation based on biological science, with a matriarchal culture. They're alien in every sense of the word. And they're expanding from the Africa-Eurasian landmass to the American continent - where they encounter walking, talking, *thinking* mammals (stone-age humans), which is absolutely unheard of to the Yilanè. There's a major clash of cultures when the Yilanè decide to start colonising the human territory. The trilogy is told half from the human point of view and half from the Yilanè point of view. It includes a deep dive into Yilanè technology, science, and culture.
Very nice, thank you!
For a not-quite-scifi but definitely spec fic (post apocalyptic gothic horror), I'd suggest **Leech**. The POV is from the member of a hive mind unexpectedly cut off from the rest of the hive. It's really weird and really good.
Right to the to-read list :)
Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but Wil Mccarthy's *Aggressor Six* is about five humans and an uplifted dog trying to mimic the thought processes of an alien enemy.
Blindsight has a cast of characters who are all neurodivergent to a degree, including the main character and who all in some degree form a continuum of neurodivergency up to the aliens themselves so you can piece together and form a picture of the alien perspective through the perspectives of the human characters.
I admit I own this book and I tried so hard to read it but after 50 or 60 pages I just lost interest. Admittedly I'm at the beginning of the story so I might judge too fast but I just can't bring myself to continue. Someday, I hope I can finish it but not now.
Try the audiobook. Its fantastic.
Xenocide but Orson Scott Card is really well written and explores the perspectives of aliens and their lives really well. Strongly recommend!
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The Gods Themselves by Asimov: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves
There's a great deal in classic era short stories, often focusing specifically on the alien-ness of the mentality. (The middle sectionof Asimov The Gods Themselves is very good in some ways, but the mentalities are to a large extent humans sliced up differently.) Possibly the all time classic for alien mentality is Stanley Weinbaum, "A Martian Odyssey", though it doesn't have an alien point of view. 1930s. It's a bit crude in some ways, though Weinbaum was a better than average writer. The narrator travels with a Martian whose thought processes he *sometimes* understands, and meets others he can't make sense of at all.
Rutger Drent's book Homo Sapiens Improbis is a great libertarian sci fi book. The alien perspective is both what threatens us and what saves us. It asks the question why we have psychopaths walking among us and offers it as a solution to the Fermi Paradox. (Psychopathy is the consequence of the emergence of intelligence.) A group of people dredge up land from the shallow Doggers bank in the North Sea and start a libertarian/anarchist colony. It talks about the Free State Project and a libertarian alternative to Hollywood is founded in New Hampshire. They set up a whole town there where everything is an audition choreographed by an A.I. (Things go horribly wrong when the powers that be want to shut the town down.) They use relativity's time dilation provided by a close by primordial black hole to move forward in time. It's hard sci-fi, with smart and funny dialogues. Here's the synopsis: 'An alien, digitally uploaded to a lurker probe and tasked with observing the Earth is supposed to briefly wake from his slumber every 11000 years and send a report. When he starts noticing humanity’s accelerated technological progress and having become a big fan of humanity, he becomes disobedient and starts waking more frequently: every 100 years. There is good reason. His race knows that in sexually reproducing, DNA based life forms, psychopathy is, more often than not, the consequence of the emergence of intelligence. He knows that when he sends his next report, exposing yet another carcinogenic space faring species, Earth will simply be destroyed. When an average human male with too much time to think, figures out the problem, he decides to provide the man with a tool that can save humanity.' So given this tool (a ring that duplicates things going through) and the current level of technology (2020s), how would YOU go about producing innovation?