Starfish Aliens: Difference between revisions

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* The [[All Trolls Are Different|Trolls]] in Pratchett's [[Discworld]] kind of fit, because while they 'look' like [[Humanoid Aliens]] their physiology is mineralogical (is that the word?) rather than biological.

** Geological, I suppose. The troll brains is silicon, so they get stupider in warmer climates, and they view the past as being "in front" of them because you can see it, so people travel backwards through time. It's complicated, [[Rule of Cool|but cool]].

** There's a bit in ''[[~~Discworld/Lords and Ladies|~~Lords and Ladies]]'' about how strangely [[The Fair Folk|elves]] perceive the world, apparently via a sensitivity to magnetism.

** There's a bit in ''[[Lords and Ladies]]'' about how strangely [[The Fair Folk|elves]] perceive the world, apparently via a sensitivity to magnetism.

* Various alien species in [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman]]'' series, including but not limited to the Palainians, who lived on Pluto-like planets and had metabolic mechanisms which extended into the fourth dimension in order to work, the Rigellians, who looked like large barrels on legs with 4 multiply-subdivided tentacles equally spaced around them, and the [[Our Dragons Are Different|Eastern dragon-like]] (to an extent - they have an undetermined number of eyes (but more than eight), each of which is on a stalk, among other oddness) Velantians.

* Various alien species in [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman]]'' series, including but not limited to the Palainians, who lived on Pluto-like planets and had metabolic mechanisms which extended into the fourth dimension in order to work, the Rigellians, who looked like large barrels on legs with four multiply-subdivided tentacles equally spaced around them, and the [[Our Dragons Are Different|Eastern dragon-like]] (to an extent - they have an undetermined number of eyes (but more than eight), each of which is on a stalk, among other oddness) Velantians.

** It's emphasized that regardless of their physical form, they're still ''people'' - the Velantian Worsel is one of Kimball Kinnison's best friends. However, the Palainians, while still on the side of Civilization, do have remarkably weird psychologies.

* [[Diane Duane]] loves including this trope in her ''[[Star Trek]]'' novels, adding such members of the ''Enterprise'' crew as giant snowflake-shaped silicon creatures, a bipedal catlike being who doesn't comprehend past tense, two-meter-long lizards, a Starfleet captain who is basically a giant slug, a glass spider with twelve legs who wrote the laws for a universe, ~~and—yes—a~~ Horta lieutenant (basically a sentient lump of rock that looks like a giant pizza). [[The Federation]] gets a lot more multi-cultural when she's writing. And that's just in Starfleet - she ''also'' introduces such species as sentient rocks who can manipulate time, creatures who are basically intelligent amoebae, and trees with a consciousness.

* [[Diane Duane]] loves including this trope in her ''[[Star Trek]]'' novels, adding such members of the ''Enterprise'' crew as giant snowflake-shaped silicon creatures, a bipedal catlike being who doesn't comprehend past tense, two-meter-long lizards, a Starfleet captain who is basically a giant slug, a glass spider with twelve legs who wrote the laws for a universe, and — yes — a Horta lieutenant (basically a sentient lump of rock that looks like a giant pizza). [[The Federation]] gets a lot more multi-cultural when she's writing. And that's just in Starfleet - she ''also'' introduces such species as sentient rocks who can manipulate time, creatures who are basically intelligent amoebae, and trees with a consciousness.

** See also Diane Duane's ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series. The first book involves an intelligent ''stellar body'' and things get crazier from there.

* The novel ''The Leaves of October'' by Don Sakers mostly revolves around a race of sentient, telepathic (but not [[Epileptic Trees|epileptic]]) trees that can influence the evolution of other life forms by blowing themselves up. They can also communicate by altering the coloration of their leaves, which humankind does eventually learn to translate.