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more about #arthurcclarke RollsRoyceRevenge: My votes:Yog-Sothoth and the rest of them-there crazy kids, for reasons I hope we need not go into. The Alien from Alien (see above). The Blob, ment... more » d_r_e: That's great that you brought up Solaris right off of the bat. Stanislaw Lem disliked the idea of humanoid aliens, and wrote about that subject in qui... more » Daveinva: It's cliche now, and probably loses points for being humanoid, but Giger's Alien is *still* one bizarre mo-fo. Ditto the comment about Carpenter's Th... more » exwizard: About half of Lovecraft's Aliens: Flying Polyps, Yithians, Elder Things, Shoggoths, the Fungi from Yuggoth, etc. I actually thougth "At the Mountains... more » CodenameV: The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion seem partially inspired by Solaris' point that "aliens are supposed to be 'alien'".....the later, smarter ones... more » rek: How do we get Barlowe to publish an update to his Guide? I'm sure there have been enough interesting aliens in the last 30 years to warrant it. And h... more » Jaffey: How far "The Blob" has fallen to not be mentioned in the post or the comments. more » warestoth: Vernor Vinge 's aliens in "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the sky" are really alien in every possible way, but cleverly described by Vinge. more » Segador: Kosh from season 1 of Babylon 5 was awesome because he was so alien and unknowable. The worst thing they did was revealing what he looked like. more » MrTim: To me one of the most frightening things about Children of Earth's 456 was that once we found out what was motivating them their actions came off as b... more » Jack_Ferguson: One of my personal favourite depictions of a series of alien aliens is from Naomi Mitchison's ([en.wikipedia.org]) 'Memoirs of a Spacewoman.' The main... more » pan_magnetic: The "Reapers" from the video game Mass Effect. They were giant, squid-like things that could travel about like spacecraft and even carry passengers. S... more » the.joey.o: I may be the lone sci-fi freak advocating for this, but it seems to me that the probable reality is that aliens will be remarkably like us, in appeara... more » MISS MERCY STREET: The Capellans of James E. Gunn's The Listeners, if only for an example of an alien/human interstellar communications, and the difficulty of understand... more » phypidialown: "The Mote in God's Eye" is one of my favorite when it comes to "otherness". Especially, how the end of the book reflects a scary possibility how anoth... more » BlueBeard: Farscape. more » Bill-Lee: Sometimes other humans can be as alien as a creature from another world. One of my favorite "aliens" was Charlie, the ice age hunter portrayed by John... more » TheMonkeyKing: I look at the Heechee Saga by Fredrick Pohl. We as humans think we know what the alien might look like but we don't know why they were here (on Venus)... more » cobaltage: Not just in Solaris, Stanislaw Lem consistently worked with the idea that no matter how advanced human beings became technologically, our ability to e... more » Gildo: Do the Tines from Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep qualify as truly alien aliens? On the one hand, their culture is nearly equivalent to medieval Ear... more » -
#rant
The Case For Aliens Who Are Truly Alien
In James Cameron's Avatar, we're introduced to an alien race that we immediately take to: the almost-human Na'vi. But sympathizing with slightly-different people is easy. Here are few examples of sci-fi giving us truly "alien" aliens. More » -
#arthurcclarke
Was Arthur C. Clarke An Amateur Writer?
Arthur C. Clarke's big, famous novels are "dull, slow and passionless," but you have to admire the fertility of his imagination, writes Robert Silverberg. But there's still something to love about an early Clarke novel, Against The Fall Of Night. More » -
#crapfuturism
2000's Wackest Predictions For The World Of 2010
Are you enjoying your "smellyvision?" Does your implanted microchip adjust every building's temperature when you enter? Or how's your portable quantum generator working out? These are just a few of the craziest predictions for 2010, made in 1999 and 2000. More » -
#triviagasm
10 Reasons Not to Bring Someone Back from the Dead
When you've got amazing technologies or strong magical powers, death doesn't have to have the final word. But is bringing the dead back to life always a good idea? We look the reasons it's better to say no to resurrection.
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#geowanking
A Map Of Your Future Mega-Cities And Megalopolises
The cities of the future are massive, sprawling, beautiful monsters, covering entire coastlines — and in some cases, entire continents. Whether it's Judge Dredd's Mega-Cities or William Gibson's "Sprawl," future cities always devour land. Here's a map of future megalopolises. More » -
#triviagasm
10 Ways To Rescue The Climate, According To Science Fiction
Hot enough for ya? Our crazy fossil-fuel orgy is driving the planet's temperatures through the roof. Good thing science fiction books and movies have come up with 10 can't-fail solutions (well, maybe they'd work) for stopping global warming. More » -
#triviagasm
10 Unsinkable Science Fiction Stories About The Titanic
The RMS Titanic sank almost a century ago, but it's still sailing through the imaginations of science-fiction writers and artists. Here are 10 Titanic tales, including Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, and Doctor Who. More » -
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#books
Science Fiction Put Words In Our Mouths
Science fiction doesn't just glimpse the future - it invents the scientific vocabulary of the present, according to an editor from the Oxford English Dictionary, who's listed nine scientific terms that came from science fiction. More » -
#triviagasm
Science Fiction Writers' Craziest Wagers
Science fiction's best authors chart a vast and unpredictable cosmos - but they're not above making a little wager here and there on earthly matters. Here are SF authors' weirdest (and most productive) bets.
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#bookreview
The Brightest Artificial Minds Are Fragmentary, And Often Female
A new anthology gives some hints at the cutting edge of storytelling about artificial intelligences. We Think Therefore We Are, just out from Daw, includes a number of brilliant concepts amidst mostly lukewarm writing. More » -
#thewhoeffect
Brit Actors Want A Part In Sexy Sci-Fi
For years the property of geeks and nerds, now science fiction is suffering the ultimate indignity: Becoming the next big "sexy" thing for British actors. Is this the beginning of the end for the genre? More » -
#spaceelevator
Imagining the Chuck Klosterman Space Elevator
As Japan Space Elevator Associated contemplates building a space elevator, Esquire writer Chuck Klosterman sees one on the horizon in his "A Brief History of the 21st Century." Artist Bruce Irving conceptualizes the elevator to the stars above, and Klosterman gives us the details below. More » -
#coverart
The Best Scifi Book Covers Of All Time — And Space
Here's a gorgeous detail from Michael Whelan's cover art for Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two. It has everything, the giant blue baby head, the spaceship, the sillhouette of Jupiter, and that sexy, sexy obelisk. The folks over at LibraryThing are having a discussion of their favorite science fiction book covers, and it's introduced me to some amazing classic — and recent — cover art that I hadn't seen before. Click through to see a few of the other great LibraryThing recommendations, including an Asimov cover by Ralph McQuarrie. More » -
#fermiparadox
Why Aren't Aliens Talking to Us?
Several of the most imaginative minds in science fiction (and science) gathered at this year's Readercon to discuss a fundamental question of our existence: Why does it seem like we're alone in the universe? Writers Jeff Hecht, Steven Popkes, Robert J. Sawyer, Ian Randal Strock, and Michael A. Burstein offered their recommendations for the best fictional explorations of this question, commonly known as the Fermi paradox. See their picks, and find out more about one of the greatest paradoxes in human existence. More »
