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By "real" aliens that are really alien -- not anthropomorphic like Klingons and Vulcans. Nonhuman and nonearthlike...at least as far as human writers can make them...

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
or Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi perhaps :)

Most of the really alien aliens tend to be mostly off-screen in the first examples I can think of. 2001: A Space Odyssey's monoliths are either really weird aliens or really weird alien robots. The creatures that kick humanity off of Earth in John Varley's Eight Worlds series are likewise off-camera.

I suppose the most alien aliens who share actual page time with the humans are the Moties from The Mote in God's Eye, but they do also sort of remind me of bugs. Which reminds me of Bruce Sterling's Shapers and Mechists.

Lots of authors do have truly put-there aliens, but they tend to play minor roles in the stories alongside more recognizably earth like creatures. Niven's Puppeteers are weird looking, but at their heart they are basically cowardly businessmen/politicians. But then he has the Grog, the Bandersnatch and the Outsiders. Jack Chalker's Well World has more aliens per minute than even Star Wars and some of them are things like "coherent color."

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

Dabid Brin's Uplift Saga (http://www.goodreads.com/series/41134...) has a number of very strange alien races, a lot of which play a huge part in the series.

Wheelers by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen has an interesting take on aliens. The authors are also the men who wrote the Science of Diskworld books with Terry Pratchett.

A.C. Crispin's Starbridge has great aliens :) Starbridge

C. J. Cherryh and Sarah Zettel both do aliens extremely well.

Also try A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

And of course, the aliens in Orson Scott Card's Ender series often are not anthropomorphic.

A Stitch in Time is a Star Trek book written by Andrew J. Robinson who played Elim Garak for all the years Deep Space 9 was on tv. Garak, in this book, it's his POV, is very, very alien...

The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn

I always liked Alan Dean Foster's Thranx. They appear in several of his books; the first-contact story is Nor Crystal Tears.

For some "really alien" aliens, you might enjoy The Lurking Fear and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft. This is a collection of short stories. One in particular that comes to mind from the collection is From Beyond. A horrible movie, IMHO, but a great story. And the aliens are definitely alien.

Well, there's Ender's Game and The Forever War - haven't seen those mentioned yet! But neither includes extensive interactions with the non-humanoid aliens ...

It is really hard for us, as human beings, to not create something that is at least partially known to us. The mental leap into the unknown is a difficult thing for most people. I remember a short story where the aliens were akin to giant spiders but with biochemistry based on sulfur rings and not carbon chains. (I will try to hunt the title down). I thought that was quite the alien leap at the time.

I think The Clockwork Rocket would fit into that category with really different aliens.

In reference to my above comment, the story is "Ginungagap" by Michael Swanwick.

Moira wrote: "Well, there's Ender's Game and The Forever War - haven't seen those mentioned yet! But neither includes extensive interactions with the non-humanoid aliens ..."

the obvious one that would relate to these two would be Starship Troopers

I would try Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Probably my favorite SF novel of all time. A story about people/mankind trying to come to grips with a truly alien being.

Try The Frozen Sky... Cant remember the author but its on my read list if you want to take a look.

The aliens are really alien; the whole book is about how alien they actually are.

I can't post a link because im on my crappy phone, sorry.

Pickle wrote: "he obvious one that would relate to these two would be Starship Troopers ."

I lost my heart to a Starship Trooper :(

Andy wrote: "...I lost my heart to a Starship Trooper :("

Haven't we all. Avon from Blake's 7 was one.

Peter Hamilton's Great North Road has a totally alien thingy in the Zanthswarm (does that appear in other books?). The other alien entity in the story, the one on St. Libra (and central to the plot), I thought was a bit of an anticlimax.

BJ wrote: "I would try Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Probably my favorite SF novel of all time. A story about people/mankind trying to come to grips with a truly alien being."
And his "Eden" and "The Invincible" has 'really alien aliens' too )

Or nice short story - "Wacky World" by Edmond Hamilton - full arsenal of aliens

Some have already mentioned Wheelers, Vernor Vinge, and the Uplift books. For Cherryh, I'd go with Serpent's Reach, Forty Thousand in Gehenna, and the Chanur books.

Blindsight by Peter Watts not only has non-humanoid aliens but also raises interesting questions about the nature of intelligence and sentience.

China Mieville's book Embassytown is about aliens furthering their mental evolution through language.

The Helliconia books by Brian Aldiss, Xenowealth by Tobias Buckell, and the Rama books by Clarke and Lee all have various interesting aliens that are in the story, but mostly in the background.

Lots of new titles here... I have to admit, I've had the same question plenty of times, when seeking out scifi. Gotta love the Lovecraft recommendation, though. Love Lovecraft.

The aliens in Vokhtah, by A.C Flory are very unique and would qualify for this list.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

I don't remember who said it, some SF author...whoever it was said that the problem with aliens in SF is that you can always see the human inside the alien suit.

Meaning, of course, that it's almost impossible to write aliens without attributing human thoughts, motivations, emotions, concerns, personalities, etc. to them.

Anthropomorphizing isn't just about sticking an alien in a human body with an oddly shaped forehead; you can have the most bizarre alien body in the world, but if their motivations, thoughts and actions can be related to human analogies, more than likely you're anthropomorphizing.

From what I've read, aliens tend to be written in only three ways: monsters, humans in weird bodies, and as mysterious agents who are talked about, but never actually seen much in the story.

Starship Trooper's main aliens were monsters: bugs. Kind of boring.

All the aliens in Iain M. Banks's Culture novels (that I've read) are just humans in weird bodies. They talk like humans, compete like humans, have exactly the same concerns and desires as humans. Pretty much the same with Vernor Vinge's aliens (IIRC) in A Deepness in the Sky. He built an interesting biology and society for them, but ultimately they were just the same as humans warring for territory.

The aliens in 2001 were of the latter kind: mysterious, never seen, motives unclear...you never really see from their perspective. Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space universe has this kind of alien as well...the Pattern Jugglers (nice one!), the Inhibitors/Wolves. Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars uses this kind as well.

I prefer category 3, but would like to read real attempts at writing convincing aliens that are none of the above.

I have not read most of what people have listed here so far, but true aliens would be extremely hard (impossible?) to write about. Humans simply couldn't relate to them at all (neither the writer nor the reader). I mean, write a convincing story from a dog's point of view and don't make it sound like a human. Even that's difficult or impossible to do.

So...I'm skeptical. ;)

Oh, wait...having written all that, I just realized that I have read real aliens: Stanislaw Lem's book Eden.

That whole book is alien. o_0

HG Wells's Martians were pretty inhuman. I wouldn't see anything likeable in them!!

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Their appearance is a mystery for a good portion of the book, so I won't spoil it. I'm not suggesting them because they're necessarily very *alien* in appearance, but because of the nature of their appearance. It's hard to explain. It's really interesting, though, and the book itself is great, so I fully recommend it.

I'd have to go with William's vote for H.P. Lovecraft, though the story that comes to my mind is The Colour Out of Space.

By Micah's description, the alien (aliens??? never quite sure if it was just one or more) in that story would be of the mysterious agent type.

On the other hand, I would have to agree with Paul as far as inhuman aliens were concerned. We never did learn why Wells' Martians came to Earth or what they wanted, how they communicated, etc. Wells never gave them anything that might be construed as human characteristics.

H.P. Lovecraft's aliens were definitely among the best. They do fall into type 3, though. My favorites were the ones in The Whisperer In Darkness. That one was a really creepy story.

Wells's Martians were monsters. You never really see them but all they do is land and start killing. That's a monster.

I have to admit that the aliens I had in Children of Destruction were very human except for what drove them. But I read Bruce Davis' That Which is Human recently and his aliens are ... "alien" (for want of a better term).

The biggest problem in creating technologically advanced aliens is that any society that can advance to a space-going culture has to be able to think logically (at least in the scientific fields), grasp and handle tools, use fire or some other high-temperature source for dealing with metals, and cooperate well enough to create an industrial base. This precludes mindless monsters from being believable as a space-going race. I suspect that's why so many "aliens", no matter what their physical appearance, seem to be somewhat "human".

Al wrote: "The biggest problem in creating technologically advanced aliens is that any society that can advance to a space-going culture has to be able to think logically (at least in the scientific fields), grasp and handle tools, use fire or some other high-temperature source for dealing with metals, and cooperate well enough to create an industrial base. This precludes mindless monsters from being believable as a space-going race."

Not that this has ever stopped SF authors from writing about aliens who are both technological and monsters...or that possess no visible means of creating their high technology.

For example, in
Accelerando Charles Stross has an alien race that's supposed to be one of the uber races, one that has lorded it over other races for eons. Yet that super highly advanced technological race is described as single celled organisms that are the size and shape of...a swamp.

Mmm...OK, so how did they build space ships? How did they dominate other more agile races? How did they develop into galactic task masters? No mention of this from Stross. Stross also has fish aliens, another one of the slave driver races, with space ships full of water for the swarms of aliens to swim around in. How did they evolve into a technological race? How did the first of them smelt the metals needed to form the tools that would eventually propel them into space? Again, no mention.

Iain M. Bank violates that a lot as well.

It's one of my pet peeves about aliens in SF. If your aliens do not have appendages that can manipulate tools, then you'd better explain how they evolved into high-tech races or else you kill my ability to suspend disbelief.