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* ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'': Nothing at all is known about the aliens who visited Earth and created the Zones. They landed on the planet, milled around for a couple of weeks, and then left, all without ever approaching or interacting with humanity in any way. Why they landed on Earth and created the Zones is one of the driving questions of the book. [[spoiler:It's never revealed. One character's best guess is that they basically stopped for a "picnic" and left when they had rested up, and that all the miraculous technology and anomalies they left behind are just their discarded garbage.]]
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** More is revealed in the sequel, like the fact that they're a HiveMind and like to extract planetary cores. There's also a lot more than a single fleet.
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* Variation in ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}''. The alien ship does make contact but the crew quickly figure out that they're talking to a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room "Chinese room"]]. They spend a lot of the novel trying to figure out whether the giant starfish-like creatures patrolling the ship are sentient or just drones of some kind as they make no attempt at communicating. The truth is far more sinister: [[spoiler:the aliens are not sentient, self-awareness is not required to build starships, sentience is an anomaly unique to ''H. sapiens sapiens'' and will be corrected eventually, as the aliens perceive it as an utterly unacceptable waste of energy]].
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* Variation in ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}''. The alien ship does make contact but the crew quickly figure out that they're talking to a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room "Chinese room"]]. They spend a lot of the novel trying to figure out whether the giant starfish-like creatures patrolling the ship are sentient or just drones of some kind as they make no attempt at communicating. The truth is far more sinister: [[spoiler:the aliens are not sentient, self-awareness is not required to build starships, sentience is an anomaly unique to ''H. sapiens sapiens'' and will be corrected eventually, as the aliens perceive it as things like art, culture, and self-awareness are an utterly unacceptable waste of energy]].energy that ensure we will not survive in a galaxy full of far more ''efficient'' aliens]].
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* In ''Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem'', this is the key issue that makes the galaxy [[CosmicHorrorStory such a terrible place]]: because it's so hard to understand other species, it's essentially impossible to establish trust, civilisations have to assume everything Out There is hostile, and as such, the objectively correct response to first contact is to schedule extermination. [[spoiler: Later subverted, as the universe isn't ''completely'' full of hostile life.]]
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* In ''Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem'', this is the key issue that makes the galaxy [[CosmicHorrorStory such a terrible place]]: because it's so hard to understand other species, it's essentially impossible to establish trust, civilisations have to assume everything Out There is hostile, and as such, the objectively correct response to first contact is to schedule extermination. [[spoiler: Later subverted, as the universe isn't ''completely'' full of hostile life.life, but even friendly aliens consider it gauche to ask where someone's home planet is.]]
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[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' fanfiction ''[[Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon Abraxas]]'': We don't know much about the ancient alien AbusivePrecursors called [[Characters/AbraxasHrodvitnonTitansAndOtherCreatures the Makers]] who transformed [[DraconicAbomination Ghidorah]] into what it is now, except that they were at least loosely comparable to humans in size and shape from Ghidorah's perspective, they had advanced enough technology to turn alien animals into a gigantic, planet-destroying, space-traveling DraconicAbomination with eons-spanning immortality, they earned Ghidorah's ire by hurting it with their experiments to turn it, they set Ghidorah loose from its cage to [[BioweaponBeast destroy something for them]], and they ''weren't'' powerful enough to stop Ghidorah from killing them when it turned against them and made the Makers die screaming in revenge. ''Fanfic/AbraxasEmptyFullness'' reveals [[spoiler:that the Makers made Ghidorah to commit genocide against another planet whose people had "refused" the Makers' "offers" three times, and that the Makers regarded concepts of religion and faith as "primitive superstition" which they'd moved past]].
[[/folder]]
* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' fanfiction ''[[Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon Abraxas]]'': We don't know much about the ancient alien AbusivePrecursors called [[Characters/AbraxasHrodvitnonTitansAndOtherCreatures the Makers]] who transformed [[DraconicAbomination Ghidorah]] into what it is now, except that they were at least loosely comparable to humans in size and shape from Ghidorah's perspective, they had advanced enough technology to turn alien animals into a gigantic, planet-destroying, space-traveling DraconicAbomination with eons-spanning immortality, they earned Ghidorah's ire by hurting it with their experiments to turn it, they set Ghidorah loose from its cage to [[BioweaponBeast destroy something for them]], and they ''weren't'' powerful enough to stop Ghidorah from killing them when it turned against them and made the Makers die screaming in revenge. ''Fanfic/AbraxasEmptyFullness'' reveals [[spoiler:that the Makers made Ghidorah to commit genocide against another planet whose people had "refused" the Makers' "offers" three times, and that the Makers regarded concepts of religion and faith as "primitive superstition" which they'd moved past]].
[[/folder]]
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* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'': Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing for a lark.
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* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'': Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing acting mysterious for a lark.
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* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks: Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing for a lark.
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* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks: ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'': Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing for a lark.
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks: Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing for a lark.
[[/folder]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks: Deconstructed with the Vendorians. InUniverse they are seen as this, but after a few appearances the audience can see that they are yet another example of [[AliensAreBastards asshole aliens]] who are exploiting the "act mysterious" thing for a lark.
[[/folder]]
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** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'': In Season 4, a strange anomaly travels through the galaxy destroying everything in its path, including inhabited planets. Eventually it is discovered that the anomaly was on a mission to scoop up boronite, and was created by an alien race that lives outside the galaxy. The ''Discovery'' is sent to negotiate with the aliens, who they label as species 10-C, and ask them to stop their anomaly. The aliens prove to be so unlike anything that had been encountered earlier, the universal translator doesn't work, and the team sent to negotiate with them has a very hard time establishing even basic communication.
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* ''Film/AsteroidCity'' is all about this. An alien arrives in a small town, steals the town's local meteor tourist attraction, disappears, then returns and gives the meteor back before leaving yet again. It never explains itself or why it did those things. [[RiddleForTheAges The audience and characters alike are left to speculate about it]]. Lampshaded in the [[NestedStory upper layer of the plot]], where Creator/JeffGoldblum — the actor playing the alien in the ShowWithinAShow — points out that the alien is more [[AllegoricalCharacter a metaphor and representation of the story's themes than a real character]].
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* ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' is quite possibly the TropeCodifier. The aliens do bizarre, inscrutable things like abducting people, placing things they took in the wrong location, meddling with machines, flying around seemingly aimlessly, and all sorts of other general weirdness. We never learn why and they certainly never explain themselves; it's not til the end that anybody even manages to communicate with them to any real extent. They're not malevolent, just something beyond current human understandings.
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-> ''"About Khaak culture absolutely nothing is known. From their behaviour it is difficult to determine a recognisable analogue, prompting some Argon exobiologists to comment on the 'fundamental impenetrability' of the modes of thought of extraterrestrials."''
--> -- ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} The X-Encyclopedia]]''
--> -- ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} The X-Encyclopedia]]''
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* In Christopher Nuttall's ''Literature/ArkRoyal'', the aliens ignore all calls for communication and simply dice humanity's ships to pieces. [[spoiler: Though, late in book 2, a faction of the aliens attempts to make contact, before being destroyed by the war faction.]]
* In Edmond Barrett's ''Literature/{{Nameless War}}'' the Nameless make no attempts at communication; expeditions after the Mississippi Incident discover their handiwork, but not the Nameless themselves. [[spoiler: In Last Charge, the Nameless do offer terms of surrender-- humanity must stop breeding and go extinct peacefully.]]
* In Edmond Barrett's ''Literature/{{Nameless War}}'' the Nameless make no attempts at communication; expeditions after the Mississippi Incident discover their handiwork, but not the Nameless themselves. [[spoiler: In Last Charge, the Nameless do offer terms of surrender-- humanity must stop breeding and go extinct peacefully.]]
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* In Christopher Nuttall's ''Literature/ArkRoyal'', the aliens ignore all calls for communication and simply dice humanity's ships to pieces. [[spoiler: Though, [[spoiler:However, late in book 2, a faction of the aliens attempts to make contact, before being destroyed by the war faction.]]
* InEdmond Barrett's ''Literature/{{Nameless War}}'' ''Literature/TheNamelessWar'' the Nameless make no attempts at communication; expeditions after the Mississippi Incident discover their handiwork, but not the Nameless themselves. [[spoiler: In Last Charge, the Nameless do offer terms of surrender-- humanity must stop breeding and go extinct peacefully.]]
* In
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* The Presger in ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'' exist mainly as an unknowable outside force that has put a dampener on [[TheEmpire The Radch]] by proclaiming humans a 'significant' species that are worth not being disassembled in an amusing fashion. From what little we learn from one of their ArtificialHuman 'translators', their way of thinking is completely alien to ours and they don't seem to understand individuality or personhood, or at least not in a way translatable to us.
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* The Presger in ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'' ''Literature/ImperialRadch'' exist mainly as an unknowable outside force that has put a dampener on [[TheEmpire The Radch]] by proclaiming humans a 'significant' species that are worth not being disassembled in an amusing fashion. From what little we learn from one of their ArtificialHuman 'translators', their way of thinking is completely alien to ours and they don't seem to understand individuality or personhood, or at least not in a way translatable to us.
