History StarfishAliens / Literature

* The ''Literature/{{Sten}}'' series features occasional wildly nonhumanoid creatures, such as the peaceful race of floating jellyfish, or a ring of sentient polyp creatures that appear to be permanently installed in a ring inside a large Customer Service desk. There's also one ''literal'' example of a Starfish Alien, and it's nightmarish for three reasons: it's as tall as a man, it runs through waist-deep water as quickly as a man can on land, and it's got a thresher maw in in its center. The creature, called a "gurion", is only encountered once in the series but remains one of the most memorable and horrific of all the alien entities Sten fights.

** The Knnn are snarls of black hair mounted on spider legs. None of the oxygen breathing aliens have figured out even the tiniest portion of their language, forcing them to use the T'ca as translators. Not that having translators seems to be much help, since the Knnn are so alien that they have yet to be made to understand such simple concepts as "you're going the wrong way down a one-way street". They used to force their way onto dock and take what they wanted; through painstaking negotiations with t'ca intermediators, the concept of 'trade' was conveyed to them. Now they force their way onto dock, take what they want, and leave some other randomly chosen item behind.

** The Morodin of Varonat (a planet near Bespin) are a tragic example: they are sentient, but look like multilegged [[StockDinosaurs sauropods]] and are therefore hunted by poachers.

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** The Martians in ''Literature/RedPlanet'' are similar in nature and lifecycle. The description of those in ''Literature/TheRollingStones'' is less detailed since they are incidental to the plot so it is hard to determine their similarity.

** The Yeerks, a race of parasitic slugs that burrow into the ear of their hosts to infest and take over their brains, feed off of energy from their home sun, and reproduce though some sort of fusion/fission ritual that kills all three of the parents. In their natural state they're completely helpless and have no form of communication outside of their own species, despite being intelligent and entirely sentient.

* The last book of the ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' trilogy had a species from an [[AlternateHistory alternate version of the Earth]] called the "Mulefa" who have a diamond shaped skeletal structure instead of a spine. They also evolved to have elephant like trunks and the hooks on their feet to allow the use of what are essentially giant pea pods as wheels on their front and rear legs, since the viewpoint character for this subplot notes that it's impossible for a species to evolve wheel-like appendages. (If this is hard to visualize, [[http://bookpolygamist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/mulefa_from_the_amber_spyglass_by_3djinn.jpg here]].)

* ''Literature/TheHost2008'' contains the "Souls", a PuppeteerParasite species. The main character actually comments on how no species they have taken over has been exactly the same. Other species mentioned are basically giant intelligent dragonflies, intelligent flowers, and seaweed with eyes and a psychic connection to the entire species.

* ''Literature/TheHost'' contains the "Souls", a PuppeteerParasite species. The main character actually comments on how no species they have taken over has been exactly the same. Other species mentioned are basically giant intelligent dragonflies, intelligent flowers, and seaweed with eyes and a psychic connection to the entire species.

* Most of the aliens in the ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series qualify. Of the ones revealed in the first two books, the Turusch evolved to live in Venus-like atmospheres and exist as pairs of cylindrical organisms with a StarfishLanguage wherein each body speaks a separate line and the harmonics between the two lines of dialogue create a third. The H'rulka are colony organisms (think Portuguese man o' war) that form a LivingGasbag averaging 200 meters long and evolved in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. The most human-like psychologically are the Agletsch, a ProudMerchantRace of spider-like aliens that [[AlienCatnip get drunk off vinegar]] and treat eating as an intensely private act (which is good, because their method is NauseaFuel for humans). Later novels introduce and describe the Slan, a race whose primary sense is echolocation (think bats UpToEleven), who are even able to use it as XRayVision. Since their light-sensing organ is rudimentary at best, they don't even understand the concept of "space". To them, it's one big airless cave, through which they require spaceships to move to get to another habitable cave. The Grdoch are large rolling spheres with dozens of mouths, who ''really'' like to eat other beings. Unfortunately for humans, they happen to match the Grdoch protein requirements. They're also almost always pregnant and release their offspring at times of stress, frequently eating them or using them to distract larger predators. Then there are the jellyfish-like aliens who come from a Europa-like world. They have a reducing-medium metabolism (rather than oxidizing-medium, like almost all the other species), meaning they intake hydrogen and use it to reduce nutrients. Because of this, they live very slowly and perceive every other race as Franchise/TheFlash. They "see" with something called "electric-sense", which is also how they communicate.

* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'': The eponymous "worms" or "entities" revealed near the end of the story. [[spoiler:They have long since abandoned their original, dead world and now travel throughout the multiverse seeking ways to grow. Two individuals are the source of all the superpowers in ''Worm'', having come to Earth as the latest in a long line of worlds and civilizations they have parasitized and consumed. These beings exist in multiple parallel realities simultaneously and can move between them as casually as taking a step. They possess millions upon millions of superpowers and further retain the scientific knowledge of not only their own, ancient race, but of every intelligent civilization they've consumed. To say their thought processes and outlooks don't resemble those of a human in the slightest is an understatement. They're so complex that it's stated the tiny "shards" of themselves they shed (ie, the superpowers everyone has) are themselves living things with their own form of life and intelligence.]]

* [[HordeOfAlienLocusts The Vord]] in ''Literature/CodexAlera'' are, [[CaptainErsatz for all intents and purposes]], the Zerg from ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'', which are described below. Their HiveQueen's attempts to [[CuteMonsterGirl look human]] mostly just succeed in making their totally alien nature [[UncannyValley that much more obvious]].

** The Flying Polyps, historical enemies of The Great Race of Yith, are something of a species of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. They come down on planets in order to feed, and are described as having "temporary lapses in visibility" by virtue of not being wholly material. They're also {{Nigh Invulnerab|ility}}le to physical harm; the Yithians defeated them with energy weapons. As for the Star Spawn, the fact that they are merely slightly scaled-down versions of bona fide EldritchAbomination Cthulhu speaks volumes about their abomination status.

* Most of the aliens in the ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series qualify. Of the ones revealed in the first two books, the Turusch evolved to live in Venus-like atmospheres and exist as pairs of cylindrical organisms with a StarfishLanguage wherein each body speaks a separate line and the harmonics between the two lines of dialogue create a third. The H'rulka are colony organisms (think Portuguese man o' war) that form a LivingGasbag averaging 200 meters long and evolved in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. The most human-like psychologically are the Agletsch, a ProudMerchantRace of spider-like aliens that [[AlienCatnip get drunk off vinegar]] and treat eating as an intensely private act (which is good, because their method is NauseaFuel for humans). Later novels introduce and describe the Slan, a race whose primary sense is echolocation (think bats UpToEleven), who are even able to use it as XRayVision. Since their light-sensing organ is rudimentary at best, they don't even understand the concept of "space". To them, it's one big airless cave, through which they require spaceships to move to get to another habitable cave. The Grdoch are large rolling spheres with dozens of mouths, who ''really'' like to eat other beings. Unfortunately for humans, they happen to match the Grdoch protein requirements. They're also almost always pregnant and release their offspring at times of stress, frequently eating them or using them to distract larger predators. Then there are the jellyfish-like aliens who come from a Europa-like world. They have a reducing-medium metabolism (rather than oxidizing-medium, like almost all the other species), meaning they intake hydrogen and use it to reduce nutrients. Because of this, they live very slowly and perceive every other race as ComicBook/TheFlash. They "see" with something called "electric-sense", which is also how they communicate.

** On a meta level, the dichotomy between humanoid and non-humanoid races, with the somewhat unrealistic (for a duo of writers who started out writing ''hard'' SF and one of whom was an astronomer and computer scientist by education and trade, at least) amount of HumanAliens is [[{{JustifiedTrope}} justified]] or at least [[{{HandWave}} handwaved]] with the idea that beings evolving on planets with similar circumstances will be phenotypically similar due to convergent evolution, and will likely also be behaviorially similar (thus the "humanoid" status of Tagorians and Leonidans). This is not really stated outright, but it's a strong subtext between the lines in ''Literature/BeetleInTheAnthill'' (the Noon Universe novel most intensely dealing with the Wanderers, [[TheGhost not that that is saying much]], likely [[{{TheUnreveal}} by design]]). The extent of convergent evolution is somewhat hard to believe for the cases where the "aliens" ''are'' de facto humans, but TransplantedHumans was not a common trope when the books were written.

* Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' was the TropeCodifier, particularly for the common "cephalopod alien" variant. Wells designed his Martians by starting out with a humanoid, then eliminating all organs (limbs, digestive tract, etc) that he felt advanced technology would render useless and/or inefficient.

** Lukyanenko's ''Literature/{{Spectrum}}'' also features some strange races. One is a sentient race of 3-foot amoebae whose homeworld is covered by a layer of water with such a high surface tension that other races can walk on it. However, if they spend more than a day on that planet, they will die from their own body fluids adopting the local surface tension (i.e. blood can't flow anymore). Members of another race live only for six months and die shortly after giving birth (which implies that they can never have a positive population growth). Additionally, they give half their memories to their offspring. Another race looks like TheReptilians, except only their males do. Their females are non-sentient, are much smaller, move on all fours, and are usually treated as pets.

** The ''Literature/RodAlbrightAlienAdventures'' series has Tar Gibbons (member of a multi-gendered species), Phil the Plant, and Edgar/Seymour (member of a symbiont species which splits into two bodies as part of its life cycle). On the psychological side, Captain Grakker uses a computerized implant to experience moods.

** Other Asimov books include: horse descended aliens which need hydrogen cyanide in the air they breathe, and who cannot understand marriage ("Hostess"); sulfur based life forms which cannot understand how humans can have more than one government ("In a Good Cause—"); chlorine based creatures which evolved from something like insects, who cannot understand how a group of humans found together can be anything but a social group connected more deeply than a family ("C-Chute"); a HiveMind which can design parts of itself to look like anything, including pieces of wire, and which is desperate to make Earth similar to itself ("Green Patches"); tentacle horrors from a dying planet who are seriously disturbed by the fact that humans can feel emotional connection to their children ("The Deep"); bug eyed monsters who cannot understand the idea of sexual reproduction ("What is This Thing Called Love?").

* ''Literature/TheBible'' describes angels as having bizarre appearances or as being easily mistaken for {{human|aliens}}s, never anywhere in between. The former cases (eye covered wheels being among the most mundane) are apparently horrific, such that they usually introduce themselves with "Be not afraid" when delivering messages from God to humanity. Some examples of descriptions of angels include having hundreds of hands along with multiple layers of heads, speaking fire, talking winds, "amber/electrum coloured" lights, or beings so bright they have to be covered with multiple pairs of wings to prevent Earthly onlookers from spontaneously combusting from their mere presence.

* The scramblers in Peter Watts' ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'' are starfish-shaped, with a reproduction cycle inspired by jellyfish (not surprisingly, Watts is a marine biologist). Their metabolism is similar to that used by anaerobic bacteria (except part of it involves ''quantum tunneling''), they have no DNA, and for the best part? [[spoiler:They're extremely intelligent, but not ''self-aware'']]. The [[Literature/{{Echopraxia}} sequel]] reveals that they [[spoiler:effectively have no consistent biochemistry or biology at all, and can ''perfectly'' design entire new forms of life for an environment in an instant]]. "They" is a somewhat misleading pronoun, since the human characters wonder, but never find out, whether a scrambler can even be considered an "organism" by conventional Earth definitions at all.

* In Robert J. Sawyer's ''Calculating God'', the first alien met by the main character is a big spider-sphere thing. That alien also takes a few shots at the RubberForeheadAliens on Franchise/StarTrek, when he is being introduced to human culture.

* Ben Jeapes' ''Commonwealth'' trilogy has the First Breed, dubbed the Rusties - four-legged aliens with tentacles near their mouths. Their [[StarfishLanguage language sounds like someone being strangled]], so they use translators instead. Untranslated Rusties Language has the emotion in square brackets first, then the sentence in double triangle-brackets. [[SelfDemonstratingArticle [Explanatory] <<Like This.>> ]] They have no imagination - they were raised from primitive cattle beings by the Ones Who Command, who treated them as labour and cannon fodder. The Ones Who Command accidently sterilized themselves with a virus, and now only the Rusties are left. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality They have weird ideas about leadership.]]

** The Flying Polyps, historical enemies of The Great Race of Yith, are something of a species of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. They come down on planets in order to feed, and are described as having "temporary lapses in visibility" by virtue of not being wholly material. They're also NighInvulnerable to physical harm; the Yithians defeated them with energy weapons. As for the Star Spawn, the fact that they are merely slightly scaled-down versions of bona fide EldritchAbomination Cthulhu speaks volumes about their abomination status.

** The Affront - a floating, bulbous mass about two metres in diameter, which hangs from a frilled buoyant gas sac one to five metres in diameter, with a set of tentacles, eyestalks and beaks. Their name is an insult given by another species after their diplomats [[IAmAHumanitarian have been eaten]], which they have been using as a sign of pride. Their society has been described as a "never-ending holocaust of pain and misery". Masters of genetic engineering, they mainly use it to make their preferred prey and slave species experience constant pain and fear, and one of the only changes they made to themselves is making sex for their females excruciatingly painful.

* Polish sci-fi writer Jacek Dukaj has a couple examples. The adynatosee in "Different Chants" (an AlternateHistory with Aristotlean physics and metaphysics) come from outside the sphere of constant stars. In the book every object and being has a morph (form) which influences the morph of other objects/beings near it. Their form is so alien that [[spoiler:people start melting miles away from a city they built in Africa]]. Lute (the ice angels) in "Ice" look like a combination of a jellyfish with an ice sculpture they move by melting old parts and frozing new ones. The question whether they are even alive is never answered (though most people think of them as such) but [[spoiler:leads the main character to the conclusion that he doesn't exist]]. Also they seem to have an aura of boolean logic - no uncertainities, quantum mechanics, wave-particle duality or even believable lies around them.

* The latter books of ''[[Literature/EndersGame Ender saga]]'' (once you get past the ChildSoldiers part) are pretty much all about the intricate moral distinctions between incomprehensible starfish aliens and HumanAliens - so much so that the series uses its own terms for the two: ''varelse'' and ''ramen'' respectively. The first species humanity [[BugWar encounters]], the "Buggers", seem like clear-cut HiveMind evil ''varlese'' - until it turns out that they only genocided half of humanity because they didn't realize mankind was sentient. In ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' the "piggies" have such an alien biology, it starts an interplanetary incident before the xenozoologist protagonists figure out what's going on. In ''Literature/{{Xenocide}}'' it is revealed that the piggies, after dying, ''become father-trees'', and in order to do that, they absolutely require the "descolada" virus, which is lethal to humans ([[spoiler:although the "recolada", the crippled version, works just as fine]]). At the conclusion of ''Literature/ChildrenOfTheMind'' [[spoiler:it seems the protagonists may ''really'' have found some ''varlese''-class starfish aliens; the ones who made the "descolada" virus, and [[StarfishLanguage communicate exclusively through chemical signals]].]]

* Very consciously applied in Creator/WayneBarlowe's illustrated novel ''Literature/{{Expedition}}''. Barlowe is vocally sick of HumanAliens and RubberForeheadAliens and set out to create the most genuinely alien creatures he could think of, describing the ecology of the world in detail. Very few of them have the number of legs one would expect, only one named creature has ''eyes'' (and it is a single, atrophying eye at that; the creature seems to prefer keeping it retracted into a special chamber anyway), and only one named creature has anything resembling a conventional head with a "mouth" and "jaws" - and it turns out that the lower jaw can separate from the upper one and that it functions more like a mosquito's proboscis. And yet, he still keeps them familiar enough in subtle ways. [[spoiler:There is also an alien of humanlike intelligence -- and it looks more like what would happen if an octopus hitched a ride on a hot air balloon]]. Barlowe also painted portraits of many fictional alien races in his ''Guide to Extraterrestrials'' and ''Guide to Fantasy'', focusing on ''very'' alien aliens including the Elder Things and Velantians mentioned on this page.

* The Taurans in Joe Haldeman's novel ''Literature/TheForeverWar''. Their minds are far more alien than their vaguely-humanoid bodies.

* Alan Dean Foster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'': In ''The Founding of the Commonwealth'', humans almost allied with both the [=AAnn=] (who are LizardFolk) and the Pitar (preternaturally beautiful HumanAliens) instead of the insectoid Thranx... simply because the Thranx [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute looked like bugs]] (rather cute bugs, but still). [[spoiler:It turned out that the [=AAnn=] are militant bastards, and the Pitar wanted to [[PlanetLooters take everything useful from everything else]], then [[KillAllHumans kill them to make room for themselves]]. Once they got over their mutual instinctive dislike of each other's physical forms, humans and thranx found that they got along pretty well.]]

* ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'' has the Posleen, described as {{hermaphrodite}} crocodilian centaurs, the Tchi... erm, crabs, which bear a ''very'' superficial resemblence to the earth arthropods they're nicknamed after (because the real name isn't really pronounceable with a human mouth), as well as the Himmit, which are basically double-ended frogs with a natural InvisibilityCloak.

* The Oankali in Octavia Butler's ''Xenogenesis''/''Literature/LilithsBrood'' trilogy...''some'' of whom have been genetically altered to be more-or-less humanoid in outline. In their original state, they more closely resemble giant sea cucumbers.

** The asymmetrical Moties from ''Literature/TheMoteInGodsEye'' (which he co-wrote with Jerry Pournelle).
* In C.L. Moore's ''Literature/NorthwestSmith'' story "Shambleau" the titular creatures show themselves as creatures resembling a smallish human-like cat alien, but when feeding reveal a true form that's apparently just a mass of tentacles. They're described as inspiring, among other things, the Medusa myth of a horrible creature that turns people to stone when seen.

* Creator/KarlSchroeder's ''Permanence'' has aliens so weird, they can't talk to humans or other species without an artificial intelligence. This applies to writing as well, and the translations are never anything close to perfect. In the backstory, one intelligent species inhabited an entire planet, forming '''all''' living things there. The animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, etc were all one species, and had identical DNA. The scientists thought this was odd, until they found some human babies with the same DNA! (The babies basically had a human mind and an alien mind, which didn't communicate with each other.) When they managed to communicate to the aliens that they were sentient, the aliens [[spoiler:responded violently, as they felt no species had the right to alter their environment. The humans had to quickly evacuate and nuke the planet. Other nearby planets were also inhabited by the aliens, and the human colonists there had to leave really slowly before the aliens could catch on to what was happening.]] Creepy.
* The dragonlike reptilian aliens - just known as "[[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]]" - in ''The Literature/PitDragonChronicles'' are not particularly weird to ''look'' at, but they're telepathic and communicate in incomprehensible patterns of color, and it's very hard to tell how intelligent they are. So what do the descendents of penal colonies dumped on that world do? Capture them, pen them, and force them to breed and take place in bloody ritual fights, of course! Though this ''is'' said to have saved the dragons, as apparently they were dying out, surviving ones being too viciously territorial to know when to stop, and they were carefully bred to be less aggressive. It's still very hard to tell how their minds work and how intelligent they are, even in ''A Sending Of Dragons'', where the main characters can perceive their sendings as words. Then thirty years later came ''Dragon's Heart'', which had {{Series Continuity Error}}s to the point where dragons are clearly clever but not mysterious or weirdly insightful at all, and distinctly limited.

** and maybe the strangest of all, the Thek, roughly pyramidal-shaped blocks of stone with molten cores who feed on transuranic elements, grow larger as they age (up to the size of mountains), are quite possibly immortal (the remains of one who had been ''subducted by continental drift'' was found, and communicate very slowly with other races (a conversation with a large one can last a human lifetime). They are ''also'' SufficientlyAdvancedAliens who are powerful enough to dictate terms to the rest of the Federation (when a Thek Cathedral happens, you '''''will''''' listen, and you '''''will''''' do what you are told). It is strongly implied that the Thek are the cource of rumors about the Others, an unknown species that consumes the surface of worlds utterly to feed their monstrous appetites.

* Also by K.A. Applegate, the ''Literature/{{Remnants}}'' series features different alien species, of which the Squids are the most ''normal''. The Blue Meanies/Children are described as looking like giant cats with tentacles they use for sign language, the Riders have two different-looking heads (one is basically just a mouth), and the Shipwrights look like starfish, but with '' transparent skin''.

* The aliens from the Rocheworld novels include the Flowen and their cousins, the Gummies, sapient trees called Jollies, a creature that looks like a pillar on a rug, and two kinds of sapient fish, one of which is [[BizzarreSexualDimorphism the male counterpart to the pillar-and-rug beastie.]] The flowen are [[BlobMonster basically slimes,]] but contemplate complex mathematical equations, only "dying" when they encounter a math problem that makes them condense permanently. The gummies are evolved from flowen to live on dry land. They look like starfish too. The jollies look like oak trees with mouths on them, and have symbiotic animals that see and collect food for them. On the same world is a sapient fish that starts out as a male, goldfish-like creature, and develops into an amphibious shark.

* Ted Chiang's short story "[[Film/{{Arrival}} Story of Your Life]]" is about a human team's attempts to study and communicate with an alien species. Eventually, the linguists realize that the alien written language is nonlinear because the aliens don't have our idea of time. Learning the alien language enables the linguists to [[spoiler: perceive the future, but not to change it]].

** On the other end of the spectrum, you have the non-humanoid races, into which the weird stuff goes. These include IntelligentGerbil species like Golovans (who look like large Earth dogs with very big heads, have PsychicPowers and, while they ''do'' communicate with humans, a psychology which is hard to understand, with the few people who work as Golovan liasons ending up quite frustrated) or the so-called Ark Megaforms from ''Literature/SpaceMowgli'', who seem to be either huge colonies of microbes or something like land corals, manifesting as large, immobile tentacle-like appendages. They do not directly communicate with the human expedition to Ark at all, but are somehow psychically linked to a human child (sole survivor of a previous expedition to the planet, having been born to two of the expedition's members), the titular Space Mowgli, and use him as a mouthpiece (and even that with somewhat limited results).
** Finally, there are the Wanderers, a HigherTechSpecies who either vanished, AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence or are simply extremely good at not being seen. The only evidence of Wanderer activity are occasional artifacts (including one anti-ship KillSat orbiting a planet) that are entirely incomprehensible to any other species technologically, are mainly made out of an entirely unknown substance, and yet still work quite well, as a human ship tragically finds out in relation to said kill sat). Most humans don't believe that Wanderers actually ever existed, while those in positions of power who do (due to witnessing examples of their technology, for instance) have more than a few sleepless nights due to the possibility that they might still be around. A few select characters like Rudolf Sikorski (head of COMCON-2, which is the closest the Noon Universe comes to a StateSec agency and counterintelligence program, for humanity as a whole, making Sikorski one of the most powerful humans in the setting) are extremely worried by the suspicion that Wanderers may not only still be around, but might also be covertly influencing / "progressing" humanity just as humanity itself does with the "lower" species. Nothing is known about the actual species besides the fact that they likely were/are radically non-humanoid.
** On a meta level, the dichotomy between humanoid and non-humanoid races, with the somewhat unrealistic (for a duo of writers who started out writing ''hard'' SF and one of whom was an astronomer and computer scientist by education and trade, at least) amount of HumanAliens is [[{{JustifiedTrope}} justified]] or at least [[{{HandWave}} handwaved]] with the idea that beings evolving on planets with similar circumstances will be phenotypically similar due to convergent evolution, and will likely also be behaviorially similar (thus the "humanoid" status of Tagorians and Leonidans). This is not really stated outright, but it's a strong subtext between the lines in ''Literature/BeetleInTheAnthill'' (the Noon Universe novel most intensely dealing with the Wanderers, [[{{TheUnseen}} not that that is saying much]], likely [[{{TheUnreveal}} by design]]). The extent of convergent evolution is somewhat hard to believe for the cases where the "aliens" ''are'' de facto humans, but TransplantedHumans was not a common trope when the books were written.

* In ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'', [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uplift_Universe_species few aliens are bipedal]]. There's one species that looks like a stack of wax doughnuts, another with five-point radial symmetry, and one species that has '''wheels'''. The other orders of life are much stranger, including quantum entities and [[MemeticMutation intelligent memes.]]

* The illustrations in ''Literature/{{WondLa}}'' are just chock-full of them. The first one [[KidHero Eva]] meets is [[HumanoidAliens humanoid enough save for the backwords-bending legs,]] but it pretty much ends there, as she comes across, among others, an upscaled water bear, a multi-armed hovering fortune teller who doesn't speak with his mouth, and a giant praying mantis-like queen.
* Creator/FrederikPohl's ''The World At The End Of Time'' features plasma-based aliens who live inside stars and don't care much for "slowlife" like biological beings.

* The TropeMaker seems to be the 1888 short story ''Literature/LesXipehuz'' by J.H. Rosny. While the eponymous creatures are never stated to come from outer space, they are non-organic lifeforms with [[LivingPolyhedron cone- or cylinder shaped bodies]] with a HeartLight, talk by [[StarfishLanguage drawing symbols on each others bodies with lasers]] and [[BizarreAlienReproduction reproduce]] by merging over night and creating a new individuum from smoke that's much bigger than the adults and shrinks as it gets denser.

* The JAM in ''[[Literature/SentouYouseiYukikaze Yukikaze]]''.

** The various outright HumanAliens present in the galaxy, who are all at much lower stage of development than humanity, such as the natives of Saraksh (''Literature/PrisonersOfPower''), Giganda (''Literature/TheKidFromHell'') or the DungAges planet where Arkanar is located (''Literature/HardToBeAGod''), who are being covertly influenced by (Terran) human agents called Progressors to uplift them culturally. Those "aliens" are, in physiology/genetics, behavior and everything else, essentially identical to humans.
** Then, there are other aliens, technologically comparable to Terrans, who are biologically radically different, but apparently still ''look'' vaguely humanoid and have a psychology similar to humans, so they are counted as part of the "humanoid" group. Two of those have been described vaguely: Tagorians, who seem to have insect-like reproduction, with one life stage involving larvae, but otherwise seem ''not'' to behave like BeePeople, and the plant-like Leonidans, who are a pacifistic philosopher society with OrganicTechnology. Both of those are on good terms with Terrans and meaningful communication and cooperation is possible.

** Finally, there are the Wanderers, a HigherTechSpecies who either vanished, AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence or is simply extremely good at not being seen. The only evidence of Wanderer activity are occasional artifacts (including one anti-ship KillSat orbiting a planet) that are entirely incomprehensible to any other species technologically, are mainly made out of an entirely unknown substance, and yet still work quite well (as a human ship tragically finds out in relation to said kill sat). Most humans don't believe that Wanderers actually ever existed, while those in positions of power who do (due to witnessing examples of their technology, for instance) have more than a few sleepless nights due to the possibility that they might still be around, with a few characters extremely worried by the suspicion that Wanderers may not only still be around, but might also be covertly influencing ("progressing") humanity just as humanity does with the "lower" species. Nothing is known about the actual species besides the fact that they likely were non-humanoid.