In 1979, artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe came out with
Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, in which he presented the reader with beautiful paintings of fifty alien species from written SF. (Full list
here.) I bought the book as a teenager and poured over it. Years later, I picked up Frederik Pohl's
The Age of the Pussyfoot and Donald Moffit's
The Jupiter Theft in used bookstores solely because I remembered the titles from Barlowe's book.
Now, let's imagine that they're coming out with a new
Guide to Extraterrestrials, illustrated by Barlowe or some other artist, and fifty alien races created by SF authors since... oh, let's say 1979, are to be included. Which ones do you nominate as vivid, well-described, and believable enough to make the cut? No pre-1979 aliens qualify. (This means Niven & Pournelle's Moties get screwed, but oh well.)
My initial nominations (obviously restricted by which SF lit I'm familiar with):
Fithp (
Footfall by Niven & Pournelle)
Heechee (
Heechee series by Frederik Pohl)
Pequeninos (
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card)
Skroderiders (
A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge)
Spiders (
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge)
Tines (
A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge)
(I was a bit reluctant to put the Heechee on there, since I frankly preferred the earlier books where they were an unseen plot device, but my list was looking rather sparse with just five races.)
