Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This past month's Contemporary Novel Discussion, Spin, includes some totally inscrutable aliens. In fact, those aliens are so unfathomable that there's no actual proof they exist. They're called simply "Hypotheticals", because an alien action seems the only explanation for inexplicable actions that seem impossibly unnatural.

Don't you just hate it when aliens show up and then don't do anything? They just stand there behind their monoliths or send their obscure radio beep beep noises, and nobody really knows what they want? They don't say hello, they don't attack, they don't ask for water or women or political asylum, they just float there in the sky the way bricks don't.

So this topic is, what are some books with some truly inscrutable aliens? Or even cryptoscrutable aliens?


Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Listed first because it brought the subject of mind as part of our June book discussion as inexplicable phenomena engulf planet Earth, leading to the ineluctable hypothesis that incredibly technologically advanced aliens are "up to something", though exactly what is a total mystery.



2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

This Clarke/Kubrick collaboration brings aliens we also never see in whose purpose is left vague at best. In many ways, Clarke's earlier novel, Childhood's End, is a forerunner to this concept of mysterious aliens guiding humanity.


Contact by Carl Sagan

A multi-layered transmission from space signals the presence of aliens, who ultimately send the plans for some sort of machine whose purpose is at best vague, and whose ultimate purpose remains a mystery.


Others....?

The first thing that comes to mind is Solaris: the intelligent ocean is so vastly different from us it is impossible to make any kind of contact with it.

Evgeny wrote: "The first thing that comes to mind is Solaris: the intelligent ocean is so vastly different from us it is impossible to make any king of contact with it."

Oh, yeah, great example. (Great book, too.)

my fav aliens of all time are from Fredric Brown's Martions Go Home...in one way, they don't fit the rules here...they make tons of problems for us Earth-Folk, and have no problem with showing themselves, but on the other hand, they touch nothing (nor can they be touched), no Jedi-Mind tricks or anything....the only thing they do is talk alot of trash and act like a bunch of fifth graders on subtute teacher day. They dont seem to actualy WANT anything, other than to cut-up 24/7 and they sure as hell dont want to leave. this book is a lol a minute SF novel, worth your time.