Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi once asked, “if we live in an infinite universe with infinite capacity for life, why haven’t we seen any aliens?” This question is known as the Fermi Paradox – left unanswered until now. Where are all the aliens? Why, they’re in these 10 sci-fi books! While we’ve yet to see extraterrestrial life in the observable universe, we’ve created it countless times in the literary universes that we’ve dreamed up in our heads! Here are the 10 best sci-fi books about aliens, and you didn’t even have to get abducted and probed to find them – lucky you!
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a universe where humanity has colonized the stars. The human genome has spread throughout the void, seeding worlds and causing humanity to mutate little by little along the way. On the ice planet of Gethen, a species of post-humans has evolved to form a complex society where gender roles are entirely eliminated. The Gethenians are ambisexual, meaning that they only develop male or female sexual characteristics while in “kemmer” – a brief, monthly period of fertility. An ambassador from a human federation of planets comes to visit the Gethen in hopes of convincing its nations to join up with their human siblings beyond the stars. It doesn’t go so well, his cultural misunderstandings cause him to become a political undesirable, and he’s forced to flee across a cold wasteland with a Gethenian companion by his side. Part political drama, part sci-fi, part almost slow burn romance, all aliens.
The Three Body Problem
Before it became a big ol’ Netflix series, Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem was part of a celebrated but dense sci-fi series where the laws of physics are a thing to be feared. The title is named for a particular physical conundrum: when three celestial bodies are in introduced together in a system, their movements are nearly impossible to predict. When you’re an alien race living on a planet orbiting three suns, the problem becomes even trickier. One wrong solar move and your planet might be scorched to a crisp or frozen solid, causing you to have to rebuild civilization over and over again. Lucky for these aliens, there’s a nearby planet orbiting one sun that’s much more hospitable for life. Unlucky for us, that planet is called Earth, and the Trisolarions are aiming to take it by force.
The Xeelee Sequence
When it comes to grimdark, The Xeelee Sequence might just have genre stalwart Warhammer 40k beat. Stephen Baxter’s series of carbon hard sci-fi novels takes place over a billion years, and details humanity’s war of attrition with the godlike Xeelee – aliens that make their homes within the event horizons of black holes. If that mind boggling factoid didn’t clue you in, the Xeelee are one of the most powerful fictional species ever conceived, soaring above the competition on the Kardashev scale. And the Xeelee aren’t the only species that humanity must contend with – there’s also the Photino Birds, a towering species comprised of dark matter that live in the center of galaxies. And there are the Silver Ghosts, each a symbiotic colony of organisms housed in a floating metallic shell. Oh and a treelike species on distant moons with superfluid helium blood. And sentient nanobots made of mathematical structures. And the Qax, which are… on second thought, just read the book.
All Tomorrows
C.M. Kosemen All Tomorrow‘s is the story of humanity’s ascendance from out of the terrestrial mud and into interstellar greatness – only to come crashing back down after ticking off the wrong alien race. After humanity spread across the Milky Way, we were visited by the Qu – a hostile species of gene altering dickheads that spliced our DNA to smithereens. Due to the genetic meddling of the Qu, once proud humanity has been reduced to separate species of human animals – many of whom are both pitiful and horrifying to behold. As the ages past, these post-humans species begin to revolve sentience (if they don’t go extinct first) and recolonize the stars – only to finally be snuffed out at the end of countless eons. Nothing lasts forever, but hey, at least C.M. Kosemen included illustrated pictures!
Children of Time
When humanity sent out seeds of life to distance planets, it was supposed to terraform said planets to create hospitable environments for human civilizations. No other sentient organisms were supposed to evolve on these garden worlds, but evolve they did. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time is the story of a group of human explorers who attempt to colonize a terraformed planet, only to find that a civilization of sentient spiders has already gone and established dominion there. These intelligent spiders were a logistical mistake, as the terraforming efforts were meant to uplift primates and not arachnids as the dominate species on the planet. Now humanity must examine its own morality and ask if their attempt to take the planet is justified at all. Who are the alien invaders here? Spoiler: it’s us.
Story of Your Life
Before it was adapted into a big blockbuster with Amy Adams, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life was a celebrated novella about a truly alien visitation. After a fleet of spaceships appear above the heads of humankind, the governments of the world scramble for answers. Linguist Louise Banks is recruited by the U.S. government to attempt to communicate with the Heptapods, towering seven-legged squid-looking guys that speak in circular symbols. As Louise works to decipher the Heptapod’s bafflingly alien language, she slowly realizes that the inscrutable extraterrestrials are attempting to give humanity one of the greatest gifts imaginable: a new way of thinking.
The Sparrow
Colonialism was bad enough on planet Earth, but now humanity is attempting to expand its broken system of power and control to the stars. What could go wrong? After Earth overhears some alien music bumping from a faraway world, a group of explorers are sent to investigate. Among them is a Jesuit priest hopefing to establish peaceful contact with the two intelligent species of planet Rakhat – which happen to have a predator and prey relationship. Again, what could go wrong? Despite the group’s best intentions, they end up committing a series of serious cultural faux pas with brutal and devastating repercussions for all involved. When it comes to complex alien societies with their own ways of doing things, maybe Earth should just mind its own damn business. But as is human habit, we never do.
Annihilation
The good thing about many of the alien species on this list is this: at least you know where you stand. Whether hostile or friendly, it’s better to know what kind of close encounter you’re about to have with the third kind. In Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, humanity is not given that luxury. The plot concerns an extraterrestrial stain that is spreading across the Earth like an astronaut’s spilled Tang, warping the wilderness that it covers beyond its shimmering veil of light. An all female group of scientists are the newest guinea pigs sent to investigate the anomaly, in hopes of finding answers about the enigmatic anomaly. What they find instead is pure, unleaded eldritch terror. The aliens of Annihilation aren’t seen, but their presence is felt in every mutated blade of grass and in the eyes of the amnesiac survivors of a one way journey across the threshold of madness.
Semiosis
When we think of aliens, we generally think of beings somewhat like us. Big headed guys with eyes and fingers, maybe a couple tentacles here and there, but definitely an animal with a spinal cord! Why? Because anything else is simply to alien to conceive of! But when Sue Burke broke wrote Semiosis, she conceived it anyway! The plot concerns a group of star-faring colonists who land on a faraway planet teeming with alien flora. As the hapless settlers attempts to gain their bearings in the steaming jungle, they begin to suspect that the surrounding plant life may just have a mind of its own. This is why when dealing with plants, you should always hot glue googly eyes to their leaves – that way you can tell where they’re looking, what they’re plotting in their little chlorophyll heads. If only the colonists had thought of that, maybe some of their horror could have been avoided.
The Bohr Maker
When we think of aliens, we think of them as organic beings, flesh and blood creatures like you and me. In Linda Nagata’s The Bohr Maker, the aliens in question are of a synthetic nature – not exactly a comforting thought. In the distant future, humanity’s experiments with genetic engineering have allowed them to successfully make the first “post-human” – a dude named Nikko who is able to survive in the vacuum of space. In order to escape a pre-programmed genetic flaw designed to kill him, Nikko steals a device called the Bohr Maker in order to rewrite his DNA. Things go awry when the Bohr Maker escapes (yes, it’s sentient of sorts) and bonds itself to a street urchin – giving her seemingly supernatural healing abilities. As the authorities attempt to clamp down on the nanotech mind now reshaping humanity’s genetic code, those who have been blessed by the Bohr Maker’s gifts are attempting to recapture the device that could usher in a golden age for humanity be rewriting its flaws. Robot alien turns people into post-human aliens, how much more alien do you need?
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