Aliette de Bodard is on my shortlist of “auto-preorder” authors: writers whose works I order as soon as they become available (remember: preorders are love). I first encountered her through fantasy, the marvelous The House of Shattered Wings and its sequels and tie-ins. (Purely coincidentally, the core trilogy has just been released in a shiny new edition.)
Thanks to commenter Khryss for reminding me that I had an unread De Bodard in my TBR pile, and for pointing out that it features jellyfish aliens. Naturally I leaped to move it to the top of the pile.
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Navigational Entanglements
Navigational Entanglements’ title works on multiple levels. It’s about four junior navigators in a Vietnamese-inspired science-fictional universe, confronted with a near-impossible task. This universe has an unusual take on star travel: navigators use their own energy, called Shadow, to open gates and navigate ships through the weird continuum called the Hollows.
The Hollows are inhabited, and the inhabitants are deadly dangerous. They’re called Tanglers. What they are, almost point for point, are spacefaring jellyfish. Bell, tentacles, stingers, the whole package.
Tanglers’ effect on humans is less about physical stingers and more about psychic damage. When their tendrils escape the Hollows into human space, navigators can track them with Shadow—and by following trails of humans whose minds have been bent or broken. A Tangler in human space is a serious threat to the humans in its path.
Much of the story revolves around the social, emotional, and political lives of the four young navigators, but the nature and biology of Tanglers is crucial to both the conflict and the resolution. The navigators are sent by their elders to find and capture a Tangler that has escaped (or so they’re told) from the Hollows. It has to be captured and presumably killed before it drifts into inhabited space. If they can’t stop it in time, the death toll will be enormous.
We’ve been learning about the life cycle of the jellyfish, and we’ve seen what happens when a bloom of giant jellyfish shows up along the coast of Japan. Both of these things are relevant to the story.
The average Tangler is about human-sized, but its tendrils trail far from the main body. The tendrils are the deadly part. What we learn along with the characters is that a Tangler can grow very, very, very big. The more it eats, the bigger it gets.
We don’t learn how long it lives, but that’s not really relevant. What is relevant is that a Tangler can breed in human space, and it reproduces in jellyfish fashion, seeding an area with polyps that develop into miniature Tanglers. The process seems to be fairly rapid, at least in space outside of the Hollows. The result, if it’s not checked or destroyed, is a bloom of Tanglers, and that is very bad.
Unlike terrestrial jellyfish (at least as far as we know), Tanglers appear to be sentient. They feel emotions (fear, loneliness, longing to go home). They seem to have a language.
They’re not mindless monsters. There’s no malice in them. They are what they are; they’re psychic predators, and they prey on humans who invade the Hollows. Outside of the Hollows, they hunt whatever they can eat, which would be the inhabitants of any habitat (from ship to planet) they encounter.
Whether it’s possible to communicate with them, or to persuade them to go back to the Hollows, is one of the problems the navigators have to solve. Can they settle this without violence, or without being killed themselves? In light of the political situation, should they even try? And what will the consequences be? Is it worth the cost?
I love that Tanglers are pretty much straightforward jellyfish with a couple of extra space powers. Jellies are profoundly alien to our human biology and psychology. They make sense as space aliens.
Now, a question for you all. What are your favorite book or film aliens based on terrestrial animals? That’s where I’m headed in the next chapter.
I have my eye on Pride of Chanur to start (lions! in space!), and several others are on my radar. What would you like me to look at? It doesn’t have to be fully sentient aliens; it can be unique life forms that are critical to the development of the story, as Tanglers are here. What’s out there, especially in the last decade or so? What shouldn’t I miss?
Not in the last decade, or even this century, but the Barnes/Niven/Pournelle “Legacy of Heorot” and it’s sequels have aliens loosely based on african bullfrogs.
Hmm, I didn’t remember that. (making note)
And then there’s the Turtledove aliens based on saguaro cacti.
Niven and Pournelle also did alien elephants, in Footfall….
There are the Cheschires in Bear and Monette’s Boojumverse stories. I think you could do a decent run on all the space cats. I like the treecats in Weber’s Honorverse but that’s a lot of reading to do.
McCaffrey had space unicorns but you might have done them already.
There must be space wolves but I can only think of the one in Jupiter Ascending.
Joyce Chng has a whole universe featuring werewolves in space.
I was also going to suggest David Weber’s treecats from the Honorverse – and there is, fortunately, a shortcut into that canon – the self-contained YA books co-written by Weber and Jane Lindskold, beginning with A Beautiful Friendship. That first book is itself an expansion of a novella/novelette of the same title, by Weber alone, from the first Honorverse anthology, More Than Honor. FWIW, while I like the spinoff series, I would rate the original shorter version as one of the best first-contact SF stories I’ve ever come across, and well worth reading entirely independent of the Honorverse canon. [For those unfamiliar with the larger series, treecats blend characteristics of cats and koalas in an ecosystem dominated by six-limbed lifeforms; they are also innately telepathic.]
Another set of interesting nonhuman aliens are Alan Dean Foster’s insectoid Thranx, from his “Commonwealth” universe, although it’s been a loong time since I’ve looked at those books; Nor Crystal Tears is the novel featuring first contact between Thranx and humans. Foster’s Web site also includes some background information on Thranx language and culture.
My very first thought was Niven’s Protectors, and all the hominids on the Ringworld. Then to the Gw’oth, and the Jotoki, both starfish-analogs.
Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand reveals near the end that a tail-less cat is actually an alien spy in disguise.
Holy moley, my void tortie kitten must be half space alien. Her mother and half her siblings have no tails.
This is literally just Asian Warhammer 40,000. However, that said, I am a sucker for interdimensional tentacle things–and I’ve liked just about everything I’ve read by De Bodard–so it’s definitely on my list.
I would not be surprised if that was deliberate.
OK, do I need to do a subsection on Cats In Space?
Caaaaats in Spaaaaace!
Mind you, if you do Cats in Space, Muppet fans may demand equal time for Pigs! In! Spaaaaace! (And there are several instances of space-based Muppets in the extended canon, from the denizens of the planet Koosbane as observed by action news reporter Kermit the Frog to none other than the Great Gonzo, who according to the film Muppets In Space is himself a space alien, and whose alien relatives play a non-trivial role in said movie.
And now that I think of it, there’s actually a Disney live-action film titled The Cat From Outer Space, in which the title character is in fact played by a cat. (And which may well have been based on a children’s book….)
I should think so; I think there was/were at least one Greenberg anthology with exactly that focus (with Mercedes Lackey as a contributor, no less), and I am thinking that at least some of Andre Norton’s space operas had ship’s cats aboard their vessels.
Pride of Chanur is good for “intelligent cats”, but for real aliens you want her study of the Kif in the trilogy starting with Chanur’s Venture
After reading it for the adventure, re-reads start to get an idea of how the Kif work
Good grief, this has caused my brain to go on an extended retro binge….
For non-sentient animals with interesting SFnal characteristics, one really ought not overlook Star Trek’s tribbles, which are arguably a mutant cross between guinea pigs, hamsters, and/or pet rats, whose biology is configured to make them interesting as a potential weapon…
…and once we’ve gone there, I abruptly remember that TSR’s Spelljammer setting for Dungeons & Dragons had a canonical race of Giant Space Hamsters (I promise, I am not making this up)…
…and that in turn reminds me of (Poul) Anderson and Dickson’s alien teddy bears, the Hoka. Who in turn remind me of a second alien race of alien teddy bears, the Ulru-Ujurrians, also from Alan Dean Foster’s Commonwealth, who end up as mostly silent backers of Foster’s series character Flinx.
Alien teddy bears, avast! Let’s not forget H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzies.
I’m fond of C.J. Cherryh’s carnivorous telepathic Nighthorses.